StrongerBible

meta

מְטָא

AramaicH4291“reach, come upon, ...”

Appears 8 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Dan 4:11(8)Dan 4:20(17)Dan 4:22(19)Dan 4:24(21)Dan 4:28(25)Dan 6:24(25)Dan 7:13Dan 7:22
Word studymeh-TAHverb

What meta means

to reach: to get all the way to the thing something was heading for, whether a height, a place, a person, or an appointed time.

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

Every appearance of this word sits in the Aramaic chapters of Daniel, and every one of them is about something finishing its travel and touching what it was aimed at. A tree grows until its top touches the sky. Men thrown into a pit never make it down to the floor. The word is not about the going but about the getting there.

That is what lets one verb cover such different pictures. A height can get to the sky, a person can get to the place where God is seated, a sentence handed down in heaven can catch up with the man it was spoken against, and a date fixed long ago can finally land on the calendar. In each case something set in motion arrives at its target, and Daniel keeps reusing the word so the reader feels the link: the king's greatness gets as high as heaven in one chapter, and the punishment gets to the king in the next.

Daniel 7 sets the word directly beside the ordinary verb for coming (אֲתָה). In the night vision one like a son of man is coming with the clouds, and then he reaches the Ancient of Days. A few verses later the Ancient of Days comes, and the appointed time arrives. The plain verb carries the movement; this one marks the instant the movement lands.

Nuances

1ato stretch or get all the way to a limit: to reach as high as, or as far down as, some point.
TranslatabilityDirect
Dan 4:11(8)Dan 4:20(17)Dan 4:22(19)Dan 6:24(25)
1bto arrive in front of someone: to come right up to where a person is.
Dan 7:13
1cto come upon someone: of a sentence or decision that catches up with the person it was aimed at.
Dan 4:24(21)Dan 4:28(25)
1dof a set time: to arrive, to come at last.
TranslatabilityDirect
Dan 7:22

What scholars say about meta

The lexica treat Aramaic מטא as a single lexeme, glossed "to reach, attain, arrive", and BDB's Aramaic section, HALOT, and Vogt organize its eight Danielic attestations along the same lines: spatial extension to a limit (Dan 4:8, 17, 19 [Eng 4:11, 20, 22]; 6:25 [Eng 6:24]), arrival at a person (7:13), incidence upon a person, construed with עַל, of a decree (4:21, 25 [Eng 4:24, 28]), and the temporal use "the time came" (7:22). The root corresponds to Hebrew מצא by the regular sibilant correspondence between the two languages, though the Hebrew verb specialized toward "to find" while the Aramaic kept "to reach"; the verb is well attested with the same range in Imperial Aramaic, the Targums, and Syriac. Rosenthal's grammar and the lexica note the constructions with לְ (goal), עַל (incidence on a person), and עַד (up to). Theodotion renders it with φθάνω throughout Daniel, and the New Testament preserves the same idiom of arrival on a person (Matt 12:28; 1 Thess 2:16). No live disagreement attaches to the verb's sense; the long-running debate at Dan 7:13 concerns the identity and direction of travel of the one like a son of man, not the meaning of this word.

Sources

  • HALOT, s.v. מטא (Aramaic)lexicon
  • BDB, Biblical Aramaic section, s.v. מטאlexicon
  • Ernst Vogt, A Lexicon of Biblical Aramaic, trans. J. A. Fitzmyer (Rome: Gregorian & Biblical Press, 2011), s.v. מטאlexicon
  • Franz Rosenthal, A Grammar of Biblical Aramaic, 7th ed. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006)grammar
  • John J. Collins, Daniel, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993)commentary

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of מְטָא

peal perfect 3ms

מְטָה, מְּטָא

Dan 7:13, Dan 7:22, Dan 4:28

peal imperfect 3ms

יִמְטֵא

Dan 4:11, Dan 4:20

peal perfect 3fs

מְטָת

Dan 4:22, Dan 4:24

peal perfect 3mp

מְטוֹ

Dan 6:24