StrongerBible

matam

מַטְעָם

HebrewH4303“delicacies, savory food, ...”

Appears 8 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 27:4Gen 27:7Gen 27:9Gen 27:14Gen 27:17Gen 27:31Pro 23:3Pro 23:6
Root family
Word studyResearch-grademat-AHMnoun

What matam means

a delicacy: tasty, specially prepared food made to satisfy a craving

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

This is a rare word, found only eight times and always in the plural. It names food that has been specially prepared to please the palate, the kind of dish a person craves and asks for by name. Its root means "to taste," and the word points to the tasted thing itself: a savory, appetizing dish set before someone to enjoy.

All eight uses fall in just two places, and in both the desired food is tangled up with deception. Six of them cluster in the story of Isaac's stolen blessing: the blind, aging father asks his son for the savory dish he loves, and his wife and younger son use that very craving to trick him. The other two come in a proverb warning a young courtier not to crave the fine food of a powerful host, "for it is deceptive food." In both settings the word marks food that gratifies appetite while quietly serving someone else's agenda.

The word itself does not carry any built-in note of luxury or lavishness; it simply means tasty, prepared food, and the sense of something rich or seductive comes from the surrounding story. Because Isaac is described as loving the taste of wild game (צַיִד), some read the dish in his story as specifically a hunter's meal, though the word on its own does not say so. There is a quiet irony worth noticing: the same root that gives this food word also gives a word for taste and good judgment (טַעַם), yet here the tasted dish is exactly what defeats the old man's judgment.

Gen 27:4Gen 27:7Gen 27:9Gen 27:14Gen 27:17Gen 27:31Pro 23:3Pro 23:6

Disputed

Whether מַטְעָם carries any built-in nuance beyond "tasty, prepared food," specifically whether it evokes a hunter's game-dish in Genesis 27.

  • majorityThe word means tasty, savory prepared food in general, with no built-in overtone of game or luxury; any such nuance is contextual.; Brown, Driver, Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), s.v. מַטְעָם; D. J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (DCH), vol. 5, s.v. מַטְעָם; W. A. VanGemeren, ed., NIDOTTE, vol. 2, s.v. טעם
  • minorityIn Genesis 27 the word specifically evokes a hunter's game-dish, following the Arabic cognate ṭaʿām applied to dishes made from hunted flesh.; W. Gesenius, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon, tr. S. P. Tregelles (1857), s.v. מַטְעָם, citing Schultens; J. Skinner, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Genesis, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1910), ad loc.; G. J. Wenham, Genesis 16-50, WBC 2 (Dallas: Word, 1994), 206-16

What scholars say about matam

מַטְעָם is a product-noun of the maqtal formation built on the root טעם ("to taste"), designating the tasted object, that is, prepared palatable food; it is morphologically parallel to מַאֲכָל ("that which is eaten") and semantically twin to Arabic ṭaʿām and Geʿez maṭʿam. The major lexica converge on the core gloss while shading the nuance: BDB gives "tasty or savoury food, dainties"; DCH "tasty, savoury food"; HALOT and Gesenius (following Schultens on the Arabic cognate for game-dishes) lean toward "delicacy, Leckerbissen"; NIDOTTE notes that any luxury or seductive overtone is contextual, not lexical. Fabry in TDOT treats the word as the concretization of the root at its sensory end and highlights the irony of Genesis 27, where the food meant to aid Isaac's discernment (also טעם) instead defeats it. Alter reads the sixfold repetition in Genesis 27 as a deliberate leitwort; Sarna and Wenham read the meal as a ritual accompaniment validating the deathbed blessing, whereas Westermann sees only a doting father's favorite dish. In Proverbs 23, part of the section related to the Egyptian Instruction of Amenemope, Waltke and Fox read the ruler's delicacies as a test and a trap, food that presents as hospitality but functions as a probe or bribe; Fox derives the parallel phrase "deceptive food" from Amenemope. Comparative study (Kaufman, Mankowski, Fabry) places מַטְעָם at the concrete South Semitic end of a root whose abstract branch produced Akkadian ṭēmu ("decree, report") and the administrative senses of Biblical Aramaic טְעֵם.

In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • Brown, Driver, Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), 381, s.v. מַטְעָםlexicon
  • Koehler and Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (HALOT), s.v. מַטְעָםlexicon
  • D. J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (DCH), vol. 5, s.v. מַטְעָםlexicon
  • W. A. VanGemeren, ed., New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis (NIDOTTE), vol. 2, s.v. טעםtheological-dictionary
  • H.-J. Fabry, "טָעַם ṭāʿam," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT), vol. 5, 331ff.theological-dictionary
  • R. Alter, Genesis: Translation and Commentary (New York: Norton, 1996), ad Gen 27commentary
  • N. M. Sarna, Genesis, JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: JPS, 1989), 190-91commentary
  • G. J. Wenham, Genesis 16-50, Word Biblical Commentary 2 (Dallas: Word, 1994), 206-16commentary
  • C. Westermann, Genesis 12-36: A Commentary, tr. J. J. Scullion (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1985), 440-41commentary
  • B. K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs: Chapters 15-31, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 237-39commentary
  • M. V. Fox, Proverbs 10-31, Anchor Yale Bible 18B (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 720-29commentary
  • S. A. Kaufman, The Akkadian Influences on Aramaic, Assyriological Studies 19 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974)monograph

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

All attested forms of מַטְעָם

m p absolute

מַטְעַמִּים, מַּטְעַמִּים

Gen 27:4, Gen 27:7, Gen 27:9, Gen 27:14, Gen 27:31, Gen 27:17

f p construct

מַטְעַמּוֹתָיו, מַטְעַמֹּתָיו

Pro 23:3, Pro 23:6