StrongerBible

malon

מָלוֹן

HebrewH4411“inn, lodging place, ...”

Appears 8 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 42:27Gen 43:21Exo 4:24Jos 4:3Jos 4:82Ki 19:23Isa 10:29Jer 9:2(1)
Root family
Word studymah-LOHNnoun

What malon means

a place to stop for the night on a journey: the spot where travelers halt, whether or not anything is built there

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

This word is built from the ordinary verb for spending the night (לוּן), and it names the place where that happens: the spot a traveling party stops when the day's walking is done. It is a word about a journey, never about a home. Nobody lives at one of these places. People arrive at dusk, sleep, and move on in the morning.

The picture is usually far plainer than the old English rendering "inn" suggests. When Joseph's brothers open a sack at the stopping place and find their silver back inside it, and when God meets Moses on the road at the stopping place, nothing in the text points to a building, a keeper, or a paid room. It is simply where they halted. Joshua uses the same word for the whole nation's one night beside the Jordan, and Isaiah uses it for the night halt of an advancing army.

The word can also lean toward an actual shelter. Jeremiah wishes he had a travelers' lodging out in the desert, a rough place to hole up in, which is why he can picture it as somewhere to run away to. And once it stretches away from sleeping altogether: in the boast of the Assyrian king it marks the last stop at the far edge of Lebanon, the point past which there is nowhere further to go.

Two neighbors are worth keeping clear of it. A camp (מַחֲנֶה) is a settled body of tents that can stand for months, and a dwelling (מָעוֹן) is where someone actually lives. This word means one night, on the way to somewhere else.

Nuances

1athe overnight stop of a party on the road, whether a family with donkeys or a whole army on the march
Gen 42:27Gen 43:21Exo 4:24Jos 4:3Jos 4:8Isa 10:29
1ba rough shelter standing out in open country for travelers to put up in
Jer 9:2(1)
1cthe last stopping place at the far edge of a region: the point beyond which a traveler goes no further
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyContested
2Ki 19:23
2Ki 19:23

Whether this word stands in 2 Kings 19:23 at all: the written consonants give "his farthest lodging place", while the traditional reading and the parallel line in Isaiah 37:24 give a word meaning "height".

  • majorityRead "height" with the reading tradition and the Isaiah 37:24 parallel, so the boast is about reaching the highest peaks of Lebanon.; HALOT, s.v. מָלוֹן
  • minorityKeep the written form and take the phrase as the farthest lodging place of Lebanon, the last halt at its edge.; BDB, s.v. מָלוֹן

What scholars say about malon

מָלוֹן is a place-noun formed on the root לין / לון, "to pass the night." BDB glosses it "lodging place, inn, khan"; HALOT gives "place to spend the night, night quarters"; DCH has "lodging place, resting place." The lexica agree that the term designates the site of an overnight halt rather than an institution, and commentators on Genesis and Exodus (Wenham, Propp) regularly caution that the caravanserai of later Near Eastern travel, and still more the innkeeper of the King James "inn," should not be read back into the patriarchal and Mosaic narratives; at Exodus 4:24 the noun locates the night encounter on the road and nothing more. Both BDB and HALOT set apart Jeremiah 9:1 in the Hebrew numbering (English 9:2), מְלוֹן אֹרְחִים, a wayfarers' lodging, as a shelter rather than a bare campsite, and both flag 2 Kings 19:23, where the consonantal text reads מְלוֹן קִצֹּה while the Qere and the parallel in Isaiah 37:24 read מְרוֹם, "height"; most modern versions follow the latter, and Cogan and Tadmor discuss the variant in the Rabshakeh material. In Joshua 4:3, 8 the noun carries the whole encampment of Israel for a single night at Gilgal, showing that it is not limited in scale. The Greek translators of the Old Testament commonly used κατάλυμα for it, the noun BDAG defines as "lodging, guest room" and which underlies the same over-translation as "inn" at Luke 2:7.

Sources

  • BDB, s.v. מָלוֹןlexicon
  • HALOT, s.v. מָלוֹןlexicon
  • DCH, s.v. מָלוֹןlexicon
  • TWOT, s.v. לוּןtheological-dictionary
  • BDAG, s.v. κατάλυμαlexicon
  • G. J. Wenham, Genesis 16-50, Word Biblical Commentarycommentary
  • W. H. C. Propp, Exodus 1-18, Anchor Biblecommentary
  • M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings, Anchor Biblecommentary

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

All attested forms of מָלוֹן

m s absolute

מָּלוֹן, מָלוֹן

Gen 42:27, Gen 43:21, Exo 4:24, Jos 4:3, Jos 4:8, Isa 10:29

m s construct

מְלוֹן

2Ki 19:23, Jer 9:2