StrongerBible

melekh

מֶלֶךְ

HebrewH4428“king, King, ...”

Appears 2526 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 14:1 (4×)Gen 14:2 (5×)Gen 14:5Gen 14:8 (3×)Gen 14:9Gen 14:17 (2×)Gen 17:6Gen 17:16Gen 35:11Gen 36:31 (2×)Gen 39:20Gen 49:20Exo 1:8Num 20:17Num 21:22Num 22:4Num 23:21Num 24:7Num 31:8 (2×)Deu 3:8Deu 3:21Deu 4:47Deu 7:24Deu 17:14Deu 17:15 (2×)Deu 31:4Deu 33:5Jos 2:10Jos 5:1 (2×)Jos 6:2Jos 8:2 (2×)Jos 9:1Jos 9:10Jos 10:1 (2×)Jos 10:5Jos 10:6Jos 10:16Jos 10:17Jos 10:22Jos 10:23Jos 10:24 (2×)Jos 10:28Jos 10:30 (2×)Jos 10:37Jos 10:39 (3×)Jos 10:40Jos 10:42Jos 11:12Jos 11:17Jos 12:18
Word studyResearch-gradeMEH-lekhnoun

What melekh means

a king: the single supreme ruler at the head of a people, city, or land

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

A king is the one ruler who holds the highest authority over a people or territory, normally for life and normally passing the throne to his son. The same word covers a huge range of power: it names the ruler of a single Canaanite town, the head of a small tribal people, and the emperor of a world power like Egypt, Assyria, or Babylon. So a biblical king is not always the grand figure the English word suggests; often he is simply whoever rules a given place.

This is the ordinary, everyday word for that office, and most of the time it carries no praise or blame in itself. It is used freely of Israel's enemies and of the great empires, where the king can be opposed, defeated, or judged, just as much as it is used of David or Solomon. What changes is not the word but the people it describes.

In Israel the king was meant to rule under God, not in God's place. The people's demand for a king "like all the nations" was treated as a turning away from the LORD's own rule, and from then on each king was measured by whether he kept faith with God. The same office that other peoples simply took for granted became, in Israel, a thing argued over, hoped for, and feared.

Out of that tension the Bible takes a further step and calls the LORD himself the true King, the one who really reigns over Israel and over the whole earth. Every human king, Israelite or foreign, is then answerable to this higher throne, and the prophets and psalms increasingly look past any human ruler to God's own kingship.

Nuances

1aa foreign king: the ruler of a nation, city, or empire other than Israel
Gen 14:1 (4×)Gen 14:17 (2×)Gen 20:2Gen 39:20Gen 49:20Exo 1:8Num 20:17Num 21:21Jos 12:242Ki 25:28Isa 36:1Jer 25:9
1ba king of Israel or Judah: the ruler over God's own people, whose reign is weighed against his faithfulness to God
Gen 36:31 (2×)Deu 17:14Deu 17:15 (2×)Jdg 9:61Sa 8:51Sa 12:11Sa 15:12Sa 5:31Ki 1:39Psa 2:6Hos 13:11Zec 9:9
1cGod as King: the LORD himself as the true sovereign who reigns over his people and over all the earth
Num 23:21Deu 33:51Sa 12:12Psa 5:2(3)Psa 10:16Psa 24:7Psa 44:4(5)Psa 47:7Psa 74:12Psa 84:3(4)Psa 95:3Psa 98:6

What scholars say about melekh

The standard lexica (HALOT, BDB, DCH) and TDOT agree on the surface meaning: melek is the male sovereign of a people or territory, ranging from local Canaanite city-rulers to the great Near Eastern emperors, and applied to the LORD as Israel's true king. It is a common West-Semitic word, with close relatives in Phoenician, Aramaic, Ugaritic, Akkadian (poetic malku, beside the ordinary word sharru), and Arabic; the Greek Bible renders it basileus. Beyond the gloss, scholarship is unusually divided. TDOT traces a three-stage development across the canon: a default term for foreign rulers in the earliest texts, the institutional Israelite king interrogated against the law of the king in Deuteronomy 17, and a theological extension to YHWH himself in the Psalms and prophets. Mettinger, Ishida, and Halpern distinguish melek from a crowded field of ruler-words (nagid, nasi, mashiach, shofet, sar, moshel), each of which marks a phase, function, or status that melek, the unmarked institutional term, does not. The deeper debates concern the original meaning of the root, the origin of YHWH's kingship, and whether the Israelite king was a sacral cult figure or a ruler deliberately constrained by the law.

Where scholars disagree about melekh

What the root behind this word originally meant. The cognate languages point in three directions, and lexicographers weigh them differently.

  • contestedTo rule or be king, taken as a workable common Semitic sense.; BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), s.v. מֶלֶךְ; Edward Lipinski, Semitic Languages: Outline of a Comparative Grammar (OLA 80, 2001)
  • contestedTo possess or own, on the Arabic evidence: the king is the one who holds dominion over his realm.; John Huehnergard, Semitic roots appendix to the American Heritage Dictionary
  • contestedTo counsel or deliberate, on the Akkadian (malaku) and Aramaic evidence, possibly a later eastern development rather than the original sense.; Leonid Kogan, in Huehnergard and Pat-El, eds., The Semitic Languages (2nd ed., 2019)

Where the picture of the LORD as King came from: whether it was always part of Israel's faith or grew out of the human monarchy.

  • contestedA metaphor projected from human kingship: the language of an earthly king was applied to God and then refined, dropping the more diminutive royal traits.; Marc Z. Brettler, God Is King: Understanding an Israelite Metaphor (JSOTSup 76, 1989)
  • contestedAn early tradition rooted in older Canaanite and El religion, present before the Israelite monarchy and inherited rather than invented.; Frank Moore Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (1973); J. J. M. Roberts, "The Davidic Origin of the Zion Tradition," Journal of Biblical Literature 92 (1973): 329-344

Whether the Israelite king was understood as a sacred figure at the center of worship or as a ruler deliberately limited by the law.

  • minorityA sacral cult figure, central to an annual festival in which the LORD's kingship and the human king's role were celebrated together.; Sigmund Mowinckel, The Psalms in Israel's Worship (ET 1962); Aubrey R. Johnson, Sacral Kingship in Ancient Israel (2nd ed., 1967)
  • majorityA ruler whose powers were deliberately curtailed, subordinated to the law in Deuteronomy 17 and stripped of the standard claims other ancient kings made.; Bernard M. Levinson, "The Reconceptualization of Kingship in Deuteronomy," Vetus Testamentum 51 (2001): 511-534; Martin Noth, The Deuteronomistic History (ET 1981)
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

  • HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner-Stamm), s.v. מֶלֶךְlexicon
  • BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), s.v. מֶלֶךְlexicon
  • DCH (D. J. A. Clines, ed.), s.v. מֶלֶךְlexicon
  • TDOT (Botterweck-Ringgren, eds.), s.v. מֶלֶךְ melek (Ringgren, Seybold, et al.)dictionary
  • T. N. D. Mettinger, King and Messiah: The Civil and Sacral Legitimation of the Israelite Kings (ConBOT 8, 1976)monograph
  • Tomoo Ishida, The Royal Dynasties in Ancient Israel (BZAW 142, 1977)monograph
  • Baruch Halpern, The Constitution of the Monarchy in Israel (HSM 25, 1981)monograph
  • Bernard M. Levinson, "The Reconceptualization of Kingship in Deuteronomy," Vetus Testamentum 51 (2001): 511-534article
  • Marc Z. Brettler, God Is King: Understanding an Israelite Metaphor (JSOTSup 76, 1989)monograph
  • Sigmund Mowinckel, The Psalms in Israel's Worship (ET 1962)monograph

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

All attested forms of מֶלֶךְ

m s absolute

מֶּלֶךְ, מֶלֶךְ, מֶּלֶך

Gen 14:17, Gen 39:20, Num 20:17, Num 21:22, Jdg 3:19, Jdg 8:18, 1Sa 8:9, 1Sa 8:11

m s construct

מֶלֶךְ, מֶּלֶךְ, מֶלֶך

Gen 14:1, Gen 14:1, Gen 14:1, Gen 14:1, Gen 14:2, Gen 14:2, Gen 14:2, Gen 14:2

m p construct

מַלְכֵי

Gen 17:16, Num 31:8, Num 31:8, Deu 3:8, Deu 4:47, Deu 31:4, Jos 2:10, Jos 5:1

m p absolute

מְלָכִים, מְּלָכִים, מְלָכִין

Gen 14:9, Gen 17:6, Gen 35:11, Jos 12:24, Jdg 1:7, Jdg 5:3, Jdg 5:19, 1Ch 16:21

m p construct

מַלְכֵיהֶם

Deu 7:24, Jos 10:40, Jos 11:12, Jos 11:17, Neh 9:24, Psa 105:30, Psa 149:8, Isa 60:10

m s construct

מַלְכָּהּ

Jos 6:2, Jos 8:2, Jos 8:2, Jos 10:1, Jos 10:1, Jos 10:28, Jos 10:30, Jos 10:30

m s construct

מַלְכָּם

2Sa 12:30, 2Sa 20:2, 1Ch 20:2, Psa 149:2, Jer 30:9, Hos 3:5, Amo 1:15, Mic 2:13

m s construct

מַלְכִּי

2Sa 19:43, Psa 2:6, Psa 5:2, Psa 44:4, Psa 68:24, Psa 74:12, Psa 84:3

m s construct

מַלְכּוֹ

Num 24:7, 1Sa 2:10, 2Sa 22:51, Psa 18:50, Isa 8:21, Hos 11:5, Zec 11:6

m p construct

מְלָכֵינוּ

Ezr 9:7, Neh 9:32, Neh 9:34, Jer 44:17, Dan 9:6, Dan 9:8

m s construct

מַלְכֵּנוּ

1Sa 8:20, Psa 47:6, Psa 89:18, Isa 33:22, Hos 7:5

m s construct

מַלְכְּכֶם

1Sa 8:18, 1Sa 12:12, 1Sa 12:25, Isa 43:15, Amo 5:26

m p construct

מְלָכֶיהָ

Isa 7:16, Jer 25:18, Jer 46:25, Ezk 32:29

m s construct

מַּלְכֵּךְ, מַלְכֵּךְ

Ecc 10:16, Ecc 10:17, Zec 9:9

noun

מַלְכָּם

Jer 49:1, Jer 49:3, Zep 1:5

m s construct

מַלְכְּךָ

Deu 28:36, Hos 13:10

c s absolute

מֶּלֶךְ

2Sa 13:34

m p construct

מַלְכֵיכֶם

Jer 44:21