StrongerBible

me'eh

מֵעֶה

HebrewH4578“bowels, womb, ...”

Appears 32 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 15:4Gen 25:23Num 5:22Rut 1:112Sa 7:122Sa 16:112Sa 20:102Ch 21:15 (2×)2Ch 21:182Ch 21:192Ch 32:21Job 20:14Job 30:27Psa 22:14(15)Psa 40:8(9)Psa 71:6Sng 5:4Sng 5:14Isa 16:11Isa 48:19Isa 49:1Isa 63:15Jer 4:19 (2×)Jer 31:20Lam 1:20Lam 2:11Ezk 3:3Ezk 7:19Jon 1:17(2:1)Jon 2:1(2)
Root family
Word studyResearch-grademeh-EEM (always plural)noun

What me'eh means

the soft inner organs of the body (the guts, belly, and womb), and by extension the innermost self, felt as the place where deep emotion churns

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

This word always appears in the plural and names the interior of the body. At its most concrete it is the entrails and the belly:

  • the guts that can spill from a wound
  • the stomach that takes in food
  • the insides wracked by disease

From there it stretches naturally to the reproductive interior, the source of a person's children, and it does so for men and women alike, so it can mean a mother's womb or a father's loins.

Its most vivid use is emotional. When a biblical writer feels grief, compassion, distress, or longing, that feeling is reported as something happening in these inner organs: they moan, boil, ferment, and churn. This is not a figure of speech dressing up a private thought. Ancient Israelites located intense feeling in the body and named the felt place as the feeling itself, much as we still speak of a gut reaction or a sinking feeling in the stomach.

The three uses are not really three separate words. They are one word for the interior of the body, viewed as the place

  • where food is digested
  • where new life begins
  • where a person feels most deeply

Scholars stress that the writers seem not to have needed to keep these functions apart, because they thought of the inner life as a single thing.

The most striking cases put these churning inner organs in God's own mouth. When God says in Jeremiah that his innermost being is in turmoil for his people, he is telling them that his insides are moved for them, the same bodily language a parent would use.

Nuances

1athe physical inner organs: the entrails and the belly, where food is taken in, digested, and where the guts can be wounded or fall sick
Num 5:222Sa 20:102Ch 21:15 (2×)2Ch 21:182Ch 21:19Job 20:14Ezk 3:3Ezk 7:19Jon 1:17(2:1)Jon 2:1(2)
1bthe source of a person's children: a mother's womb, and a father's body as the origin of his offspring
Gen 15:4Gen 25:23Rut 1:112Sa 7:122Sa 16:112Ch 32:21Psa 71:6Isa 48:19Isa 49:1
1cthe innermost self, felt as the churning seat of deep emotion: compassion, grief, distress, or longing
Job 30:27Psa 22:14(15)Psa 40:8(9)Sng 5:4Isa 16:11Isa 63:15Jer 4:19 (2×)Jer 31:20Lam 1:20Lam 2:11
Jer 31:20

Whether the churning inner organs of God in the divine-compassion passages carry a specifically maternal, womb-related resonance, or simply the general somatic language of feeling that the word applies to men and women alike.

  • contestedThe imagery is subtly maternal: the word sits close enough to the vocabulary of womb and compassion that God's churning innards evoke a mother's feeling for her child, without being restricted to women lexically.; F. Mirguet, An Early History of Compassion: Emotion and Imagination in Hellenistic Judaism (Cambridge, 2017); S. Schroer and T. Staubli, Body Symbolism in the Bible (ET Collegeville, 2001)
  • contestedThe term genuinely covers male inner organs as well, so it should not be tied too tightly to the womb; the divine emotion is figured with the shared body-language of feeling rather than a specifically female image.; D. E. Grant, Divine Anger in the Hebrew Bible (CBQMS 52; Washington DC, 2014); M. S. Smith, The Heart and Innards in Israelite Emotional Expressions, JBL 117/3 (1998): 427-436
1dthe outward midriff: the visible surface of the body's front
Sng 5:14

What scholars say about me'eh

All the major lexica (BDB 588; HALOT II:609-610; DCH V:382; and Hamilton's TWOT/NIDOTTE article) treat the plural noun as a single word with an anatomical core (intestines, entrails, inward parts, belly) that extends to the reproductive interior (womb and male loins) and to the somatic seat of intense emotion. They differ mainly on etymology and organization, not on meaning: BDB and NIDOTTE keep the older derivation from a root meaning to be soft, whereas HALOT and comparative Semitists (Militarev and Kogan, Semitic Etymological Dictionary I, entry 185) reconstruct a genuine Proto-Semitic anatomical noun for entrails, with cognates across Akkadian, Aramaic, Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic; the emotional or compassionate extension is a Northwest Semitic (Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac) development not shared by Arabic or Ethiopic. Mark S. Smith (JBL 1998) argued that Israelite organ-emotion language tracks real bodily sensations that accompany strong feeling, so the different organs (heart, liver, kidneys, inner organs) name different felt textures of experience rather than functioning as synonyms; Paul Kruger extended this with cognitive-metaphor analysis of the verbs of boiling, fermenting, and churning. Francoise Mirguet (2017) and David Lambert (2015) caution that biblical Hebrew has no abstract term for compassion as an inner state, describing instead a bodily-relational response, and that the abstract vocabulary is a later Hellenistic Jewish achievement. Deena Grant (2014) notes an asymmetry in the divine emotions, since God's compassion retains the full bodily idiom while divine anger is figured mostly by outward effects. The Greek Old Testament largely rendered the word with the general term koilia and occasionally with splanchna, and the latter, developed by Greek-speaking Jews, became the New Testament vocabulary of compassion, as traced in Koster's TDNT article on splanchnon.

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

  • F. Brown, S. R. Driver, C. A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford, 1906), 588, s.v. מֵעֶהlexicon
  • L. Koehler, W. Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Brill, 1994-2000) II:609-610lexicon
  • D. J. A. Clines, ed., Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (Sheffield, 1993-2011) V:382lexicon
  • V. P. Hamilton, מֵעֶה, in TWOT I:518-519, and the parallel entry in NIDOTTE ed. W. VanGemerentheological-dictionary
  • A. Militarev and L. Kogan, Semitic Etymological Dictionary I: Anatomy of Man and Animals (AOAT 278/1, Ugarit-Verlag, 2000), entry no. 185reference-work
  • M. S. Smith, The Heart and Innards in Israelite Emotional Expressions: Notes from Anthropology and Psychobiology, JBL 117/3 (1998): 427-436article
  • P. A. Kruger, On Emotions and the Expression of Emotions in the Old Testament, BZ 48 (2004): 213-228article
  • F. Mirguet, An Early History of Compassion: Emotion and Imagination in Hellenistic Judaism (Cambridge, 2017)monograph
  • D. E. Grant, Divine Anger in the Hebrew Bible (CBQMS 52; Washington DC, 2014)monograph
  • H. Koster, σπλάγχνον κτλ., TDNT VII:548-559theological-dictionary

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

All attested forms of מֵעֶה

m p construct

מֵעַי, מֵעָי, מֵּעַי

Rut 1:11, Job 30:27, Sng 5:4, Isa 16:11, Jer 4:19, Jer 4:19, Jer 31:20, Lam 1:20

m p construct

מֵעֶיךָ, מֵּעֶיךָ

2Ch 21:15, 2Ch 21:15, Isa 48:19, Isa 63:15, Ezk 3:3, Gen 15:4, 2Sa 7:12

m p construct

מֵעָיו

2Sa 20:10, 2Ch 21:18, 2Ch 21:19, 2Ch 32:21, Job 20:14, Sng 5:14

m p construct

מְּעֵי, מְעֵי

Psa 71:6, Isa 49:1, Jon 2:1, Jon 1:17

m p construct

מֵעַיִךְ, מֵּעַיִךְ

Num 5:22, Gen 25:23

m p construct

מֵעֵיהֶם

Ezk 7:19