Bible word study

Machaneh (Strong’s H4264): Meaning in the Bible

Machaneh (מַחֲנֶה) is the Hebrew word numbered H4264 in Strong’s concordance of the Bible. Strong’s defines it as an encampment (of travellers or troops); hence, an army, whether literal (of soldiers) or figurative (of dancers, angels, cattle, locusts, stars; or even the sacred courts). In the King James Bible it is translated army, band, battle, camp, company.

• Original wordמַחֲנֶה
• Transliterationmachăneh
• Pronunciationmakh-an-eh'
• Part of speechnoun (masculine) (n-m)
• Strong’s numberH4264
• LanguageHebrew

The full Strong’s definition

Derivation. from H2583;

How the King James Bible translates it

Where Machaneh appears in the Bible

In the King James Bible’s text tagged with Strong’s numbers, Machaneh (H4264) stands behind 216 English renderings in 190 verses across 20 of the 66 books. It is most frequent in Numbers (49), Judges (28), 1 Samuel (22).

How the King James Bible renders Machaneh, by count

• camp129 of 216 (60 percent)
• host57 of 216 (26 percent)
• camps7 of 216 (3 percent)
• company5 of 216 (2 percent)
• tents5 of 216 (2 percent)
• armies4 of 216 (2 percent)

Three places to read Machaneh

• Genesis 32:2 And when Jacob saw them, he said, This is God’s host: and he called the name of that place Mahanaim.
• Numbers 11:9 And when the dew fell upon the camp in the night, the manna fell upon it.
• Judges 21:12 And they found among the inhabitants of Jabeshgilead four hundred young virgins, that had known no man by lying with any male: and they brought them unto the camp to Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan.

Counts are made at build time from the King James text tagged with Strong’s numbers (eBible.org, public domain). Verses are read from the stored King James text, never typed.

Why the word matters

Every word the biblical writers chose carries weight. Studying Machaneh in the original Hebrew lets you read the passages where it appears more carefully, closer to what the first hearers understood, so the meaning is drawn from the text itself rather than from the English alone.

The lexical data on this page comes from the public-domain Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890), a Hebrew and Greek dictionary keyed to the King James Bible. It is a reference tool, not a settled verdict: no single word decides a doctrine, and meaning is finally shaped by how a word is used in its sentences. Read the passages themselves, prayerfully, and in full.

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