Bible word study

Melakah (Strong’s H4399): Meaning in the Bible

Melakah (מְלָאכָה) is the Hebrew word numbered H4399 in Strong’s concordance of the Bible. Strong’s defines it as properly, deputyship, i.e. ministry; generally, employment (never servile) or work (abstractly or concretely); also property (as the result of labor). In the King James Bible it is translated business, cattle, industrious, occupation, ( -pied).

• Original wordמְלָאכָה
• Transliterationmᵉlâʼkâh
• Pronunciationmel-aw-kaw'
• Part of speechnoun (feminine) (n-f)
• Strong’s numberH4399
• LanguageHebrew

The full Strong’s definition

Derivation. from the same as H4397;

How the King James Bible translates it

Where Melakah appears in the Bible

In the King James Bible’s text tagged with Strong’s numbers, Melakah (H4399) stands behind 159 English renderings in 143 verses across 21 of the 66 books. It is most frequent in Exodus (33), Nehemiah (22), 1 Chronicles (18).

How the King James Bible renders Melakah, by count

• work126 of 159 (79 percent)
• business12 of 159 (8 percent)
• workmanship5 of 159 (3 percent)
• workmen3 of 159 (2 percent)
• works3 of 159 (2 percent)
• goods2 of 159 (1 percent)

Three places to read Melakah

• Genesis 2:2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
• Numbers 28:18 In the first day shall be an holy convocation; ye shall do no manner of servile work therein:
• 2 Chronicles 17:13 And he had much business in the cities of Judah: and the men of war, mighty men of valour, were in Jerusalem.

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 Melakah 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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