Bible word study

Matstsah (Strong’s H4682): Meaning in the Bible

Matstsah (מַצָּה) is the Hebrew word numbered H4682 in Strong’s concordance of the Bible. Strong’s defines it as properly, sweetness; concretely, sweet (i.e. not soured or bittered with yeast); specifically, an unfermented cake or loaf, or (elliptically) the festival of Passover (because no leaven was then used). In the King James Bible it is translated unleaved (bread, cake), without leaven..

• Original wordמַצָּה
• Transliterationmatstsâh
• Pronunciationmats-tsaw'
• Part of speechnoun (feminine) (n-f)
• Strong’s numberH4682
• LanguageHebrew

The full Strong’s definition

Derivation. from H4711 in the sense of greedily devouring for sweetness;

How the King James Bible translates it

Where Matstsah appears in the Bible

In the King James Bible’s text tagged with Strong’s numbers, Matstsah (H4682) stands behind 53 English renderings in 42 verses across 13 of the 66 books. It is most frequent in Exodus (16), Leviticus (12), Numbers (7).

How the King James Bible renders Matstsah, by count

• bread33 of 53 (62 percent)
• unleavened14 of 53 (26 percent)
• cakes5 of 53 (9 percent)
• leaven1 of 53 (2 percent)

Three places to read Matstsah

• Genesis 19:3 And he pressed upon them greatly; and they turned in unto him, and entered into his house; and he made them a feast, and did bake unleavened bread, and they did eat.
• Leviticus 2:5 And if thy oblation be a meat offering baken in a pan, it shall be of fine flour unleavened, mingled with oil.
• Deuteronomy 16:16 Three times in a year shall all thy males appear before the LORD thy God in the place which he shall choose; in the feast of unleavened bread, and in the feast of weeks, and in the feast of tabernacles: and they shall not appear before the LORD empty:

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 Matstsah 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.

Related words