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מלך

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Etymology and origin of the Biblical Hebrew word מלך

מלך1 king

Confidence
Established
Formation
Inherited
First attested
500s BC Lachish ostraca
Inherited from
Proto-Semitic *malk-
Ultimate origin
Proto-Semitic *malk-

Pronunciation

  • Tiberian: meleḵ, pausal māleḵ[1][2]
  • Samaritan reading tradition: mā̊lək, plural mā̊lēkəm[3]

Forms

מֶלֶךְ (meleḵ) noun, masculine, plural מְלָכִים[1][2] Construct מֶלֶךְ, with suffix מַלְכִּי, plural מְלָכִים, once מְלָכִין (Proverbs 31:3), construct plural מַלְכֵי.[4][2] In the inscriptions it is written mlk, with the article hmlk and as lmlk “belonging to the king” on stamped jar handles.[5][4]

Etymology

The noun for “king” is inherited from Proto-Semitic *malk- (“king”).[2][6] Kogan sets up Proto-West Semitic *mal(i)k- (“king”) beside the verb *mlk (“to rule”), and Gesenius–Buhl explains the segolate form of the noun as a shortening of an older ⟨malik⟩, the form Akkadian and Arabic show.[7][8] The noun is kept in Ugaritic mlk,[9] Phoenician mlk, Moabite mlk, Aramaic מַלְכָּא (malkā),[10] Classical Syriac ܡܲܠܟܵܐ (malkā), Sabaean mlk and Arabic مَلِك (malik).[4][7][11] Ge'ez kept only the broken plural Ge'ez አምላክ (ʾamlāk, “God”), which Dillmann explained as the plural of a lost singular for “king”.[12][13] In Akkadian the ordinary word for “king” is Akkadian šarru, and malku (“prince, king”) is rarer.[14][15] Kogan, against the standard Akkadian dictionaries, takes the Akkadian word to be a loan from West Semitic, since it is mostly late, tied to Mari and the West, and often means a foreign king.[7]

The root's first sense is disputed.[16] Klein and BDB, following the older Arabists, start from “to possess”, the sense of the Arabic verb of the root and of Ge'ez መለከ (malaka).[17][18] Others, as BDB and Klein report, connected the king with the counsellor of Akkadian malāku (“to advise”) and the Hebrew and Aramaic root “to advise” (see Usage notes), the king being the one whose counsel decides.[18][17] HALOT lists both views without choosing.[16]

Earliest recorded meaning

The noun is one of the commonest in the Bible, 2,522 times in the Hebrew text and 180 more in the Aramaic of Ezra and Daniel.[1] Fifteen uses are in the poems that Sáenz-Badillos counts as archaic Hebrew:[19][1] Asher “shall yield the delicacies of a king”, maʿăḏannê-meleḵ (Genesis 49:20), Balaam speaks of Balak meleḵ-môʾāḇ “king of Moab” (Numbers 23:7) and says of Israel ûṯərûʿaṯ meleḵ bô, “and the shout of a king is among them” (Numbers 23:21).[1][4] In the Song of Deborah “the kings of Canaan” fought (Judges 5:19).[4] The oldest dated records are the Lachish and Arad ostraca of the 6th century BC, which speak of hmlk, “the king”.[20][21][22]

Semantic evolution

HALOT divides the uses into kings of men and kings as a title of God.[4] A king rules a people (“king of Israel”), a land (“king of Elam”), a city (“king of Jerusalem”) or an empire (“king of Assyria”); hammeleḵ haggāḏôl “the great king” is the Assyrian title, matching Akkadian šarru rabû, and Ezekiel's meleḵ məlāḵîm “king of kings” (Ezekiel 26:7) is Nebuchadnezzar.[4][23] In the older books the title stands before the name, hammeleḵ dāwiḏ, but later, especially in Chronicles, after it: dāwiḏ hammeleḵ.[4] The God of Israel is called king from the archaic poems on (Numbers 23:21, Deuteronomy 33:5) and above all in the Psalms and Isaiah: “the King of glory” (Psalm 24:7–10), “the King of Jacob” (Isaiah 41:21); other gods are called king too, and the derogatory reading mōleḵ (Molech) comes from this use.[4][24] Plants and animals have kings in fables and proverbs (Judges 9:8–15, Proverbs 30:27).[4]

The Septuagint translates it by Ancient Greek βασιλεύς (basileús) nearly everywhere.[1] The Dead Sea Scrolls use it 833 times.[25] In Rabbinic Hebrew meleḵ is also a leader or chief, and the Holy One is meleḵ malḵê hamməlāḵîm, “the King of the kings of kings”, a title already found in Ben Sira.[26][4] Today Modern Hebrew מלך (mélekh) keeps the word and its plural.[2]

Timeline

  • 6th century BC – hmlk “the king” in the Lachish and Arad ostraca.[20][21]
  • Archaic Hebrew poetry – maʿăḏannê-meleḵ (Genesis 49:20), meleḵ-môʾāḇ (Numbers 23:7) and the kings of Canaan of Judges 5:19.[19][1]
  • Classical Biblical Hebrew – 938 of the verses with the word are in the prose of Genesis to Kings.[1]
  • Late Biblical Hebrew – the order dāwiḏ hammeleḵ becomes usual.[4]
  • 3rd–2nd century BC – the Septuagint renders it Ancient Greek βασιλεύς (basileús).[27][1]
  • 2nd century BC – 2nd century AD – 833 occurrences in the Dead Sea Scrolls.[28][25]

Meanings

Noun

  1. a king, a ruler of a people, a land, a city or an empire, of varying rank.[4][29]
  2. (title) the king;[2] hammeleḵ haggāḏôl “the great king”, the king of Assyria;[2] meleḵ məlāḵîm “king of kings”.[4]
  3. (of God) the King of Israel, of the nations, of glory.[4][29]
  4. (of other gods) the king of a foreign cult; compare mōleḵ.[4]
  5. (in compounds) royal: dereḵ hammeleḵ “the King's Highway”, ʾeḇen hammeleḵ “the royal weight”.[4]
  6. (figurative) a king among trees or animals.[4]

Word family

  • מַלְכָּה (malkâ, “queen”)
  • מַלְכוּת (malḵûṯ, “kingship”)
  • מַמְלָכָה (mamlāḵâ, “kingdom”)
  • מַמְלָכוּת (mamlāḵûṯ, “kingdom”)

Descendants

  • Modern Hebrew מלך (mélekh)[2]

מלך2 to reign

Confidence
Probable
Formation
Inherited
First attested
Hebrew Bible (Song of the Sea)
Inherited from
Proto-West Semitic *mlk
Ultimate origin
Proto-West Semitic *mlk

Pronunciation

  • Tiberian: mālaḵ[1]
  • Samaritan reading tradition: imperfect yimlåk[3]

Forms

מָלַךְ (mālaḵ) verb[1] Qal about 300 times (imperfect יִמְלֹךְ, infinitive מְלֹךְ, with suffix מָלְכוֹ), hiphil about 50 times (הִמְלִיךְ “to make king”), hophal once (הָמְלַךְ, Daniel 9:1).[16][30]

Etymology

The verb “to reign” is inherited from Proto-West Semitic *mlk (“to rule”).[7] HALOT finds it in all the Semitic languages except Akkadian, where von Soden takes the verb as a loan from Canaanite: in Ugaritic mlk,[9] Amorite, Phoenician, Moabite, Old and Egyptian Aramaic, and Tigre.[16] Whether the verb was formed from the noun מֶלֶךְ (meleḵ, “king”) or the noun from the verb, HALOT leaves open: it allows that the root first meant “to possess”, as Arabic مَلَكَ (malaka) and Ge'ez መለከ (malaka) still do, or that the verb is denominative, as Zimmern and Gesenius–Buhl hold.[16][11][31] BDB and Klein also call it a denominative of the noun.[30][32]

Earliest recorded meaning

Its only use in the archaic poems is the last line of the Song of the Sea: YHWH yimlōḵ ləʿōlām wāʿeḏ, “the LORD will reign for ever and ever” (Exodus 15:18).[19][1] The same root is used of the king's reign in the Moabite inscription of Mesha.[29][1]

Semantic evolution

In the qal it means to be king and to become king;[1] bəmolḵô “when he became king” and šənaṯ molḵô “the year of his accession” date the reigns in Kings and Jeremiah, and the verb is used of queens too (2 Kings 11:3, Esther 2:4).[16] Said of God it is the acclamation YHWH mālāḵ, “the LORD has become king” or “the LORD reigns”, of the enthronement psalms (Psalms 93:1, 96:10, 97:1, 99:1), modelled on the cry with which a new king was hailed (2 Samuel 15:10, 2 Kings 9:13).[16] The hiphil is to make someone king, said of God or of the people.[16][30] The Septuagint renders it by Ancient Greek βασιλεύω (basileúō).[1] In Rabbinic Hebrew the qal is also to preside or hold office, and the niphal nimlaḵ means to take counsel or ask permission.[33]

Timeline

  • Archaic Hebrew poetry – YHWH yimlōḵ “the LORD will reign” (Exodus 15:18).[19][1]
  • Classical Biblical Hebrew – 169 of the verses with the verb are in Genesis to Kings, in the formulas of the reigns.[1][16]
  • Late Biblical Hebrew – 86 verses, mostly in Chronicles; the hophal once in Daniel 9:1.[1][16]
  • 3rd–2nd century BC – the Septuagint renders it Ancient Greek βασιλεύω (basileúō).[27][1]

Meanings

Verb

  1. qal to be king, to reign (over: ʿal, bə-).[16][30]
  2. qal to become king, to come to the throne; of a queen, to reign.[16]
  3. qal (of God) to reign as king: YHWH mālāḵ.[16]
  4. hiphil to make someone king, to enthrone; to make queen (Esther 2:17).[16][30]
  5. hophal to be made king (Daniel 9:1).[16]
  • Aramaic מֶלֶךְ (meleḵ, “king”)

Usage notes

A homonymous root “to advise” appears once, in the niphal wayyimmālēḵ libbî ʿālay, “I took counsel with myself” (Nehemiah 5:7); HALOT and Gesenius–Buhl list it separately, with Aramaic and Syriac məlaḵ “to advise” and Akkadian malāku.[34][31] Kogan notes that this Aramaic root is missing from the Old Aramaic inscriptions but common later, and the Septuagint renders the verse with ἐβουλεύσατο “he took counsel”.[35][1] The Biblical Aramaic noun məlēḵ “advice” (Daniel 4:24) belongs to the same root.[1][36]

The god Molech, mōleḵ, named eight times (Leviticus 18:21, 20:2–5, 2 Kings 23:10, Jeremiah 32:35), is usually explained as meleḵ read with the vowels of bōšeṯ “shame”;[24] Eissfeldt instead took it as the name of a kind of sacrifice, like Punic molk, and HALOT holds that it is a divine name at least in Leviticus 20 and 2 Kings 23:10.[24] Huehnergard traces it to a Canaanite *mulk, perhaps a variant of the word for “king”.[6] MACULA tags one more mōleḵ as the common noun (Amos 5:26, “your king”).[1][4] The Aramaic of Ezra and Daniel has the same noun, meleḵ (emphatic malkā), 180 times.[1][10]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Clear Bible (2023–), MACULA Hebrew Linguistic Datasets (Westminster Leningrad Codex, with Greek alignment), github.com/Clear-Bible/macula-hebrew, CC BY 4.0
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  3. ^ a b Højgaard, Christian Canu; Naaijer, Martijn; Schorch, Stefan (2023), Text-Fabric Dataset of the Samaritan Pentateuch, Zenodo, doi:10.5281/zenodo.7734632
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Koehler, Ludwig; Baumgartner, Walter; Stamm, Johann Jakob (1994–2000), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, transl. and ed. M. E. J. Richardson, 5 vols, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. מֶלֶךְ I
  5. ^ Davies, Graham I. (1991), Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Concordance, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  6. ^ a b Huehnergard, John (2011), "Proto-Semitic Language and Culture" and "Semitic Roots", in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  7. ^ a b c d Kogan, Leonid (2015), Genealogical Classification of Semitic: The Lexical Isoglosses, Berlin: De Gruyter, p. 91
  8. ^ Gesenius, Wilhelm; Buhl, Frants (1915), Hebräisches und aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament, 17th ed., Leipzig: F. C. W. Vogel, p. s.v. מֶלֶךְ
  9. ^ a b del Olmo Lete, Gregorio; Sanmartín, Joaquín (2015), A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language in the Alphabetic Tradition, 3rd ed., transl. W. G. E. Watson, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. m-l-k
  10. ^ a b Kaufman, Stephen A., ed., Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon, Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College, cal.huc.edu, p. s.v. mlk
  11. ^ a b Lane, Edward William (1863–1893), An Arabic-English Lexicon, 8 parts, London: Williams and Norgate, p. 3023
  12. ^ Kogan, Leonid (2015), Genealogical Classification of Semitic: The Lexical Isoglosses, Berlin: De Gruyter, p. 455
  13. ^ Leslau, Wolf (1987), Comparative Dictionary of Geʿez (Classical Ethiopic), Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, p. 344
  14. ^ Black, Jeremy; George, Andrew; Postgate, Nicholas (2000), A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian, 2nd ed., Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, p. s.v. malku
  15. ^ von Soden, Wolfram (1965–1981), Akkadisches Handwörterbuch, 3 vols, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, p. 595
  16. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Koehler, Ludwig; Baumgartner, Walter; Stamm, Johann Jakob (1994–2000), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, transl. and ed. M. E. J. Richardson, 5 vols, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. מלך I
  17. ^ a b Klein, Ernest (1987), A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English, Jerusalem: Carta; Haifa: University of Haifa, p. s.v. מֶלֶךְ
  18. ^ a b Brown, Francis; Driver, S. R.; Briggs, Charles A. (1906), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, with an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. מלך
  19. ^ a b c d Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 69
  20. ^ a b Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 76–77
  21. ^ a b Davies, Graham I. (1991), Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Concordance, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 1.003.19
  22. ^ Davies, Graham I. (1991), Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Concordance, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 2.024.3
  23. ^ Tawil, Hayim ben Yosef (2009), An Akkadian Lexical Companion for Biblical Hebrew: Etymological-Semantic and Idiomatic Equivalents, Jersey City: Ktav, p. 214
  24. ^ a b c Koehler, Ludwig; Baumgartner, Walter; Stamm, Johann Jakob (1994–2000), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, transl. and ed. M. E. J. Richardson, 5 vols, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. מֹלֶךְ
  25. ^ a b Abegg, Martin G.; Jacobs, Jarod; Roorda, Dirk (2022), The Dead Sea Scrolls, Text-Fabric dataset, version 2.0.2, github.com/ETCBC/dss
  26. ^ Jastrow, Marcus (1886–1903), A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature, London: Luzac; New York: Putnam, p. s.v. מֶלֶךְ
  27. ^ a b Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 93
  28. ^ Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 143
  29. ^ a b c Brown, Francis; Driver, S. R.; Briggs, Charles A. (1906), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, with an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. מֶלֶךְ
  30. ^ a b c d e Brown, Francis; Driver, S. R.; Briggs, Charles A. (1906), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, with an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. מָלַךְ
  31. ^ a b Gesenius, Wilhelm; Buhl, Frants (1915), Hebräisches und aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament, 17th ed., Leipzig: F. C. W. Vogel, p. s.v. מלך
  32. ^ Klein, Ernest (1987), A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English, Jerusalem: Carta; Haifa: University of Haifa, p. s.v. מלך I
  33. ^ Jastrow, Marcus (1886–1903), A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature, London: Luzac; New York: Putnam, p. s.v. מָלַךְ
  34. ^ Koehler, Ludwig; Baumgartner, Walter; Stamm, Johann Jakob (1994–2000), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, transl. and ed. M. E. J. Richardson, 5 vols, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. מלך II
  35. ^ Kogan, Leonid (2015), Genealogical Classification of Semitic: The Lexical Isoglosses, Berlin: De Gruyter, p. 419
  36. ^ Klein, Ernest (1987), A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English, Jerusalem: Carta; Haifa: University of Haifa, p. s.v. מלך II

Related etymologies

  • אבק · also from Proto-West Semitic
  • אמן · also from Proto-West Semitic
  • יין · also from Proto-West Semitic
  • קנה · also from Proto-West Semitic
  • עיר · also from Proto-West Semitic
  • ראה · also from Proto-West Semitic
  • לוט · also from Proto-West Semitic
  • קבל · also from Proto-West Semitic
Cite this entry

“מלך.” Etymologically, 1 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/hbo/%D7%9E%D7%9C%D7%9A. Accessed 1 Nov. 2026.

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