Aramaic word · H4077

מָדָאָה

madaya'

Median

A word naming a people: 'Median, a Mede,' from Māday, Media (Gen 10:2). Media lay in what is now northwest Iran, with its capital at Ecbatana.

A Biblical Aramaic word, from the parts of the Old Testament written in Aramaic. Why Aramaic?

Appears once in the Aramaic of the Old Testament. · Updated November 14, 2026

What it means

also called Mede frequently

Aramaic of me.dan (מְדָן "Medan" H4091)

§ Mede or Medes = "middle land"

an inhabitant of Media

Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).

Range of meaning: A word naming a people: 'Median, a Mede,' from Māday, Media (Gen 10:2). Media lay in what is now northwest Iran, with its capital at Ecbatana.
Against the English: 'The Mede' (BSB, WEB, YLT) and 'the Median' (KJV) mean the same thing.
Used elsewhere in the period: Isaiah 13:17 and Jeremiah 51:11, 28 foretold that the Medes would destroy Babylon. In Daniel, the Medes and Persians are paired as 'the law of the Medes and Persians' (6:8, 12, 15) and as the two-horned ram (8:20). Daniel 9:1 calls Darius 'of Median descent.'

Daniel · 1

Daniel 5:31 מָֽדָאָ֔ה Median the

and Darius the Mede received the kingdom at the age of sixty-two.

Here: A word naming his people: he is from Media, the Iranian kingdom northwest of Persia. Daniel stresses it (also 9:1; 11:1) because the book sees the Medes as the power that comes after Babylon (compare 5:28, 'given to the Medes and Persians').

Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.