Aramaic word · H4203
מָזוֹן
umazon
food
māzôn means food, provisions, sustenance in general. zûn means to feed; the passive form here means 'be fed, be nourished'. Hebrew uses the noun too, for provisions (Genesis 45:23; 2 Chronicles 11:23).
A Biblical Aramaic word, from the parts of the Old Testament written in Aramaic. Why Aramaic?
Appears 2 times in 2 verses of the Aramaic of the Old Testament. ·
What it means
food, feed
Aramaic of ma.zon (מָזוֹן "food" H4202)
Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).
In depth
- Range of meaning
māzôn means food, provisions, sustenance in general. zûn means to feed; the passive form here means 'be fed, be nourished'. Hebrew uses the noun too, for provisions (Genesis 45:23; 2 Chronicles 11:23).
- Against the English
Modern versions say 'food' and 'fed'. KJV's 'meat for all' used 'meat' in its older sense of any food, which modern readers misread. Few translations can keep the same-root echo between 'food' at the start and 'fed' at the end.
- How it drifted
In English 'meat' narrowed from 'food in general' to 'animal flesh' after the 1600s. KJV's 'meat for all' therefore sounds odd now for a fruit tree.
- Used elsewhere in the period
The root is common across Aramaic and Hebrew. Feeding all creatures is elsewhere something God does: Psalm 104:27-28 and 145:15-16 ('the eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food').
Where it appears
Daniel · 2
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Daniel 4:12 וּמָז֨וֹן and food
Its leaves were beautiful, its fruit was abundant, and upon it was food for all. Under it the beasts of the field found shelter, in its branches the birds of the air nested, and from it every creature was fed.
Here: 'And food', meaning nourishment in general, not meat in particular. It comes from the same root as the verse's last verb, 'was fed' (yittezîn), so the verse begins and ends on the note of feeding.
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Daniel 4:21 וּמָז֨וֹן and food
whose foliage was beautiful and whose fruit was abundant, providing food for all, under which the beasts of the field lived, and in whose branches the birds of the air nested—
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.