A sepulchre
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The Hebrew noun qeber names a grave, burial place, or tomb. Scripture uses it for family burial, public mourning, dishonored disposal, ancestral memory, ritual contact, prophetic judgment, and the hope pictured when graves are opened.
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Full entry for קֶבֶר (H6913) · Open the biblical lexicon
The Hebrew noun qeber names a grave, burial place, or tomb. Scripture uses it for family burial, public mourning, dishonored disposal, ancestral memory, ritual contact, prophetic judgment, and the hope pictured when graves are opened.
The BSB source-word alignment has 67 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include in the tomb (7), tomb (5), graves (4), a grave (3), as a burial (3).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 23:4. Its strongest book concentrations include Ezekiel (9), 2 Chronicles (8), Genesis (8), 2 Kings (6).
The Hebrew noun qeber names a grave, burial place, or tomb. Scripture uses it for family burial, public mourning, dishonored disposal, ancestral memory, ritual contact, prophetic judgment, and the hope pictured when graves are opened. Abraham seeks a burial property for Sarah, communities mourn leaders, and prophets condemn violence that denies honorable burial.
Poetic texts may use grave language to voice abandonment or death’s nearness, while Ezekiel’s vision employs opened graves as an image for Israel’s restoration. The noun identifies a place associated with the dead; it does not by itself explain the intermediate state, settle every funeral custom, or provide a full doctrine of resurrection. Responsible teaching honors bodies, grief, cultural care, and lawful burial practices.
It avoids speculation, spiritualizes neither loss nor trauma, and brings resurrection hope without silencing lament or promising a particular timeline of emotional recovery.
Qeber refers to graves and burial places across family care, mourning, honor, disgrace, ritual law, judgment, poetry, and prophetic restoration. The passage determines whether the grave is literal, metaphorically evoked, honored, violated, or opened in vision.
“I am a foreigner and an outsider among you. Give me a burial site among you so that I can bury my dead.”
Abraham asks for property to bury Sarah, joining grief with a concrete and publicly recognized place of burial.
When they buried Abner in Hebron, the king wept aloud at Abner’s tomb, and all the people wept.
Abner’s burial is accompanied by the king’s loud mourning, preserving public grief within a politically violent story.
He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with a rich man in His death, although He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth.
The Servant is assigned a grave among the wicked yet is associated with a rich man despite committing no violence or deceit.
Therefore prophesy and tell them that this is what the Lord God says: ‘O My people, I will open your graves and bring you up from them, and I will bring you back to the land of Israel.
In the valley vision, God promises to open Israel’s graves and bring the exiled people into their land.
I am forsaken among the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom You remember no more, who are cut off from Your care.
The lamenter feels forsaken among those lying in the grave, giving unsoftened language to abandonment and death’s proximity.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. a sepulchre
a sepulchre BDB: grave Usage: burying place, grave, sepulchre.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
קֶבֶר is built from this root:
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Qeber keeps death embodied and social. Abraham’s negotiation for Sarah’s burial place turns love and grief into concrete care for her body and a recognized site of remembrance. Abner’s funeral allows public lament even within political conflict. Isaiah 53 places the innocent Servant under the shadow of a shameful assignment while noting the striking circumstance of his burial.
Psalm 88 refuses an easy ending and gives faithful worshipers words when death feels near and God feels absent. Ezekiel 37 uses opened graves within a vision explaining national restoration from exile; Christian resurrection hope resonates with the image but should not erase its first corporate meaning. Churches should honor legal and cultural burial practices, listen to bereaved people, avoid confident speculation about unspoken details, and protect families from financial or religious pressure.
Hope in God’s victory over death can stand beside tears, unanswered questions, traumatic circumstances, and long grief. A grave is not the final Christian word, but honest ministry does not pretend it is unreal.
Gen.23.4
Qeber is a Hebrew noun for a grave or burial place and may appear in literal, poetic, and visionary settings. It should be distinguished from broader terms for death or the realm of the dead.
The Gospels locate Jesus in a real tomb that is found empty, and the apostles proclaim bodily resurrection as God’s victory over death. Christian burial can therefore combine reverent care, honest lament, communal memory, and hope without pretending bereavement is easy.