A width , i.e. (concretely) avenue or area
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A broad open place or public square is a setting where a community's life becomes visible. In the selected passages, people gather there to hear instruction, wisdom raises her voice there, truth is pictured as stumbling there, and children and older people appear there in a promise of restoration.
Reader summary
Full entry for רְחֹב (H7339) · Open the biblical lexicon
A broad open place or public square is a setting where a community's life becomes visible. In the selected passages, people gather there to hear instruction, wisdom raises her voice there, truth is pictured as stumbling there, and children and older people appear there in a promise of restoration.
The BSB source-word alignment has 43 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include in the square (5), square (5), in the streets (4), the square (3), and in the public squares (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 19:2. Its strongest book concentrations include Jeremiah (5), Proverbs (5), Nehemiah (4), Esther (3).
A broad open place or public square is a setting where a community's life becomes visible. In the selected passages, people gather there to hear instruction, wisdom raises her voice there, truth is pictured as stumbling there, and children and older people appear there in a promise of restoration. The place does not have one fixed spiritual meaning. What happens in it gives each passage its force.
Nehemiah 8:1-3 describes the people assembled in the square before the Water Gate, listening to the Book of the Law. Isaiah 59:14 uses a public square in a very different picture: truth has stumbled while justice and righteousness stand far away. Zechariah 8:4-5 promises streets filled with older people and playing children. Their presence gives restoration an ordinary human texture, without promising that every present town will immediately be safe or prosperous. The word invites attention to shared life as each text describes it, rather than a symbolic code for every public space.
The public square hosts attentive hearing in Nehemiah, wisdom's invitation in Proverbs, the collapse of truth in Isaiah, and a restored community's ordinary life in Zechariah.
At that time all the people gathered together in the square before the Water Gate, and they asked Ezra the scribe to bring out the Book of the Law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded for Israel.
The people gather together in the square before the Water Gate and ask Ezra to bring the Law. The setting serves a public act of hearing rather than defining the square itself as sacred.
Wisdom calls out in the street, she lifts her voice in the square;
Wisdom calls aloud in public places as the following appeal confronts the simple, mockers, and fools. Her invitation is available in ordinary shared life, not hidden as privileged information.
So justice is turned away, and righteousness stands at a distance. For truth has stumbled in the public square, and honesty cannot enter.
Truth is personified as stumbling in the public square while justice is turned away. The image names communal disorder, not a literal injury or a condemnation of urban life as such.
This is what the Lord of Hosts says: “Old men and old women will again sit along the streets of Jerusalem, each with a staff in hand because of great age.
Older men and women with staffs are pictured again in Jerusalem's streets. Their age and bodily need are included within the promise of restored community rather than treated as obstacles to it.
And the streets of the city will be filled with boys and girls playing there.”
Children playing fill the streets in the same promise that includes the elderly. The image gives restoration recognizable daily activity without making play itself a guarantee of complete social healing.
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 width , i.e. (concretely) avenue or area
a width, i.e. (concretely) avenue or area BDB: broad open place Usage: broad place (way), street. See also 1050.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Zechariah 8:4-5 pictures restoration through people who are often absent from accounts of public importance. Older men and women sit in Jerusalem's streets, each with a staff because of advanced age, and children play there. The promise does not erase age or turn the children into miniature workers. It includes them in the city's visible life as they are.
This picture can help a congregation ask whether its shared life makes practical room for people at different stages of life. That application should remain distinct from the promise's original setting and scale. Installing a seat or making space for children does not fulfill the whole prophetic vision, yet thoughtful welcome can take ordinary bodily needs seriously. The passage offers hope in God's restoration without licensing claims that a favored city or congregation has already become the promised safe community in every respect.
Zech.8.4
The noun denotes an open or broad public place, including the square or streets described in these contexts. Its spatial sense does not itself mean liberty, spiritual expansiveness, or salvation. Isaiah's personified truth and Zechariah's playing children arise from their sentences, not from hidden meanings in the noun.
Matthew 18:3-5 places a child before the disciples and connects humility with welcome in Jesus' name. Alongside Zechariah's picture of children and older people in restored Jerusalem, it can encourage attention to people easily overlooked. The texts have distinct settings and do not make every shared space the fulfillment of Zechariah's promise.