בִּירָה
palace
‘palace’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Noun type
- Common
- A common noun — a general class of person, place, or thing (“king,” “city,” “water”), not a specific name.
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H1002 appears in the Book of Nehemiah — 3 distinct verses. Click any verse to open its interlinear word-by-word view. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context — . Each verse’s Hebrew form is shown with its reference; the English is not keyword-highlighted, since the data carries no word-level English alignment. Use “Compare translations” on any verse to read it across multiple English versions. This concordance covers the Hebrew Bible; Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) occurrences are not indexed here.
Nehemiah
- Nehemiah 1:1 הַ/בִּירָֽה ptcl def.art + n c fs The words of Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah. Now it happened in the month Chislev, in the twentieth year, as I was in Shushan the palace,
- Nehemiah 2:8 הַ/בִּירָ֤ה ptcl def.art + n c fs and a letter to Asaph the keeper of the king's forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the castle which appertains to the house, and for the wall of the city, and for the house that I shall enter into. The king granted me, according to the good hand of my God on me.
- Nehemiah 7:2 הַ/בִּירָ֖ה ptcl def.art + n c fs that I gave my brother Hanani, and Hananiah the governor of the castle, charge over Jerusalem; for he was a faithful man, and feared God above many.
About this entry
At a glance — auto-summarized from this page’s data, not written by a person. Every figure links to its source below. This summary describes the numbers; it doesn’t interpret them.
“palace” is the headline sense of the Hebrew noun בירה (bîyrâh). More than half of its appearances fall in Esther. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 16 verses — uncommon. Carrying more than one sense, it rewards its full sense range. Where the King James Version says “palace,” newer translations reach for “citadel” (Berean Standard Bible); the renderings breakdown has the detail. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H1002 catalogs a Hebrew word from the Hebrew Old Testament.
These counts are not copied from any lexicon or concordance. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged Hebrew Old Testament. What Lemma adds →
- 16
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 16 distinct verses.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,752
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,752 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 16 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Esther 10 verses 63%
- Nehemiah 3 verses 19%
- 1 Chronicles 2 verses 13%
By section of the Old Testament
By traditional corpus
Conventional, traditional groupings — biblical authorship is debated, so this is a traditional corpus grouping, not an authorship claim. Each share is this word’s portion of its verses in that division of the Hebrew canon. Each figure is a share of the word’s 16 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 16 verses · 100%
How translations render this word
Counts come from each version’s own published word-to-Strong’s tagging or interlinear alignment — an approximate guide to how each version renders this word, not a word-level alignment the data otherwise carries. Because each total is that version’s own tagged count, the per-version totals vary from one another and need not match the appearance or distinct-verse counts above. These counts may also differ from a printed concordance because Lemma counts each distinctly tagged rendering and does not collapse phrase taggings into a single head-word total. This is a fixed set of word-tagged versions (KJV, ASV, BSB, ULT) and does not change with the reading translation you choose elsewhere. Each version’s license is shown beside its name below (and on Sources).
- King James Version: Palace 16×
- American Standard Version: Palace 13×, Castle 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Citadel 13×, Palace 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Citadel 14×, Temple 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H1002 across 16 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H1002 across 16 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H1002 across 16 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H1002 across 17 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Senses in the full BDB
What do BDB’s symbols mean?
BDB uses these scholarly abbreviations:
| Symbol | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 𝔊 | the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation, LXX) |
| 𝔙 | the Vulgate (the Latin translation) |
| 𝔖 | the Syriac version (the Peshitta) |
| 𝔗 | the Targum (the Aramaic translation) |
| ψ | the Psalms |
| √ | root (the underlying root or stem) |
| ‖ | parallel passage (a synonymous or contrasted parallel) |
| † | the dagger: every passage where the word occurs is cited |
The 2 senses and sub-senses the full Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency), with BDB’s own verbatim wording and sub-sense lettering. Shown in Hebrew script with BDB’s own scholarly abbreviations. The condensed entry is in the Lexicon Entry tab. See also the Forms in the corpus table below.
- 1. of temple at Jerusalem
- 2. in these passages appar. means a fortress in the city bearing the same name
Senses from the full Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon (Brown, Driver, Briggs; Oxford 1906 — public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). Full attribution on Sources.
Word origin
בִּירָה n.f. castle, palace
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Origin: of foreign origin
Jastrow Dictionary
A second Hebrew/Aramaic lexicon for comparison, covering Aramaic and post-biblical (Talmudic, Targumic, Midrashic) usage that the biblical-Hebrew BDB does not. Matched by lemma rather than by Strong’s number, so a lemma may carry more than one Jastrow headword (shown separately below), and the entries cover usage well beyond the Bible.
בִּירָה
- cut off, surrounded, whence
- 1. castle, fort. Gen. R. s. 39; a. fr.
- 2. a group of buildings forming one residence. B. Bath. 61ᵇ בית בב׳ גדולה a house in a large residence (court). Bets. 25ᵃ בטפיחין ובב׳; (ib. 24ᵃ בט׳ בבירות); v. טפיח I, 2.
- 3. (= בית הבחירה, I Chr. XXIX, 1; 19) the chosen Divine residence, Temple. Zeb. 119ᵃ והא בעי ב׳ does it not require a chosen residence (Deut. XII, 18)? Y. Pes. II, 35ᵃ top כל הר וכ׳ the whole Temple mount is named Birah; Pesik. R. s. 14. Zeb. XII, 5 (104ᵇ) בבית הב׳; v. Ib. a. l.—Yoma 9ᵇ עידיכם הב׳ your witness is the Second Temple (which has not been rebuilt; Y. ib. I, 38ᶜ bot. הבחירה). Eduy. VII, 3 בִּירַת הפליא (Ms. M. הפליי׳) Fort Haflaya(?).—Pl. בִּירוֹת. Bets. 24ᵃ, v. supra. Zeb. 119ᵃ שלש ב׳ וכ׳ there are three Divine residences, Shiloh &c. Ch. בִּירְתָא.—Denom. בִּרְיוֹן. e.g. 1 Chronicles 29:1
A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (Marcus Jastrow; London, Luzac, 1903) — Public Domain. Digitized via Sefaria. Digitized via Sefaria. Full attribution on Sources.
Forms in the corpus
The 10 distinct written forms H1002 takes in the Hebrew Bible, most frequent first — each parse links to that state’s occurrences in the concordance. Hebrew forms include their vowel points and cantillation, so a single lemma takes many written forms.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| הַ/בִּירָ֖ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Esther 2:8 | 3 |
| הַ/בִּירָֽה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Esther 1:2 | 3 |
| הַ/בִּירָ֑ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Esther 2:5 | 2 |
| הַ/בִּירָ֔ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Daniel 8:2 | 2 |
| הַ/בִּירָ֗ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Esther 9:6 | 1 |
| הַ/בִּירָ֜ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Esther 1:5 | 1 |
| הַ/בִּירָ֡ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Esther 9:12 | 1 |
| הַ/בִּירָ֤ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Nehemiah 2:8 | 1 |
| הַ/בִּירָ֥ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Chronicles 29:19 | 1 |
| הַ/בִּירָה֙ | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Esther 2:3 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H1002, grouped by Strong’s listed origin. These share a root / origin per the lexicon — not necessarily a shared meaning. Each links to that word’s own entry.
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 13 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 16 Hebrew verses it occurs in. You can read those verses in Greek by switching the Old Testament edition to the Septuagint.
Read these verses in the Septuagint
This is a verse-level parallel only — the same verses exist in both the Hebrew and Greek Old Testaments. No word-level Hebrew↔Greek correspondence is claimed: the data carries no such alignment, so no Greek word is shown as this Hebrew word’s translation. Coverage is not total — the Septuagint omits the deuterocanon and renumbers the Psalms, so some Hebrew verses have no direct Greek parallel.
