רָבַע
to square
‘to square’ is one of 3 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Pual verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”). Here: ‘pass.’
- Pual
- The passive counterpart of the Piel. Here: ‘square’
Form
- Participle Passive
- A verbal adjective expressing action received (“written”).
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Every verse where H7251 appears in the Book of Ezekiel — 4 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.
Ezekiel
- Ezekiel 40:47 מְרֻבָּ֑עַת Pual ptcp.pass fs He measured the court, one hundred cubits long, and a hundred cubits broad, foursquare; and the altar was before the house.
- Ezekiel 41:21 רְבֻעָ֑ה Qal ptcp.pass fs As for the temple, the door-posts were squared; and as for the face of the sanctuary, the appearance [of it] was as the appearance [of the temple].
- Ezekiel 43:16 רָב֕וּעַ Qal ptcp.pass ms The altar hearth shall be twelve [cubits] long by twelve broad, square in the four sides of it.
- Ezekiel 45:2 מְרֻבָּ֣ע Pual ptcp.pass ms Of this there shall be for the holy place five hundred [in length] by five hundred [in breadth], square round about; and fifty cubits for the suburbs of it round about.
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.
“to square” is the headline sense of the Hebrew verb רבע (râbaʻ). More than half of its appearances fall in Exodus. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 12 verses — uncommon. First canonically at Exodus 27:1, it enters the text early. Different stems carry different senses — BDB groups them under 3 stems, among them Qal and Pual. See the sense tree, 12-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H7251 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 →
- 12
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 12 distinct verses.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,101
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,101 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 12 occurrences in the concordance →
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 12 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 6 verses · 50%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 6 verses · 50%
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).
BDB lists this Strong’s number as 2 distinct words (homographs). Each count above pools all of them and is not split by sense — see the Senses section below. A low-frequency rendering may belong to a different one of those words, not the primary meaning.
- King James Version†: Foursquare 3×, Was foursquare 2×
- American Standard Version†: Thereof 3×, Foursquare 2×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Square 6×, Was square 4×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Square 7×, Were square 3×, It 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H7251 across 12† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 7 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H7251 across 12† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 7 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H7251 across 12† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 renderings that appear 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 H7251 across 14† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Senses in the full BDB
Hebrew verbs can shift meaning by stem (binyan): Qal is the basic action, Niphal is often passive or reflexive, Piel often intensifies or makes it factitive, and Hiphil is typically causative. The senses below are grouped under the stem BDB assigns to each. This entry also uses Pual (the passive of Piel).
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 4 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.
רבע I denom., only Pt. pass. squared, square
Qal
- Pt. pass. רָבוּעַ square, of altar Ex 27:1; 30:2; 37:25; 38:1, cf. Ez 43:16; breastplate 30:2; 39:9; pl. רְבֻעִים, of doorways, etc. [on text v. Kit Benz] 1 K 7:5; fs. רְבֻעָה as subst. = a square Ez 41:21 (acc. Co Toy, om. מְזוּזַה, and joining ר׳ to v 20; Krae reads מְזוּזֹת רְבֻעֹת, cf. 1 K 6:33, רְבִיעִי 2). e.g. Exodus 27:1
Pual
- Pt. square, מְרֻבַּע Ez 45:2, of piece of land; fs. מְרֻבָּ֑עַת 40:47, of court; fpl. מְרֻבָּעוֹת 1 K 7:31 (opp. עֲגֻלּוֹת), of borders of bases (cf. Sab. רבעתם, a kind of square building, Sab-Denkm 31). e.g. Ezekiel 45:2
רבע II lie stretched out, lie down (Aramaic form of רָבַץ (q.v.)
Qal
- only Inf.: sf. רִבְעִי ψ 139:3 my lying down (for repose, opp. אָרְחִי); elsewhere (H) for copulation (woman with beast) לְרִבְעָה אֹתָהּ Lv 20:16, but read אִתָּהּ (sf. of beast) Dr-Wh KöSynt. 226 e, cf. Bae Berthol (and Dr 2 S 13:14); לְרִבְעָהּ 18:23, read לְרִבְעָה (compl. om.; v. id.). e.g. Psalms 139:3
Hiphil
- Impf. 2 ms. בְּהֶמְתְּךָ לֹא תַרְבִּיעַ כִּלְאַיִם Lv 19:19 (H) thy cattle thou shalt not cause to (let) lie down (i.e. breed) in two kinds. e.g. Leviticus 19:19
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
I. vb.denom., only Pt. pass. squared, square;—
II. vb. lie stretched out, lie down (Aramaic form of רָבַץ (q.v.); NH רבע usually of copulation, chiefly unnatural; yet cf. also Sab. רבע abide, encamp, settle, DHMZMG xxix (1875), 593, Arabic رَبَعَ abide, dwell)—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from רבע (râbaʻ) (H7250) — to lie down.
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.
רָבַע
- (b. h.) to lie with, copulate with, cover. Y. Ab. Zar. I, 40ᵃ top והלא מביא … והוא רוֹבְעָהּ וכ׳ but may he not bring (the crippled sire) to her, and he cover her, and she may give birth? Ib. והיא רוֹבַעַת ממנו וכ׳ and she (the crippled mare) may be fecundated by him.—Esp. a) (with ref. to Lev. XX, 16) to have connection with a beast. Snh. I, 4 הרוֹבֵעַ והנִרְבָּע the animal that covered (a woman), and the animal that was covered (by a man). B. Kam. 40ᵇ; a. e.—b) to commit pederasty. Snh. 9ᵇ פלוני רְבָעוֹ לאונסו וכ׳ (if a man says) such and such a man committed sodomy with him (euphem. for me) against his will, he himself in connection with another witness can testify &c.—Trnsf. to fructify the ground. Taan. 6ᵇ דבר שרובע, v. רְבִיעָה. e.g. Leviticus 20:16
- to be covered, esp. to be copulated in an unnatural way. Snh. I, 4, v. supra. Ab. Zar. 24ᵃ וולד הנִרְבַּעַת אסורה the issue of a beast that was used for buggery while pregnant is disqualified for the altar; היא וולדה נִירְבְּעוּ for mother and child have been abused; a. fr.
- 1. (v. (v. רְבִיעָה) to inundate for the sake of improving the soil. Y. Peah VII, 20ᵇ (ref. to המרבץ, ib. V, 19ᵃ top) מביון שהוא מְרַבְּעָהּ וכ׳ because he inundates it, it will yield so much more next year.
- 2. (denom. of אַרְבַּע) a) to do for the fourth time. Sifré Deut. 306 הוי מפטם … ומְרַבֵּע perfume (thyself) with the words of the Law, and do it a second, a third, and a fourth time; Yalk. ib. 942.—b) to quadrate, make quadrilateral. Part. pass. מְרוּבָּע; f. מְרוּבַּעַת; pl. מְרוּבָּעִים, מְרוּבָּעִין; מְרוּבָּעוֹת. Y. Maasr. V, end, 52ᵃ אין מר׳ מששת ימי בראשית there is no quadrangular form in natural objects; ib. והתנינן … הקילקי המ׳ but do we not read in the Mishnah (Neg. VI, 1) … ‘of the size of a Cilician bean which is quadrilateral’? כל גרמא … (ד)יְרַבְּעֶנָּהּ הוא this very passage proves that there is nothing quadrangular in nature; and why does the Mishnah say so? It means that he (the priest) should calculate the size of a bean by circumscribing a quadrilateral around it; Y. Ned. III, 37ᵈ bot.; Y. Shebu. III, 34ᵈ די ירבעונה הוא (read: יְרַבְּעֶינָּהּ). Tosef. Maasr. III, 14, v. גָּרִיס. Y. Erub. II, 20ᵃ מר׳ a quadrilateral stone, opp. עגולה; Bab. Erub. 19ᵇ; Tosef. ib. II (I), 1. Ib. VI (V), 10 ריבע את העיר וכ׳ if he squares a town (which is built in a curve) and makes the calculation as if it were a square table (plane); Erub. 56ᵇ המְרַבֵּעַ וכ׳. Ib. וחוזר ומרבע את התחומין and then again he draws a square for the Sabbath limits. Ib. כמה מר׳ יתר וכ׳ how much larger is the square than the inscribed circle?; a. fr.
רְבַע
- 1. to lie, couch. Targ. Num. XXII, 27 (h. text רבץ). Targ. Y. Gen. XLIX, 25; a. fr.—Part. רְבִיעַ; f. רְבִיעָא; pl. רְבִיעִין; רְבִיעָן. Ib. IV, 7. Targ. Deut. XXII, 6 (O. ed. Vien. רְבֵעָא). Targ. Ps. CIV, 22; a. fr.—Y. Ber. VIII, 12ᵇ top לא מיסתך דאת ר׳ וכ׳ is it not not enough that thou art lying (on the dining couch), and he stands and attends thee? Ib. גזירנא דהוא ר׳ וכ׳ (not גזירה) I decree that he lie down, and thou stand &c. Gen. R. s. 7 רביע ואנא וכ׳ lie down (to be lashed), and I will tell thee; Tanḥ. Ḥuck. 6; Pesik. R. s. 14. Koh. R. to I, 8 קם ור׳ ליה על רגלוי he arose and threw himself down at his feet. Shebu. 22ᵇ, a. fr. אריא הוא דר׳ וכ׳, v. אַרְיָא; a. fr.
- 2. to commit buggery. Ab. Zar. 24ᵃ דילמא רַבְעוּהָ לאימא דאימא perhaps they (gentiles) had connection with the grandmother (of the animal, while she was pregnant); a. e.
- 1. to cause to lie down, lay down. Targ. Y. Gen. XXIV, 11 (h. text ויברך). Targ. Y. Deut. XXV, 2 ויַרְבְּעִינֵיה (not ויִרְ׳).—Part. pass. מַרְבַּע. Targ. Y. I Gen. XLIX, 14.—Num. R. s. 19 אַרְבְּעוּנֵיה דילקי lay him down, that he may receive lashes; Tanḥ. l. c. ארבעתיה (corr. acc.); ib. ארבעונהי (corr. acc.). Pesik. R. l. c. אַרְבְּעִינֵיה lay thou him down. Y. Bicc. I, 64ᵃ אַרְבְּעֵיה על וכ׳ he ordered him to be laid on the benches (for punishment). B. Kam. 114ᵃ אַרְבְּעֵית לי אריא וכ׳ thou didst put a lion at my borders, i.e. you forced a violent neighbor upon me; a. e.—Y. Yeb. IV, 6ᵃ bot. ואנא בעי מַרְבַּעְתָּהּ וכ׳ and I want to assist at her lying down (for delivery), before she cools off, v. צְנַן.
- 2. to copulate animals, esp. to hybridize. Targ. Y. Gen. XXXVI, 24. Targ. Y. Lev. XIX, 19.
- 1. to divide into four parts. Targ. Y. Deut. XXXII, 4.
- 2. to make quadrangular. Part. pass. מְרַבַּע (מְרֻבַּע Hebraism); f. מְרַבְּעָא; pl. מְּרַבְּעִין; מְרַבְּעָן, מְרַבְּעָתָא quadrate. Targ. Ex. XXVII, 1. Targ. Ez. XLV, 2. Targ. I Kings VII, 5. Targ. Y. I Num. XXXIII, 7 (not מֵרַבְ׳); Targ. Y. I Ex. XIV, 2 (ed. Vien. מרביעתא, corr. acc.); a. e.—Y. Sot. V, 20ᵇ bot. מאן דמְרַבַּע ארבע וכ׳ he that wants to form four rows of four casks each requires sixteen casks. Erub. 57ᵃ אימור … כמאן דמְרַבְּעָא רַבּוּעֵי ודאי מי מְרַבַּעְנָא we said, we consider it in our calculations as if it were squared; do we, however, really make it a square (by filling the space with buildings)?; a. e.
רֶבַע
- preced.) one-fourth, quarter.—Pl. רְבָעִים. Erub. 56ᵃ בארבעה רִבְעֵי היום וכ׳ at one of the four quarters of the day, at the beginning of the day, or at the beginning of the night, or at noon, or at midnight.—Esp. one-fourth of a Ḳab. Pl. as ab. Ḥall. II, 6 חמשת ר׳ קמח five quarts of flour (v. Maim. a. l.). Ib. I, 4; a. fr.—Du. רִבְעָתַיִם, רִיבְ׳. Ker. I, 7 בר׳ at the price of two quarters (of a silver Denar); B. Bath. 166ᵇ (Rashb: at one quarter of a Denar for a pair of birds, v. Tosaf. a. l.); Ker. 10ᵇ
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 12 distinct written forms H7251 takes in the Hebrew Bible, most frequent first — each parse links to that stem’s occurrences in the concordance. Hebrew forms include their vowel points and cantillation, so a single lemma takes many written forms.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H7251, 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.
Derives from
Shares the same root
Derived from this word
- ארבע ʼarbaʻ H702 four
- רביעי rᵉbîyʻîy H7243 fourth
- רבע rebaʻ H7253 fourth part
- רבע rôbaʻ H7255 fourth part
- רבע ribbêaʻ H7256 fourth
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 8 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 11 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 12 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.
