Word study
Cubit
5 Hebrew words behind this English word
The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: cubits, cubit. English often uses one word where Hebrew or Greek has several, each with its own shade of meaning. Under each word are verses where it is translated this way; choose the word itself for its full study: every verse, how else it is translated, the forms it takes and what the dictionaries say.
At a glance
How often each original word is translated “cubit” or one of its forms.
Compare the Hebrew words side by side
Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)
- אַמָּה ammâhell, cubittranslated this way 222 times of its 230 uses · Strong’s H520Noun · Translated: cubits 174, cubit 32, two cubits 5, cubits long 5Full study and all 132 verses →
Genesis 6:15 And this is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high.
Exodus 25:10 And they are to construct an ark of acacia wood, two and a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half high.
- חֵצִי chêtsîhalftranslated this way 4 times of its 122 uses · Strong’s H2677Noun · Translated: half 66, half-tribe 23, other half 4, half cubits 4Full study and all 101 verses →
Exodus 25:10 And they are to construct an ark of acacia wood, two and a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half high.
Exodus 25:17 And you are to construct a mercy seat of pure gold, two and a half cubits long and a cubit and a half wide.
- אַמָּה ammâhcubittranslated this way 4 times of its 4 uses · Strong’s H521Noun · Translated: cubits 4Full study and all 2 verses →
Ezra 6:3 In the first year of King Cyrus, he issued a decree concerning the house of God in Jerusalem: Let the house be rebuilt as a place for offering sacrifices, and let its foundations be firmly laid. It is to be sixty cubits high and sixty cubits wide,
Daniel 3:1 King Nebuchadnezzar made a golden statue sixty cubits high and six cubits wide, and he set it up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon.
- קָנֶה qânehstalk, reedtranslated this way 3 times of its 46 uses · Strong’s H7070Noun · Translated: branches 9, rod 9, reeds 5, branch 4Full study and all 37 verses →
Ezekiel 42:17 He measured the north side to be five hundred cubits long.
Ezekiel 42:18 He measured the south side to be five hundred cubits long.
- חָמֵשׁ châmêshfivetranslated this way 2 times of its 249 uses · Strong’s H2568Number · Translated: five 148, fifteenth 16, fifteen 14, 25 000 14Full study and all 192 verses →
Exodus 27:15 and the curtains on the other side fifteen cubits long, with three posts and three bases.
Ezekiel 48:10 This will be the holy portion for the priests. It will be 25,000 cubits long on the north side, 10,000 cubits wide on the west side, 10,000 cubits wide on the east side, and 25,000 cubits long on the south side. In the center will be the sanctuary of the LORD.
How to study a word well
- Start from the verse, not the dictionary. Find which Hebrew or Greek word stands in the verse you are studying. One English word often translates several different original words.
- Read every place the word is used. A word means what its writers used it to mean. The list of verses and the count by book show its range, and who uses it most.
- Look at how it is translated. A word rendered five different ways has a wider meaning than any one English word can carry.
- Notice the form. A command is not a statement, and a passive verb is something done to the subject. The form in your verse is part of the meaning.
- See what it keeps company with. The words that appear beside it again and again show how the Bible itself connects ideas.
- Then read the dictionaries. They give the considered view of scholars, with their evidence.
- Come back to the verse. Context decides. A word does not carry every one of its meanings into every verse, and where a word came from does not settle what it means in a sentence written centuries later.
What the Bible says about cubit: passages by topic →
Scripture text and translation counts: Berean Standard Bible. Full entry: Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906, public domain), in the digital edition Brown-Driver-Briggs Enhanced by unfoldingWord (Joel Ruark, J. de Joode), based on data by Eliran Wong and Stephen Ku; its additions are used under CC BY 4.0. Strong’s Hebrew Dictionary: Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible Project, CC BY 4.0. Hebrew-to-English verse numbering: original work of the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible available at https://github.com/openscriptures/morphhb, CC BY 4.0. We reformatted the data, linked the references to this site’s Bible text and left out words in other scripts that the source holds only as images. These are historical reference works; an entry gives its authors’ view, and a word’s meaning in any verse depends on how it is used there.