Word study

Portico

3 Hebrew words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: portico, porticoes, porticos. 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 “portico” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • אוּלָם ûlâmporchtranslated this way 28 times of its 32 uses · Strong’s H197Noun  ·  Translated: portico 26, hall 3, colonnade 1, Inside the portico 1

    1 Kings 6:3 The portico at the front of the main hall of the temple was twenty cubits long, extending across the width of the temple and projecting out ten cubits in front of the temple.

    1 Chronicles 28:11 Then David gave his son Solomon the plans for the portico of the temple, its buildings, storehouses, upper rooms, inner rooms, and the room for the mercy seat.

    Full study and all 29 verses →
  • אֵילָם êlâmporchtranslated this way 14 times of its 15 uses · Strong’s H361Noun  ·  Translated: portico 10, gateway and its portico 2, porticos 1, porticoes 1

    Ezekiel 40:16 The gate chambers and their side pillars had beveled windows all around the inside of the gateway. The porticos also had windows all around on the inside. Each side pillar was decorated with palm trees.

    Ezekiel 40:21 Its three gate chambers on each side, its side pillars, and its portico all had the same measurements as the first gate: fifty cubits long and twenty-five cubits wide.

    Full study and all 12 verses →
  • אַיִל ayilramtranslated this way 2 times of its 178 uses · Strong’s H352Noun  ·  Translated: ram 89, rams 59, side pillars 12, like rams 3

    Ezekiel 40:37 Its portico faced the outer court, and its side pillars were decorated with palm trees on each side. Eight steps led up to it.

    Ezekiel 40:38 There was a chamber with a doorway by the portico in each of the inner gateways. There the burnt offering was to be washed.

    Full study and all 169 verses →
How to study a word well
  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. Look at how it is translated. A word rendered five different ways has a wider meaning than any one English word can carry.
  4. 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.
  5. See what it keeps company with. The words that appear beside it again and again show how the Bible itself connects ideas.
  6. Then read the dictionaries. They give the considered view of scholars, with their evidence.
  7. 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.

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.