Aramaic word · H1236
בִּקְעָא
bevik'at
plain
A broad plain or wide valley, literally a 'split' or 'cleft' in the land (from the root bqʿ, 'to split'). It means open level ground.
A Biblical Aramaic word, from the parts of the Old Testament written in Aramaic. Why Aramaic?
Appears once in the Aramaic of the Old Testament. ·
What it means
plain
Aramaic of biq.ah (בִּקְעָה "valley" H1237K)
Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).
In depth
- Range of meaning
A broad plain or wide valley, literally a 'split' or 'cleft' in the land (from the root bqʿ, 'to split'). It means open level ground.
- Against the English
BSB/KJV/WEB 'plain'; YLT 'valley'. In flat southern Mesopotamia 'plain' fits better. 'Valley' makes English readers picture hills on either side.
- Used elsewhere in the period
Hebrew biqʿāh is used in Genesis 11:2 ('they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there'), the setting of the tower of Babel. It is also used in Ezekiel 3:22–23 and 37:1–2, where the prophet, an exile in Babylonia, receives visions in 'the plain/valley'.
Where it appears
Daniel · 1
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Daniel 3:1 בְּבִקְעַ֣ת on [the] plain of
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.
Here: 'On the plain of'. A wide, flat, open area, ideal for a huge assembly and visible from far off. In Hebrew the same word names the plain in Shinar where the tower of Babel was built (Genesis 11:2).
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.