Aramaic word · H3797
כְּתַל
khetal
wall
'Wall' of a building or house. Its Hebrew counterpart kōtel appears in Song 2:9 ('behind our wall'). It is distinct from shur, the fortified city wall, used in Ezra 4:12–16.
A Biblical Aramaic word, from the parts of the Old Testament written in Aramaic. Why Aramaic?
Appears 2 times in 2 verses of the Aramaic of the Old Testament. ·
What it means
a wall
Aramaic of ko.tel (כֹּ֫תֶל "wall" H3796)
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
'Wall' of a building or house. Its Hebrew counterpart kōtel appears in Song 2:9 ('behind our wall'). It is distinct from shur, the fortified city wall, used in Ezra 4:12–16.
- Against the English
All major versions say simply 'walls', which does not show the difference between building walls and city walls.
- Used elsewhere in the period
The Western Wall in Jerusalem is still called the Kotel, from the same Semitic word. Ezra 4:12–16 accuses the Jews of rebuilding the city walls (shur). This report uses kətal for the temple's own walls.
Where it appears
Ezra · 1
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Ezra 5:8 בְּכֻתְלַיָּ֑א in walls the
Let it be known to the king that we went into the province of Judah, to the house of the great God. The people are rebuilding it with large stones and placing timbers in the walls. This work is being carried out diligently and is prospering in their hands.
Here: 'In the walls': the walls of the building itself, not the city's defensive walls. The word for city walls in Ezra 4:12–16 is a different one (shur).
Daniel · 1
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Daniel 5:5 כְתַ֥ל [the] wall of
At that moment the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace. As the king watched the hand that was writing,
Here: 'The wall of…'. A word for the wall of a building. Its Hebrew counterpart appears in Song of Songs 2:9.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.