Hebrew word · H4224

מַחֲבֵא

kemachave'-

hiding-place

Maḥaveʾ: a hiding place (root ḥava, 'hide'). Seter: secrecy, a covering, a concealed and protected place.

Appears 2 times in 2 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. · Updated November 08, 2026

What it means

hiding place

Another spelling of ma.cha.bo (מַחֲבֹא "refuge" H4224B)

Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).

Range of meaning: Maḥaveʾ: a hiding place (root ḥava, 'hide'). Seter: secrecy, a covering, a concealed and protected place.
Against the English: 'Hiding place', 'covert', 'shelter', 'refuge'. All are fair. 'Refuge' (BSB) loses some of the sense of being concealed.
Used elsewhere in the period: Seter appears in Ps 32:7 ('You are my hiding place'), Ps 91:1 and Ps 27:5. In Isa 28:15–17 the leaders of Jerusalem make 'lies our refuge' and 'falsehood our hiding place [seter]', and God says 'waters will overflow the hiding place'. Isa 4:6 promises a 'shelter [mistor, same root] from storm [zerem] and rain'.

Range of meaning: A place of hiding or concealment. It is built from the verb ḥāḇāʾ ('hide') with the prefix ma-, which forms place-words. The word is rare and neutral: it can describe a refuge or a hideout depending on who is speaking.
Against the English: KJV and WEB say 'lurking places'. BSB has 'places where he hides', and most modern versions say 'hiding places'.
How it drifted: In 1611 'lurk' could simply mean to lie hidden. Today 'lurking' suggests someone waiting in ambush to do harm, so the KJV now sounds more sinister than the Hebrew noun.
Used elsewhere in the period: The same noun appears in Isaiah 32:2 ('a hiding place from the wind'), where it is entirely positive. The related form maḥăḇēʾ appears in 1 Samuel 23:23 only in this plural sense. The verb ḥāḇāʾ is used for Adam hiding (Gen 3:10), for Saul hiding among the baggage (1 Sam 10:22), and for David hiding in the field (1 Sam 20:5).

1 Samuel · 1

1 Samuel 23:23 הַמַּֽחֲבֹאִים֙ the hiding places

Observe and find out all the places where he hides. Then come back to me with certainty, and I will go with you. If he is in the land, I will search him out among all the clans of Judah.”

Here: Places of concealment, built on the verb 'to hide'. In the Judean wilderness these were caves, ravines and rocky strongholds. The plural suggests David keeps moving between several of them.

Isaiah · 1

Isaiah 32:2 כְּמַֽחֲבֵא־ like a hiding place of

Each will be like a shelter from the wind, a refuge from the storm, like streams of water in a dry land, like the shadow of a great rock in an arid land.

Here: From ḥava, 'to hide' (Gen 3:8). It is a place where you crouch out of sight, here out of the wind. Rare: this exact form occurs only here.

Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.