Hebrew word · H6952

קְהִלָּה

kehilah

assembly

Assembly, congregation: a rare feminine form of qāhāl, the gathered people of Israel acting as a body, especially in covenant settings.

Appears 2 times in 2 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

assembly, congregation

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

From the study of Nehemiah 5:7

Range of meaning

Assembly, congregation: a rare feminine form of qāhāl, the gathered people of Israel acting as a body, especially in covenant settings.

Against the English

'Assembly' (KJV, ESV, WEB, BSB), 'meeting' (NIV), 'public meeting' (NLT). 'Meeting' can sound administrative and lose the sense of the covenant community gathered.

Used elsewhere in the period

Elsewhere only Deut 33:4, 'the assembly of Jacob', in the context of the law Moses commanded. The Septuagint renders it ekklēsia, the same word later used for 'church'.

Where it appears

Deuteronomy · 1

  1. Deuteronomy 33:4 קְהִלַּ֥ת [the] assembly of

    the law that Moses gave us, the possession of the assembly of Jacob.

Nehemiah · 1

  1. Nehemiah 5:7 קְהִלָּ֥ה an assembly

    and after serious thought I rebuked the nobles and officials, saying, “You are exacting usury from your own brothers!” So I called a large assembly against them

    Here: A rare form (elsewhere only Deut 33:4, 'the assembly of Jacob') of the common word for the gathered people of Israel. This is the community gathered as a body, the setting where covenant matters were settled.

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