Hebrew word · H877

בֹּאר

borot

cistern

A cistern, meaning a pit cut into rock, usually plastered, to collect runoff rainwater. By extension it means any pit: a dungeon or prison pit (Gen 37:24; Jer 38:6), or the 'Pit' of death (Ps 28:1; 88:4).

Appears 4 times in 3 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

cistern, pit, well

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 Jeremiah 2:13

Range of meaning

A cistern, meaning a pit cut into rock, usually plastered, to collect runoff rainwater. By extension it means any pit: a dungeon or prison pit (Gen 37:24; Jer 38:6), or the 'Pit' of death (Ps 28:1; 88:4). It is distinct from bǝʾēr, a well reaching groundwater, though the aleph spelling here resembles it.

Against the English

Most versions say 'cisterns'. YLT says 'wells', following the spelling, which is technically less accurate and loses the contrast between stored rainwater and spring water.

How it drifted

No drift in meaning, but many modern readers have never seen a rock-cut cistern and imagine a metal tank. The point depends on knowing that cisterns were hard to cut, held only collected rain, and cracked easily.

Used elsewhere in the period

Deuteronomy 6:11 promises Israel 'hewn cisterns that you did not hew' (bōrôt ḥăṣûbîm ʾăšer lōʾ-ḥāṣabtā), using the same noun and the same verb as this verse. In 2 Kings 18:31 the Assyrian envoy tempts Jerusalem: 'each of you will drink the water of his own cistern'. The Moabite Mesha inscription (9th c. BCE) records the king ordering, 'make yourselves each man a cistern in his house'. In Jeremiah 38:6 the prophet himself is lowered into a cistern 'with no water in it, only mud'.

Where it appears

2 Samuel · 2

  1. 2 Samuel 23:15 מִבֹּ֥אר from [the] well of

    David longed for water and said, “Oh, that someone would get me a drink of water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem!”

  2. 2 Samuel 23:16 מִבֹּ֤אר from [the] well of

    So the three mighty men broke through the Philistine camp, drew water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem, and brought it back to David. But he refused to drink it; instead, he poured it out to the LORD,

Jeremiah · 2

  1. Jeremiah 2:13 בֹּאר֔וֹת בֹּארֹת֙ cisterns

    “For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living water, and they have dug their own cisterns—broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

    Here: Rock-cut storage tanks for collected rainwater. The unusual spelling with an aleph looks like the word for 'well' (bǝʾēr), but the sense is cistern.

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