רָחָב
ra.chav
broad: wide
Lexicon Entry
Lexicon data from STEPBible TIPNR, Tyndale House, Cambridge. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
What Original Readers Understood
Supported# רָחָב (Rachav): Broad and Wide The Hebrew word רָחָב (rachav) carries the straightforward physical meaning of "broad" or "wide," describing spatial extension in dimension. With seventeen occurrences across the biblical text, it functions as a basic descriptive term for objects, spaces, or structures that possess considerable lateral expanse. The word appears consistently in contexts where dimensional measurement or visual impression of spaciousness is relevant to the narrative or description. The relative frequency of this term—appearing seventeen times in the biblical corpus—suggests it served as a standard vocabulary choice for depicting expansive or open areas, whether referring to architectural features, geographical spaces, or physical objects. Rather than being a specialized or rare term, it represents common, everyday language for describing the tangible world. Its consistent use across different biblical books and genres indicates that "broad" and "wide" were essential descriptive categories in ancient Hebrew, much as they remain in modern languages for characterizing physical reality.
Source data & methodology
Occurrences in Scripture
17 total occurrences across the text
I said to the nobles, and to the rulers and to the rest of the people, “The work is great and large, and we are separated on the wall, far from one another.
Nehemiah 7:4Now the city was wide and large; but the people were few therein, and the houses were not built.
Nehemiah 9:35For they have not served you in their kingdom, and in your great goodness that you gave them, and in the large and rich land which you gave before them. They didn’t turn from their wicked works.
Job 11:9Its measure is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea.
Job 30:14As through a wide breach they come. They roll themselves in amid the ruin.
Psalms 101:5I will silence whoever secretly slanders his neighbor. I won’t tolerate one who is arrogant and conceited.
Psalms 104:25There is the sea, great and wide, in which are innumerable living things, both small and large animals.
Psalms 119:45I will walk in liberty, for I have sought your precepts.
Psalms 119:96I have seen a limit to all perfection, but your commands are boundless.
Isaiah 22:18He will surely wind you around and around, and throw you like a ball into a large country. There you will die, and there the chariots of your glory will be, you shame of your lord’s house.
Isaiah 33:21But there Yahweh will be with us in majesty, a place of wide rivers and streams, in which no galley with oars will go, neither will any gallant ship pass by there.
Jeremiah 51:58Yahweh of Armies says: “The wide walls of Babylon will be utterly overthrown. Her high gates will be burned with fire. The peoples will labor for vanity, and the nations for the fire; and they will be weary.”
Ezekiel 23:32“The Lord Yahweh says: ‘You will drink of your sister’s cup, which is deep and large. You will be ridiculed and held in derision. It contains much.
Genesis 34:21“These men are peaceful with us. Therefore let them live in the land and trade in it. For behold, the land is large enough for them. Let’s take their daughters to us for wives, and let’s give them our daughters.
Exodus 3:8I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey; to the place of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite.
Judges 18:10When you go, you will come to an unsuspecting people, and the land is large; for God has given it into your hand, a place where there is no lack of anything that is in the earth.”
1 Chronicles 4:40They found fat pasture and good, and the land was wide, and quiet, and peaceful; for those who lived there before were descended from Ham.