atam

This verb never shuts a door or a gate. It works on the small openings that are meant to let something through, and it names the moment one of them is stopped up:

• an ear closed against a cry it would rather not hear
• lips held shut so that no word gets out
• a temple window closed off instead of standing open

Most of its uses are about listening. A man who shuts his ear to the cry of the poor will one day cry out himself and go unanswered (Proverbs 21:13). The wicked are compared to a cobra that stops its ear against the charmer's voice (Psalm 58:4). Yet the same gesture can be a virtue: in Isaiah 33:15 the person who may live on God's holy hill shuts his ear against talk of bloodshed, and shuts his eyes against evil, which Isaiah says with a different verb (עָצֹם). Shutting the ear is neither good nor bad in itself, and everything depends on what is being kept out. The one use with the lips works the same way: even a fool passes for wise while he keeps his mouth closed (Proverbs 17:28).

The other half of the uses describe windows, and they are the reason so small a word is argued over. Solomon's temple has them (1 Kings 6:4), and so does the temple Ezekiel sees in his vision (Ezekiel 40:16; 41:16, 26). A window that was simply sealed would be a wall, so scholars read the word two ways here: as openings covered with fixed lattice that could not be swung open, or as openings set back in their frames, wide on one side and narrow on the other. Either way the word marks a window that is not a plain gap in the wall.

Hebrew has more common verbs for closing: the everyday word for shutting a door or a city gate (סָגַר), and the word for plugging a well with earth (סָתַם). This one stayed narrow, tied to ears, lips, and windows, which is part of why it turns up only eight times.