place: the particular spot where something stands, belongs, or could still be found
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
Nearly every use of this word sits inside official Persian correspondence. The Aramaic letters preserved in Ezra 4 to 6 argue about a building project, and the phrase that keeps recurring is that the house of God is to be rebuilt "on its place": the same ground, the same footprint, not a new site somewhere more convenient. In a legal document that is the whole point. A site is where something belongs by right, and putting the new building there is what makes it the old building restored rather than a replacement.
Daniel 2:35 pushes the word one step further. The wind sweeps away the shattered statue and "no place was found for them". No spot is left where the fragments could still be located, so English versions often say "no trace of them was found". The sense has not really changed; it has simply been put in the negative, and a spot that cannot be found amounts to nothing remaining at all.
Hebrew says all of this with its own word for "place" (מָקוֹם), and the two words line up closely, except that the Hebrew one also reaches to the sanctuary and this one never does. What Aramaic does that Hebrew does not is build its everyday word for "after" out of this noun.
Nuances
1athe spot where something properly belongs: the ground a building stands on, or the position an object is put back in
TranslatabilityDirect
Ezr 5:15Ezr 6:3Ezr 6:5Ezr 6:7
1ba trace: any spot where something that has vanished might still be found
Dan 2:35
2
after: what comes next, once the short word for "in" is joined to the front of the noun for "place"
TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled
Join the short Aramaic word for "in" to the front of the noun for "place" and you get the everyday way of saying "after". The picture underneath is a physical one: what comes after stands in the spot the earlier thing occupied. Daniel 2:39 tells Nebuchadnezzar that another kingdom will rise "after you", stepping into the position he holds now, and the run of empires that follows is exactly a run of occupants of one place.
In Daniel 7 the phrase does plain narrative work. "After this I kept looking" opens the description of the third beast, and then of the fourth, moving the vision from one creature to the next. Nothing spatial is being claimed there. The phrase has settled into simple sequence, much as English "following" can mean only "next" without anyone picturing someone walking behind.
Aramaic has a second, plainer word for "after" as well (אַחַר), which Daniel 2 uses for what God will make known "after this". The two overlap, and with only a handful of occurrences of each there is no way to show a settled difference between them.
the Aramaic points to one definite, assigned spot, the exact ground a thing belongs on, which is why the Persian decrees keep insisting the temple go back "on its place" rather than anywhere in Jerusalem.Ezr 5:15Ezr 6:7
Both
both name the spot a thing occupies.Ezr 6:3Dan 2:35
Only place
English "place" is loose enough to mean a whole town, a region, a rank, or a job, none of which this word covers.
the Aramaic phrase is built from the word for "place", so a succession is pictured as one thing standing where another stood.Dan 2:39
Both
both mark what comes next in a sequence of events.Dan 7:6Dan 7:7
Only after
English "after" is a pure time word with no spatial picture left in it.
“trace”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“site”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How atar differs from similar Aramaic words
אַחַרthe plain Aramaic time word for "after", used in Daniel 2 for what will happen later, where this word reaches "after" by way of the noun for "place".
Its home meaning is a physical spot on the ground: the site where God's house once stood and where it is ordered to be rebuilt.Ezr 5:15Ezr 6:3Ezr 6:5Ezr 6:7
Because it names a spot, it can be said to be missing altogether: when the wind carries off the shattered statue, no place at all is found for the pieces.Dan 2:35
It reaches the meaning "after" only inside a set phrase that says "in the place of", so its time sense is borrowed from its place sense rather than being its own.Dan 2:39Dan 7:6Dan 7:7
Both
Both are used in Daniel to say "after this", marking one stage of the future giving way to the next.Dan 2:29Dan 2:45Dan 7:6Dan 7:7
Both can line up rulers and kingdoms in order, naming which one rises after which.Dan 7:24Dan 2:39
This is the ordinary Aramaic word for "after", and time is all it ever does. Every place it turns up it is measuring one moment against a later one, so it never has to shake off a physical sense first.Dan 2:29Dan 2:45Dan 7:24
In Daniel's dream reports it closes off a question about the future, "what will happen after this", rather than opening the next scene of a vision.Dan 2:29Dan 2:45
atar in the other biblical languages
מָקוֹםHebrew“place”the standard Hebrew word for a place or site. It covers the same ground but reaches further, since it can also name the sanctuary, which the Aramaic word never does.
Joined to the short Aramaic word for "in", it becomes the everyday way of saying "after". A second kingdom will arise after Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 2:39), and each new beast in the night vision comes into view after the one before it (Daniel 7:6,Daniel 7:7). The Hebrew word for a place never does any work with time at all.Dan 2:39Dan 7:6Dan 7:7
Never rises above a plain physical spot, even when the building in question is the house of God. In the Persian paperwork it does only surveying work: it marks the ground the temple must go back on (Ezra 5:15,Ezra 6:7), and it names the site whose height and width the royal order then specifies (Ezra 6:3). Whatever holiness is in those verses belongs to the house, never to this word.Ezr 5:15Ezr 6:3Ezr 6:7
Both
Both name the one spot a thing belongs in, so that returning it there is the whole point: the gold and silver vessels are carried back to Jerusalem and each put in its place (Ezra 6:5), and the priests bring the ark to its place in the innermost room (1 Kings 8:6).Ezr 6:51Ki 8:6
Both name the ground a house of God is put up on, and in both languages the site is fixed in advance rather than chosen for convenience: the decree orders the temple rebuilt on its own site (Ezra 6:7), and Solomon starts building at the site his father had made ready on the threshing floor (2 Chronicles 3:1).Ezr 6:72Ch 3:1
Both turn negative to say that nothing at all is left. The wind carries off the broken statue and no place is found for it (Daniel 2:35), and a man goes down to the grave and his place knows him no more (Job 7:10,Psalm 103:16). In each case the missing spot stands for the missing thing.Dan 2:35Job 7:10Psa 103:16
Becomes a word for the sanctuary itself. It is the one site God chooses out of all the tribes to put his name on (Deuteronomy 12:5), the site every man must appear at three times a year (Deuteronomy 16:16), the temple Solomon asks God to keep his eyes on (1 Kings 8:29), and the ground Moses must take his sandals off to stand on (Exodus 3:5). The Aramaic word is never used this way.Deu 12:5Deu 16:161Ki 8:29Exo 3:5
Names a person's own standing rather than any patch of ground: the post you must not walk away from when a ruler flares up at you (Ecclesiastes 10:4), the standing of the great that you should not push yourself into (Proverbs 25:6), the seat at the king's table that sits empty when David stays away (1 Samuel 20:25,1 Samuel 20:27), and the command that is taken from kings and handed to officers (1 Kings 20:24).Ecc 10:4Pro 25:61Sa 20:251Ki 20:24
τόποςGreek“place”the ordinary Greek word for a place or spot. It stretches to mean room or opportunity, as in giving no opening to the devil, which the Aramaic word does not.
Stays physical, and in practice keeps pointing at one particular site: the ground the house of God stands on, where the building is to be raised again and its furnishings are to be set back where they belong.Ezr 5:15Ezr 6:5Ezr 6:7
Also supplies the ordinary Aramaic way of saying "after", so a word for where something stands becomes a word for what comes next in time.Dan 2:39Dan 7:6Dan 7:7
Both
Both are the everyday word for a definite spot you could point to: the site where an altar stands, the ground where an execution happened. Where a New Testament writer needs the plain word the Aramaic sections use, this is it.Ezr 6:3Mat 27:33Jhn 19:41
Both carry the same picture of total removal: to say that no place was found for something is to say it was swept away and left nowhere to be.Dan 2:35Rev 12:8Rev 20:11
Stretches from a named location to plain "room": the free space available, whether or not anyone has named the spot.Luk 2:7Luk 14:22
Stretches further into the idea of an opening or a chance to act, so that giving someone "place" means letting them have their opportunity.Rom 12:19Eph 4:27Heb 12:17Act 25:16
Names the position a person holds: the office someone steps into, the role someone is filling, the seat that marks a guest's rank.Act 1:251Co 14:16Luk 14:10
אַחַרHebrew“after”the Hebrew word for "after". It does in Hebrew the job that the phrase built on this noun does in Aramaic, but it is a plain time word with no picture of a place inside it.
What scholars say about atar
אֲתַר is the common Imperial Aramaic noun for a place or site, cognate with Akkadian ašru and continued in Syriac ʾatrā, which later widens to "region, homeland". BDB's Aramaic lexicon and HALOT's Aramaic volume both give two headings for the biblical occurrences: "place, site" (Ezra 5:15; 6:3, 5, 7) and "trace" in Daniel 2:35, where the negated existential idiom denies that any spot remained in which the shattered image could be found. The Ezra occurrences belong to the Aramaic documents of Ezra 4 to 6, where עַל־אַתְרֵהּ functions as formulaic chancellery language for restoring a structure on its original site, a formula paralleled in the Achaemenid administrative correspondence from Elephantine. The same lexica treat בָּאתַר, the noun with the preposition בְּ prefixed, as a compound preposition meaning "after" (Daniel 2:39; 7:6, 7); Rosenthal's grammar lists it among the compound prepositions of Biblical Aramaic, and the grammaticalization of a spatial noun into a temporal preposition is well attested across the Aramaic dialects. The alternative Aramaic preposition אַחַר (Daniel 2:29, 45) is not lexically differentiated from it in the biblical material, whose sample is too small to support a distinction.