the belly: the rounded inner cavity of the body, and by extension the womb, the appetite, and the deep inner self
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled
One Hebrew word covers the whole rounded hollow of the trunk and everything the Bible locates there. At its most physical it is the belly that takes in food and the soft front of the body where a weapon can be driven home. From there it reaches in two directions. Inward and downward it names the womb, the place a child is formed and carried, so that to be known or set apart "from the belly" is to be claimed before birth. Inward and upward it names the hidden self: the chambers where words are swallowed and brooded over, where the spirit churns, and where dread is felt in the gut.
The senses are not separate words but one picture seen from different angles. The belly is the body's deep interior, and Hebrew treats that interior as both the organ of hunger and the seat of the inmost person, much as English still speaks of a "gut feeling." The womb is the same hollow understood as the source of life.
The word can even leave the body altogether and name the rounded bulge of an object, the swelling middle of the great bronze pillars in Solomon's temple. In every use the common thread is a curved, enclosing inner space.
Nuances
1athe womb: the place where a child is conceived, formed, and carried
the Hebrew word is the ordinary belly used by extension for the womb, so it can equally name the stomach or the inner self in the same bookJdg 3:21Job 32:19
Both
both name the place a child is formed and carried, the source from which one is bornGen 25:24Psa 139:13
Only womb
the English word means only the organ of childbearing and carries none of the wider sense of belly, appetite, or inmost being
the Hebrew names the belly in particular, the inner cavity, not the body as a whole, even where it stands for a person's offspringMic 6:7Psa 132:11
Both
both can stand for a person's own physical self as the source of their childrenMic 6:7
Only body
the English word means the entire physical frame, far broader than the specific belly the Hebrew names
“within”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How beten differs from similar Hebrew words
רֶחֶםrechem is the womb as the specific reproductive organ, the matrix that opens and closes; beten is the wider belly that can mean the womb but also the stomach, the inner self, or the rounded part of an object.
Names the womb precisely as the organ of conception that God opens or closes to grant or deny children.Gen 29:31Gen 30:221Sa 1:5
Frames the firstborn as that which first opens the womb, the one consecrated to the LORD.Exo 13:2Exo 13:12Num 3:12
מֵעֶהmeeh is the inward parts, the bowels and entrails, used both literally and as the seat of deep feeling; beten is the encompassing belly that contains them, leaning more toward the womb and the appetite.
Names the literal inward organs, the bowels and entrails that spill out in a wound or waste away in sickness.2Sa 20:102Ch 21:152Ch 21:19
The seat of deep, churning emotion: where grief, longing, and compassion are felt physically.Isa 16:11Jer 31:20Lam 1:20
Names offspring as one who comes out of a man's own inward parts, his own issue and descendant.Gen 15:42Sa 7:122Sa 16:11
קֶרֶבqerev is the inward part in the sense of the midst or middle of a person or a thing, often where the heart and spirit are; beten is specifically the belly, the rounded lower cavity, used of the womb and the digestive interior.
Most often means the midst or middle of a group, place, or land: in among, in the middle of.Gen 45:6Exo 8:22Exo 33:3
Names the inner organs of a sacrificial animal, the inward parts washed and burned on the altar.Exo 29:13Exo 29:17Lev 1:9
בֶּטֶןBeten is a biblical name written exactly like בֶּ֫טֶן, the common Hebrew word grouped here.
beten in the other biblical languages
κοιλίαGreek“belly/womb/stomach”koilia is the Greek word that does the same double duty: belly or stomach, and womb, covering most of the range of beten in the New Testament.
Names the ordinary gut, the soft middle of the body that a blade can be driven into or that swallowed wealth is vomited back out of.Jdg 3:21Job 20:15
Reaches inward to the hidden self, the place where words build up under pressure and where a person's own spirit searches out what is deepest in them.Job 32:18Pro 20:27
Is used of a man's body as the source of his children, not only a woman's, so a father speaks of offering "the fruit of my body".Mic 6:7Psa 132:11
Stretches to the rounded bulge of a thing that is not a body at all, such as the swelling curve of a temple pillar's crown.1Ki 7:20
Both
Both name the mother's womb, the place a child is carried and formed before birth, and both are used for the moment a pregnancy begins or ends.Luk 1:31Gen 25:24
Both can name the belly as the seat of appetite, so that a person governed by hunger can simply be called a belly.Tit 1:12Pro 13:25
Almost never stands alone for the body part. It lives inside the set phrase "to have in the belly", which simply means to be pregnant, so English Bibles render it "with child" and the belly itself disappears from view.Mat 1:18Rev 12:2
Carries the picture of the pregnant woman as the one most exposed when sudden trouble comes, in warnings about days of distress and labor pains that arrive without notice.Mat 24:191Th 5:3
What scholars say about beten
Standard lexica treat beten as a single polysemous noun rather than several homonyms. HALOT and BDB list one entry whose primary meaning is belly or abdomen, with the womb and the inner person as established extensions, plus a rare concrete use for the rounded bulge of the temple pillars in 1 Kings 7:20. The semantic movement from a body cavity to the seat of inner life is well attested across the Hebrew lexicon (compare the bowels, the kidneys, the heart). The womb sense is especially prominent in birth and election contexts, where being formed or called from the belly expresses God's pre-natal claim.
Sources
HALOT, s.v. בֶּטֶןlexicon
BDB, s.v. בֶּטֶןlexicon
DCH, s.v. בֶּטֶןlexicon
M. Dreytza, "בֶּטֶן," in TDOTtheological-dictionary