a curved, convex, or raised surface: the rounded outer side of a thing, or a raised structure on the ground.
At its heart this word points to a surface that curves, bulges, or rises, and that one idea fans out across very different objects.
- On a body it is the back, the rounded ridge along a person or animal.
- On a wheel it is the rim, the curved band running around the outside.
- On a shield it is the boss, the thick rounded face turned toward the enemy.
- Over the eye it is the eyebrow, the arch of hair above the socket.
- On the ground it is a raised mound or platform, including the one Ezekiel condemns as a stage for false worship.
Because the senses are so scattered, scholars are divided over whether this is truly one word stretched across many things or several unrelated words that happen to be spelled the same. Either way a reader meets the same short spelling and has to let the surrounding verse decide which object is meant. For the raised worship mound the word sits close to the more familiar term for a pagan high place (בָּמָה), and for the human back it overlaps with another common word for the back and body (גֵּו).
Two places are especially slippery. In Ezekiel 16 the raised structure has been rendered everything from "eminent place" to "vaulted chamber," and in the altar plan of Ezekiel 43 the word names some part of the altar, whether its ledge, back, or base, that no one can pin down with confidence.