a stand: the fixed support something is set on, and so the post a person holds
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
This word names whatever keeps something else where it belongs. In the tabernacle it is the stand for the bronze washing basin, and the two are listed together so consistently that they read as one item: "the basin and its stand." In the description of Solomon's temple and in a picture of a crippled ship, it is the pedestal or socket that holds a heavy thing upright.
From there the word moves easily to people. Pharaoh's cupbearer is restored "to his post," the exact slot in the royal household where he belongs, and in Daniel one king after another "arises in his place," stepping into the position a predecessor has vacated. English needs two words here, "stand" and "post," but Hebrew needs only one, because both are the same idea: the spot where a thing, or a person, properly stands.
Three neighboring words show how narrow this one is:
The socket (אֶדֶן) sunk into the ground held a tabernacle frame from below, rather than raising it up.
The wheeled carriers (מְכוֹנָה) built for the temple basins were substantial furniture in their own right.
A servant's station (מַעֲמָד) is only ever a person's place, never an object's.
Nuances
1athe stand that holds the bronze washing basin in the tabernacle courtyard
Names the stand a vessel is set on, and is bound so tightly to the bronze washing basin that the two are named as one item every time the sanctuary furnishings are listed, made together, moved together, and anointed together.Exo 30:18Exo 35:16Lev 8:11
Comes as one support tied to one particular thing by a possessive, "its stand," rather than as a numbered set, so it is never counted or weighed out.Exo 40:11Exo 39:39
Reaches past furniture to people, naming the post a servant holds and can be put back into, and the position a rival rises into when the ruler before him is gone.Gen 40:13Gen 41:13Dan 11:7Dan 11:21
Turns up in an everyday setting away from the sanctuary, the step that steadies a ship's mast, and there the whole point is that the support is not holding.Isa 33:23
Both
Each names the seat underneath something else, never the thing that stands up, so each is mentioned in the same breath as what it carries: the sockets with the wall frames, the stand with the basin.Exo 26:19Exo 30:18
Both were cast in bronze for the sanctuary courtyard out of the same donated metal.Exo 38:30Exo 38:8
Both are itemized in the same handover of finished work brought to Moses, one listed just after the other.Exo 39:40Exo 39:39
Both can carry the picture of what keeps a heavy upright from shifting, and both are used that way outside a building: the footings the earth is sunk into, and the step a mast is held firm in.Job 38:6Isa 33:23
Names the footing an upright is set down into, not just a surface under it: two of them sit beneath each wall frame of the tent, one for each of the frame's projecting ends.Exo 26:19
Comes in counted, weighed, interchangeable sets, cast by the dozen or the hundred: forty of them in silver under twenty frames, five in bronze under the screen posts, a hundred talents of silver poured into a hundred of them at a talent apiece.Exo 26:19Exo 26:37Exo 38:27
Belongs to the structure itself rather than to any vessel standing in it: the inventories of what the Levites carried list these footings alongside the frames, bars and posts they hold, and Moses sets them down first when he raises the tent.Num 4:31Num 4:32Exo 40:18
Its poetic uses stretch the picture to larger physical things, the footings the earth itself was sunk into and a figure whose legs are marble columns set on gold, and never to a person's standing or role.Job 38:6Sng 5:15
מְכוֹנָהthe elaborate wheeled carrier built for the temple basins, a large piece of furniture in its own right rather than a plain support
Reaches past furniture to a person's position, the post someone holds and can be put back into. Pharaoh restores his cup-bearer to his place, and in Daniel a ruler rises or is honored in the place he has taken over. The other word is never used of a person's standing.Gen 40:13Gen 41:13Dan 11:7Dan 11:20Dan 11:21Dan 11:38
Can hold up an ordinary, everyday object with nothing sacred about it: Isaiah pictures a wrecked ship whose crew cannot keep the footing of the mast firm.Isa 33:23
Is treated as part of the holy object it carries, anointed and set apart together with the basin in the same breath, so the support shares the basin's consecration.Exo 40:11Lev 8:11Exo 31:9
Both
Both name the bronze support that a priests' washing basin is set on, so either word can be the thing under the laver.Exo 30:181Ki 7:38
Both are counted as items in their own right in the lists of the sanctuary's bronze equipment, named right alongside the basin or the pillars.Exo 39:39Exo 30:282Ki 25:13Jer 52:20
Names a large piece of built equipment rather than a plain block: each one was cast bronze, roughly six feet square, running on four wheels with axles, its side panels carved with lions, oxen, and angel-like figures. Nothing of the sort is ever said about the other word, which is left undescribed.1Ki 7:271Ki 7:281Ki 7:30
Comes as a matching set counted as a group, ten of them made together, one basin for each, and tallied in the temple inventory. The other word is always a single base under a single object.1Ki 7:371Ki 7:432Ch 4:14
Has a story that the histories follow to its end: King Ahaz cut the side panels off them, and the Babylonians smashed them and hauled the bronze away. The other word never appears in such an account.2Ki 16:172Ki 25:13Jer 52:17
Can mean the settled spot on the ground where something belongs, not a crafted stand at all: the returning exiles rebuilt the altar on its old footing.Ezr 3:3
מַעֲמָדthe station or attendance a person is assigned in service, always of people and never of a physical support for an object
Names a physical, manufactured support: the bronze stand the washing basin sits on in the tabernacle courtyard, listed among the objects that were built, moved, and anointed.Exo 30:18Exo 40:11Lev 8:11
Used of a pedestal or socket inside built work, where the point is what holds a heavy thing upright: the support above the crosspieces of the temple carts, a rounded pedestal shape, and the socket that fails to keep a ship's mast firm.1Ki 7:291Ki 7:31Isa 33:23
When it means a position rather than an object, it is a single slot that passes from one holder to the next: in Daniel each new ruler rises up in the place of the king before him, and the same word marks the place a god is honored in.Dan 11:7Dan 11:20Dan 11:21Dan 11:38
Both
Both can name the post a person holds in the service of a superior, and both turn up exactly where that post is handed back or taken away: the cupbearer is set back on his, while the palace steward is pulled down from his.Gen 40:13Gen 41:13Isa 22:19
Neither word names the work itself; each names the place from which the work is done, which is why one can be rendered "office" and the other "station" while the duty is spoken of by a separate word alongside it.Dan 11:212Ch 35:15
Names the standing attendance of a whole staff of servants waiting on their master, which is why it belongs to the list of splendors the queen of Sheba took in when she came to Solomon.1Ki 10:52Ch 9:4
Names an assigned station of duty in the house of God that a person is stationed at and is not to leave: the Levites posted alongside the sons of Aaron, and the singers held at their places by the king's command while the gatekeepers stayed at each gate.1Ch 23:282Ch 35:15
Stands beside a second word for a fixed post in the same line when a man is being removed from office, so the two together stress that what he loses is where he was set to stand.Isa 22:19
ken in the other biblical languages
τόποςGreek“place”the general Greek word for a place, which likewise stretches from a physical spot to the position a person holds
Names a solid, manufactured support that something rests on, above all the fitted stand made for the bronze washing basin in the tabernacle courtyard, and it is listed among the furnishings alongside the basin it carries.Exo 30:18Exo 38:8Exo 40:11Lev 8:11
Names the pedestal or fitting that holds a heavy object upright, whether the base worked into Solomon's temple metalwork or the socket that should have held a ship's mast steady.1Ki 7:291Ki 7:31Isa 33:23
Because it is the support a thing stands on, it carries the settled, immovable footing of a post rather than the neutral idea of somewhere to be, and Daniel uses it for the royal standing a ruler occupies and rivals scheme to seize.Dan 11:7Dan 11:21Dan 11:38
Both
Both name the post a person holds rather than a patch of ground: the standing that can be stripped away, given back, or handed on to a successor. Pharaoh restores his cupbearer to the post he had lost, and the apostles fill the post in their ministry that Judas left empty.Gen 40:13Gen 41:13Dan 11:20Act 1:25
Names a geographical spot, often one known by name, which the Hebrew word never does: the hill called Golgotha, the paved court where Pilate sat, the field of battle called Armageddon.Mat 27:33Jhn 19:13Rev 16:16
Names empty, unsettled country where a person withdraws to be alone, so it can carry the sense English gets from "a lonely spot" or "the middle of nowhere".Mat 14:13Mrk 1:35Luk 4:42
Stands on its own for the temple and its precincts, the site set apart for God, where a Greek writer can simply say "the place" and be understood.Mat 24:15Jhn 11:48Act 21:28
Means room or available space, the amount of space left for one more person or thing.Luk 2:7Luk 14:22
Stretches to a chance or an opening for something to happen, with no physical space in view at all: room left for God to act, an opening handed to the devil, no opening left for a change of mind.Rom 12:19Eph 4:27Heb 12:17
Marks the exact spot where a particular person or thing was set down or is seated, such as the seat a guest takes at a meal or the shelf where the body of Jesus had lain.Luk 14:9Luk 14:10Mrk 16:6
Points to the spot in a written scroll where a passage stands, a use the Hebrew word never has.Luk 4:17
βάσιςGreek“foot”the Greek noun for what something stands on; in the New Testament it turns up only of a man's feet, not of furniture
names a crafted support built to hold an object up: the bronze stand that carries the washing basin in the tabernacle courtyard, the base of a heavy temple fitting, and the socket that keeps a ship's mast steady. It is equipment a workman makes, never part of a body.Exo 30:18Exo 38:81Ki 7:31Isa 33:23
names the post a person holds in someone else's service, so a disgraced official can be put back on his former footing and a rival can step into the place another once held. The support becomes a picture of where a person stands in a court or a kingdom.Gen 40:13Gen 41:13Dan 11:21Dan 11:7
Both
both name the base that bears a weight, the part underneath that lets a thing stand firm. The Hebrew word is used of the bronze stand set under the basin, the Greek word of the feet set under a man, and in each case the sense is the support beneath.Exo 30:18Act 3:7
names the feet a living person stands on. When the lame man at the temple gate is pulled to his feet, it is his own feet and ankles that are said to become firm, and the word is used of nothing else in the New Testament.Act 3:7
What scholars say about ken
The lexica treat כֵּן as a single noun related to the root כון, glossed "base, pedestal" and, by extension, "place, office" (BDB s.v. כֵּן; HALOT s.v. כֵּן III; DCH). Eight of the seventeen occurrences belong to the priestly inventory of the bronze basin and its stand (Exodus 30:18 through Leviticus 8:11), where the stand is consistently paired with the basin as a single listed item and is nowhere described. The architectural uses are textually harder: in 1 Kings 7:29 the consonants are identical to the adverb כֵּן, and versions divide between a molding or base above the frames and an adverbial "likewise", while 1 Kings 7:31 uses מַעֲשֵׂה־כֵן of the shape of the opening and Isaiah 33:23 applies the word to a mast socket within a nautical image. The transferred sense "position, office" covers Genesis 40:13 and 41:13, where the phrase is joined to the verb of restoration, and the Daniel succession formula עַל־כַּנּוֹ in 11:20, 21 (with 11:7 lacking the preposition the parallels carry, a difference commentators on Daniel regularly note). Daniel 11:38 is the one contested occurrence: the same phrase is read either as substitution, the god of fortresses honored in place of the ancestral gods, or with reference to a cult pedestal.
Sources
BDB, s.v. כֵּןlexicon
HALOT, s.v. כֵּן IIIlexicon
DCH, s.v. כֵּןlexicon
John J. Collins, Daniel (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993)commentary
James A. Montgomery, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Daniel (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1927)commentary
William H. C. Propp, Exodus 19-40 (Anchor Bible 2A; New York: Doubleday, 2006)commentary
Martin J. Mulder, 1 Kings, Volume 1: 1 Kings 1-11 (Historical Commentary on the Old Testament; Leuven: Peeters, 1998)commentary