a bordering frame: the rim, molding, or set-in side panels running around a piece of furniture or equipment
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
This is the more common use, and it always names a made object: the frame that runs around the edge of something.
In the tabernacle it is the raised rim, a handbreadth wide, around the golden table for the bread of the Presence. There it works alongside a separate strip of gold molding (זֵר), the decorative edging that caps the rim itself.
In Solomon's temple the same word shifts to the ten bronze water stands, where it names the framed side panels set between the crossbars and worked with carved lions, oxen, and cherubim. It is these panels that King Ahaz later stripped off the stands. So the one word covers both a plain edge and an ornate paneled border, which is why English translations move between "border," "rim," "frame," and "panels" depending on the object in view.
Nuances
1athe rim or molding running around the edge of the golden table
TranslatabilityDirect
Exo 25:25 (2×)Exo 25:27Exo 37:12 (2×)Exo 37:14
1bthe framed side panels of the bronze water stands in the temple
a fortified enclosed place: a stronghold or fastness people are shut inside and forced to come out of
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
In three poetic passages the word turns from a made frame to a place that shuts people in. Beaten enemies "come trembling out of" these places, driven from where they had holed up.
The picture is not so much a proud fortress as a shut-in refuge, fitting the word's root idea of closing or shutting. It stands close to ordinary words for a fortress or refuge, such as מְצוּדָה and מָעוֹז, but it keeps the flavor of confinement: a hiding place people are flushed out of rather than a stronghold they hold.
keeps the flavor of being shut or closed in, a place of confinement people are forced out of2Sa 22:46
Both
both name a fortified place people hole up inMic 7:17
Only stronghold
English "stronghold" stresses military strength and defense, playing down the shut-in, hiding-hole sense
“fastness”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How misgeret differs from similar Hebrew words
זֵרthe decorative strip of gold molding that caps the table's edge; this word is the border-frame that molding runs along, and the two are named side by side in Exodus.
A structural frame or panel that belongs to the object's construction rather than its ornament: the handbreadth-wide rim-frame of the table and the recessed panels set into the bronze water-stands.1Ki 7:282Ki 16:17
Stretches to a figurative sense of enclosed strongholds, the "close places" out of which cowering enemies come trembling.2Sa 22:46Psa 18:45Mic 7:17
Both
Both name an edging around the same object, the table of the bread of the Presence, and stand side by side in its description: one word for its border, the other for the gold molding that trims that border.Exo 25:25Exo 37:12
Always a rim of gold and purely ornamental: the finishing molding, the "crown," that runs around the top edge of the sacred furniture.Exo 25:11Exo 30:3Exo 37:2
Confined to the three gold vessels of the tabernacle, the ark, the table, and the incense altar, and only ever the crowning edge that trims them.Exo 37:2Exo 37:26
מְצוּדָהa mountain fortress or fortified refuge, named for being hard to reach; this word instead pictures a place that shuts people in, which they are driven out of.
Most often names a piece of built-in trim: the raised rim or border framing the showbread table, and the recessed panels set into the frames of the bronze water-stands in the temple.Exo 25:251Ki 7:282Ki 16:17
When it does mean a stronghold, it pictures a shut-in hole or fastness that frightened enemies cower inside and must be flushed out of, like snakes coming trembling out of their dens.2Sa 22:46Mic 7:17
Both
Both can denote a fortified, hard-to-reach place of refuge where one holds out against attack.2Sa 22:462Sa 23:14
Names a real, held military fortress: the elevated mountain stronghold David seizes and occupies, remembered as the stronghold of Zion.1Sa 22:42Sa 5:71Ch 11:16
Becomes a favorite metaphor for God as the worshipper's personal fortress and refuge, a step H4526 never takes.Psa 18:2Psa 71:3Psa 144:2
Also carries a wholly separate sense, a hunter's net or snare thrown over prey, so that God can be pictured spreading a net to trap the guilty.Psa 66:11Ezk 12:13
מָעוֹזa source of protective strength, a refuge one runs to for safety; this word is the shut-in stronghold one is flushed out of, not a refuge sought.
Names a physical rim, border, or panel of a crafted object: the raised molding around the tabernacle table, and the framed borders set between the ledges of the temple bases. This is the craftsman's sense, with no idea of safety at all.Exo 25:25Exo 37:121Ki 7:282Ki 16:17
Both
Both can name a fortified stronghold: an enclosed, shut-in place of defense. The one word pictures the closed fastness that foes hide in and are flushed out of; the other names the fortified height a fortress stands on.2Sa 22:46Mic 7:17Jdg 6:26Nam 1:7
Names strength or refuge in the abstract, and above all a person as one's protection: God himself is called the safety and stronghold of a life, and human strength is what one leans on. This word carries the personal sense of security that the other never does.Psa 27:1Psa 31:2Isa 25:4
misgeret in the other biblical languages
ὀχύρωμαGreek“stronghold”the Greek word for a fortress or stronghold, used in the New Testament of strongholds torn down; it overlaps this word's second sense of a fortified enclosed place.
In its stronghold sense it names a concrete enclosed fastness that a beaten people are shut up inside, so that they creep out of it trembling before a conquering God.2Sa 22:46Psa 18:45Mic 7:17
Both
Both name a stronghold, a fortified enclosure people rely on for defense: the Hebrew word carries this in the Old Testament poetry of enemies driven from their fastnesses, and the Greek word takes it up in the New Testament as the fortress that falls to God's power.2Sa 22:46Mic 7:172Co 10:4
In the New Testament it is used figuratively for entrenched patterns of thought and argument that set themselves against God, fortresses of the mind that are torn down by spiritual weapons rather than stormed by an army.2Co 10:4
What scholars say about misgeret
מִסְגֶּרֶת is a feminine noun formed with a mem-preformative from the root סגר "to shut, close," so its base idea is "that which encloses." HALOT, BDB, and DCH treat it under one entry with two senses: (1) the border, rim, or frame of an object, used of the molding around the table for the bread of the Presence (Exodus 25:25-27; 37:12-14) and of the paneled sides of the ten bronze lavers' stands in Solomon's temple (1 Kings 7:28-36; 2 Kings 16:17); and (2) a fastness or bulwark, a fortified enclosed place, in the parallel passages 2 Samuel 22:46 = Psalm 18:46 (English 18:45) and Micah 7:17, where the defeated "come trembling out of" it. The second sense is a natural extension of the enclosing idea rather than a separate homonym, and the lexicons register no dispute about either meaning.