ma'on

• Names God's own dwelling place, whether heaven or the temple, the settled residence from which he looks down, is blessed, and speaks.Deu 26:15Psa 26:8Psa 90:1Zec 2:13
• Names the den or lair of wild animals, the haunt of jackals in a ruined city or the lions' cave.Jer 9:11Jer 49:33Jer 51:37Nam 2:11

• Both name God as the safe place a believer runs to in trouble, in nearly identical "be to me a rock" petitions asking him to become a refuge for rescue.Psa 31:2Psa 71:3

• Names a fortified stronghold or defensive fortress, the kind of walled place armies seize and hold. Daniel's wars turn on capturing and losing them, and Egypt has its border fortress.Dan 11:7Dan 11:31Ezk 30:15Isa 17:9
• Means strength or security itself, an abstract quality rather than only a place. God is called someone's very "strength" in trouble, and the same word stands behind the joy of the LORD as a people's strength.2Sa 22:33Jer 16:19Neh 8:10Psa 43:2

• Names God's own dwelling in heaven, the holy height from which he looks down on his people.Deu 26:152Ch 30:27Zec 2:13
• Pictures God himself as the dwelling place, the secure refuge in whom his people make their home through every generation.Psa 90:1Psa 71:3Psa 91:9
• Used for the lair or den of wild animals, a haunt that the other word never names.Jer 9:11Jer 49:33Nam 2:11

• Both name the place where God's presence dwells, the sanctuary loved as the home of his glory.Psa 26:8

• The wilderness Tabernacle itself, the tent-sanctuary Moses built to God's pattern, named again and again through its construction.Exo 25:9Exo 26:1Exo 40:2
• A concrete dwelling-place or encampment of people, the tents and homesteads where a household or nation lives.Num 16:24Num 24:5

• Names the lair or den of wild animals, the haunt where beasts hole up, especially in pictures of a ruined city abandoned to jackals and lions.Nam 2:11Jer 9:11Jer 10:22Jer 49:33Jer 51:37
• Is the safe place someone flees to for shelter, the stronghold and retreat, so that God himself is called the refuge a person runs to and stays in.Psa 71:3Psa 91:9

• Both name God's holy dwelling place, the sacred abode from which he acts and to which his people belong.Deu 26:15Exo 15:13
• Both simply mean the place where someone lives, a habitation, and they stand side by side in one verse for where the LORD dwells.Jer 25:30

• Is the pasture and fold of flocks, the grazing ground and resting place where sheep are led to lie down and feed.Isa 65:10Jer 23:3Jer 33:12Ezk 34:142Sa 7:8
• Is a settled, peaceful homestead, the quiet dwelling of a household at rest and secure, blessed and undisturbed.Job 5:24Pro 3:33Isa 32:18Isa 33:20

• It is a standard word for where God lives, whether heaven or the temple, the place he looks out from and hears prayer from.Deu 26:152Ch 30:27Psa 68:5Zec 2:13
• It can be turned the other way round, so that God himself is the home his people live in rather than the one who lives somewhere.Psa 90:1Psa 91:9
• It names the settled home of a whole community, which is why the prophets picture a nation's ruin as its home being handed over to wild animals, and why losing it is the threat held over a city.Jer 10:22Jer 51:37Zep 3:7

• Both can name where a wild animal holes up, and Nahum uses them a verse apart of the same lions: the lair the pride keeps and the holes it stuffs with what it has killed.Nam 2:12Nam 2:11
• Both can be the place someone gets into to be safe from an enemy, whether men crawling into the ground to escape an invading army or a person calling God the safe place he keeps coming back to.1Sa 14:11Psa 71:3

• Its plain sense is an opening or gap in something solid, the hole itself rather than a place anyone lives: a hole bored through the lid of a chest, a hole broken through a wall, the opening in a door.2Ki 12:9Ezk 8:7Sng 5:4
• Because it means a cavity, it can be used of the body, naming the sockets that hold the eyes as those eyes rot away.Zec 14:12
• When people are in one, it marks them as having no home at all: the destitute driven out of town scratch a living in holes in the ground, which is a picture of disgrace rather than of settled life.Job 30:6

• Most often points upward to God's own dwelling, his holy home in heaven or the temple, the place from which he watches and acts.Deu 26:15Psa 26:82Ch 30:27
• Names the lair or den of a wild animal, the hidden haunt a creature retreats to, an image of ruin when a city is left to beasts.Nam 2:11Jer 9:11Jer 49:33

• Both can mean simply a dwelling place, the settled home where someone lives and abides.Psa 132:13Psa 90:1

• Names the literal seat someone sits on, or the act of sitting, in everyday human settings: a place at a table, a chair, the company one keeps by sitting there.1Sa 20:251Ki 10:5Psa 1:1
• Covers the settled territories and town sites where a people lives, the spread of homes and lands they occupy.Gen 10:30Num 31:10Ezk 6:6

• Used of heaven and of the temple as God's own settled home, the address prayer is sent to and the place his answer comes from.Deu 26:152Ch 30:27Jer 25:30Zec 2:13
• Names the den or lair a wild animal keeps and comes back to, which is why a ruined city is pictured as becoming a home for jackals.Jer 9:11Jer 49:33Jer 51:37Nam 2:11
• Turns God himself into the home his people live in, so the word points to a person to shelter in rather than to a spot on the map.Psa 90:1Psa 91:9Psa 71:3
• Carries the sense of a settled residence that someone belongs to and can therefore lose, which is what makes its loss a threat.1Sa 2:322Ch 36:15Zep 3:7

• Both name a real physical place where a living body settles down for the night, not an abstract idea of shelter, which is why English versions reach for words like "lodging" and "dwelling" for them.Gen 42:27Nam 2:11
• Both show up in pictures of wild, unsettled country, where the place named lies out beyond the towns and offers cover to whoever reaches it.Jer 9:2Jer 49:33

• Names the place where travelers stop for a single night and move on in the morning, so the stay is short by definition and the story travels on with the people.Gen 42:27Gen 43:21Exo 4:24
• Marks a stage along a route, naming where a journey or a march pauses rather than where anyone actually lives.Jos 4:3Jos 4:8Isa 10:292Ki 19:23
• Can be a bare shelter thrown up in open country for people passing through, with no household or property attached to it.Jer 9:2

• This is the word for the place God speaks and acts out of, not just the place he lives. Prayer travels up to it, he looks down out of it to bless, he roars out of it in judgment, and he rouses himself from it to move against the nations.Deu 26:152Ch 30:27Jer 25:30Zec 2:13
• It carries a set phrase in the prophets for a ruined town: the people are swept out and the place becomes a haunt of jackals. The point is not that animals have a home there but that human life is gone.Jer 9:11Jer 10:22Jer 49:33Jer 51:37
• It is the word used when God's dwelling is treated as a household he has a personal stake in: the sacrifices and gifts are tied to it, its fortunes rise and fall with Israel, and he spares it out of pity for his people.1Sa 2:291Sa 2:322Ch 36:15

• Both name the place God settles into and lives, whether that is pictured as heaven overhead or as his address in Zion.Psa 26:8Psa 68:5Psa 76:2
• Both can turn the picture around and call God himself the home his people live in, so that the shelter is a person rather than a building.Psa 90:1Psa 91:9Deu 33:27
• Both name the den of a wild animal, and Nahum sets them side by side in the same lion picture within two lines, so neither word by itself tells you whether the dweller is God or a beast.Nam 2:11Nam 2:12

• This is the working den of a living animal, the shelter it actually goes into and settles down in: beasts head for their lairs when the storm blows, lions crouch there waiting, and they come back to lie down at sunrise.Job 37:8Job 38:40Psa 104:22Amo 3:4
• It can point to a lair as a real spot on the map, the lion country and leopard ridges of the northern mountains that a person is called to come down from.Sng 4:8
• It also names the homes people hold as strongholds, in the mouths of citizens who boast that no attacker can get into their quarters.Jer 21:13

• Names an actual place where someone lives, and most often that someone is God: heaven, from which he looks down and answers prayer, and the temple in Jerusalem, called his "holy habitation."Deu 26:15Psa 26:82Ch 30:27
• Can be turned around so that God himself is the dwelling: not the one who lives in the house but the house his people have lived in across every generation.Psa 90:1Psa 91:9
• Reaches all the way down to the lair of a wild animal, so that a ruined city can be called a haunt of jackals or of lions.Jer 9:11Jer 49:33Nam 2:11
• Turns up again and again across the histories, the psalms, and the prophets, in settings concrete enough to read its sense off the context every time: a temple, a sky, a wrecked town, a people's own homeland.2Ch 36:15Jer 10:22Zep 3:7

—

• Occurs exactly once in the whole Bible, and there it names no place at all: it is the third of three things a husband may not cut back from a wife he bought, listed after her food and her clothing.Exo 21:10
• What it actually names is unsettled. Most read it as her right to intimacy, some as a ration of ointment, and a minority get "her lodging" only by tying the word back to the common word for a dwelling. That tie is a proposal about where the word came from, not something the verse itself says, so the housing sense cannot be assumed.Exo 21:10
• Whatever it names, it works in the law as a measurable good that can be reduced or withheld, and the next verse makes withholding it cost the man every claim on her.Exo 21:10

• This is the standard word for God's own dwelling place, whether heaven above or the sanctuary where his glory rests, a use the word for "nest" never has.Deu 26:15Psa 26:8Psa 68:5Zec 2:13
• It can name God himself as the place his people live in, a shelter you take up residence inside rather than a structure anyone builds.Psa 90:1Psa 71:3Psa 91:9
• Used of animals it means the ground lair of a large predator or scavenger, a lion's den or the haunt jackals take up in a ruined city.Nam 2:11Jer 9:11Jer 51:37

• Both name the settled place a creature keeps and comes back to, so either can stand for home as the place one is safe.Nam 2:11Job 29:18Pro 27:8
• In the prophets both picture a homeland its people counted on and then lost, one left to the jackals and the other abandoned like a bird driven off.Jer 49:33Jer 10:22Isa 16:2Jer 49:16

• This word means a nest a bird builds, a small thing made of gathered material and set in a tree or a cliff, ordinary enough that the law protects one a traveller happens on beside the road.Deu 22:6Deu 32:11Psa 84:3Job 39:27
• Because a nest is normally out of reach, the prophets make it the picture of proud self-security, a household or a nation perched high in the rocks or among the stars and pulled down all the same.Num 24:21Oba 1:4Hab 2:9
• It stretches to a built compartment for housing living creatures, the stalls Noah is told to make inside the ark.Gen 6:14