a den: the sheltered retreat a creature lives in, and by extension the home of God or of people
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong
Most of the time this word points at the places wild animals sleep. The picture is not a house but a hidden retreat, somewhere a creature disappears into and is safe:
lions crouching in their dens through the daylight hours
a young lion roaring out of his lair only once he has caught something
wild beasts heading indoors when the storm sweeps in
a lion's cave packed with the meat he has dragged home
The same word is then lifted to describe people and God. Jeremiah quotes the people of Jerusalem boasting about the homes nobody could break into. Psalm 76 puts God's own home in Zion. And in Moses' last blessing the eternal God himself is called the place his people live.
The closely related word for a dwelling (מָעוֹן) covers the same ground from the other end. That one is used mostly of where God lives and only sometimes of animal lairs; this one is used mostly of animal lairs and only sometimes of where God lives. Between them Hebrew makes the same startling move twice: the word for a hole in the rock where a beast sleeps is also a word for where God is at home.
Nuances
1aa den or lair: the hidden retreat a wild animal sleeps in and returns to
The Hebrew word names a place you live in day after day, not only a place you run to in an emergency.Psa 104:22Psa 76:2
Both
Both name a safe place, and in Moses' blessing that safe place is God himself.Deu 33:27
Only refuge
"Refuge" in English suggests a crisis shelter you flee to and later leave, which drops the idea of a settled home.
“dwelling place”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“lair”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How me'onah differs from similar Hebrew words
מָעוֹןThe general word for a dwelling place, used most often of God's home in heaven or the temple and only sometimes of animal lairs; this word runs the other way, naming animal lairs most of the time.
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
Both
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 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
חֹרA hole in the ground or in a rock, named by its shape rather than by who lives there; Nahum sets it beside this word, which names the same cave as a creature's home.
Names a place by the creature that keeps it, the lair an animal comes home to, lies down in, and stays in through the daylight.Job 37:8Job 38:40Psa 104:22Amo 3:4Sng 4:8
Can be said of God, both as the shelter his people live in and as his own home on Zion, which is why English Bibles often render it "dwelling place" rather than anything like a hole.Deu 33:27Psa 76:2
Carries a feeling of settled security, so a confident city can boast that no attacker will ever get inside its dwellings.Jer 21:13
Both
Both can name the rocky retreat of a lion, and Nahum sets them side by side in one picture of a lion packing his lairs with the prey he has dragged home.Nam 2:12
Names an opening pierced through something solid, whether or not anything lives in it: a hole bored in the lid of a collection box, the hole in a door that a hand reaches through, a gap broken open in a wall.2Ki 12:9Sng 5:4Ezk 8:7
Can be a hollow in the body itself, as in the picture of eyes rotting away in their sockets.Zec 14:12
Names the bare ground that people crawl into when they are hiding or destitute, with no suggestion that the place is anyone's proper home.1Sa 14:11Job 30:6
סֹךְThe screen or cover a lion crouches behind before it springs, and in one psalm God's own cover in Salem; it names what a creature hides behind, where this word names the home it lives in and comes back to.
Names the place a creature actually lives in and comes back to, not just a spot it ducks into. Animals stay put in their dens while the storm passes (Job 37:8), lions come home and settle down when the sun rises (Psalm 104:22), and a lion stocks his dens with what he has killed (Nahum 2:12).Job 37:8Psa 104:22Nam 2:12
Reaches beyond animals to ordinary human homes: the people of Jerusalem boast that nobody can get in among their dwellings.Jer 21:13
Often speaks of dens in the plural, a whole stretch of country a creature holds rather than one hiding spot: the lions' dens across the mountains of Lebanon (Song of Songs 4:8), and the several dens a lion fills with prey (Nahum 2:12).Sng 4:8Nam 2:12
God himself can be called the dwelling, so that the people live in him rather than in a place he owns.Deu 33:27
Both
Both name the den of a lion, the place the roar comes out of and the place the beast leaves when he goes hunting.Amo 3:4Jer 25:38
Both are used of God's own place in Jerusalem, and they stand side by side in a single line of Psalm 76:2, one word for his cover in Salem and the other for his dwelling in Zion.Psa 76:2
Both are lifted out of the world of animal dens and applied to the safety God gives his people.Deu 33:27Psa 27:5
Carries the idea of a screen you crouch behind out of sight and then break out from. A violent man lies in wait in his cover like a lion (Psalm 10:9), and God pictured as a lion leaves his cover to go out against the land (Jeremiah 25:38).Psa 10:9Jer 25:38
Somebody else can be tucked inside it for safety: God hides a person away in his cover when trouble comes. It is a covering thrown over another, not simply the owner's own address.Psa 27:5
מִשְׁכָּןThe dwelling as a tent, above all the tabernacle Israel carried through the wilderness; a built structure, where this word is a retreat someone withdraws into.
It is the ordinary word for a wild animal's den, the hole in the rocks a lion retreats into when the sun comes up, crouches in to wait for prey, and roars out of once it has caught something.Job 38:40Psa 104:22Amo 3:4Nam 2:12Sng 4:8Job 37:8
It gets turned around so that God is the home rather than the one who lives in a home. Moses blesses Israel by calling the God of old the place his people live.Deu 33:27
Both
Both name the place God himself lives among his people, and both do it with Zion in view, whether as the spot he has chosen or as what enemies burned.Psa 76:2Psa 74:7Psa 84:1Psa 132:5
Both name the settled homes people count on for safety, and both turn up right where that safety gives way, in a city boasting no one can reach it and in towns an invader takes for himself.Jer 21:13Isa 32:18Jer 51:30Hab 1:6
It is the standing name for the tent sanctuary as a thing you can actually build and handle: ten woven curtains, upright frames of acacia wood, raised on a set day and taken down again every time Israel moves camp.Exo 26:1Exo 26:15Exo 40:17Num 1:51
It reaches to a resting place meant to last past a lifetime: the tomb a proud official cuts for himself high in the rock, and the home people expect will still carry their name generations after they are dead.Isa 22:16Psa 49:11
It works at the scale of a whole people, naming the spread of tents that a stranger looks down on from a hilltop and calls lovely, or the ring of tents God rains food around.Num 24:5Psa 78:28
me'onah in the other biblical languages
φωλεόςGreek“den”The Greek word for an animal's hole or den, as in the saying that foxes have holes while the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head; it matches the most common use of this word.
It carries menace. The lairs it names are a lion's, the place a hungry roar comes out of, the mountain haunt a bride is called away from, and the larder a lion stuffs with the animals it has killed.Amo 3:4Sng 4:8Nam 2:12
It is the place animals retreat to when the weather turns, the shelter they keep to while the storm blows and the place they settle back into once the sun is up.Job 37:8Psa 104:22
It stretches to human strongholds. The people of Jerusalem use it to boast that no attacker can get into the places where they live.Jer 21:13
It can be said of God, both as the shelter his people live inside and as the home he keeps for himself in Zion, which is the furthest reach this word has and the reason "habitation" is a safer English word for it than "den".Deu 33:27Psa 76:2
Both
Both name the hidden lair a wild animal owns and returns to: the crouching place lions lie down in when the day breaks, and the hole a fox has waiting for it.Job 38:40Psa 104:22Mat 8:20
It belongs to a small, ordinary animal. Both times it is the fox's hole, set beside the roosting places of the birds, so it pictures the modest shelter any common creature can count on rather than a predator's stronghold.Mat 8:20Luk 9:58
It never widens beyond the animal. In both of its appearances it stays with the fox and is used to measure what Jesus does not have, a place of his own to lie down in, so it is never a person's house and never a place where God lives.Mat 8:20Luk 9:58
κατοικητήριονGreek“dwelling place”The Greek word for a dwelling place, used of the home God builds out of his people and of a ruined city as a haunt for demons; it matches this word's use for the place God or people live.
The Hebrew word is first of all the word for an animal's den, the hidden retreat a creature disappears into and comes back to. Lions crouch in it through the day, roar out of it when they have caught something, and drag their prey home to it.Job 38:40Psa 104:22Amo 3:4Nam 2:12Job 37:8
It can make God himself the dwelling, so that the shelter is a person and not a structure. Moses calls the eternal God the place his people live in. The Greek word runs the opposite direction: God is the one who moves in, never the home itself.Deu 33:27
It covers ordinary human houses, the everyday homes people count on to keep enemies out. Jerusalem boasts that nobody could ever get into hers.Jer 21:13
Both
Both name a settled home known by whoever lives in it, and both are used of God making his home among his people: the psalm puts God's home in Zion, and the letter says the believers are becoming that home.Psa 76:2Eph 2:22
Both can picture a doomed city as the haunt of whatever now lives there. Nineveh is the lion's cave stuffed with what it has torn, and fallen Babylon is the address demons have moved into.Nam 2:12Rev 18:2
The Greek word can name a dwelling made of people rather than a place on a map. Paul says the believers themselves are being built together into the house God lives in, so the building material is a community, not stone or rock.Eph 2:22
It identifies a place by the sort of spirit that has moved into it. When Babylon falls, what marks the ruin is that demons have taken up residence there, and the Hebrew word is never used of spirits at all.Rev 18:2
What scholars say about me'onah
BDB, HALOT, and DCH treat מְעֹנָה as the feminine counterpart of מָעוֹן, with essentially the same semantic range (dwelling, habitation, lair) but a distribution weighted toward the lairs of wild animals: six of its nine occurrences are animal dens, against a preponderance of divine-dwelling uses for מָעוֹן. The two nouns stand together in Nahum 2:11 to 12 (English numbering), where מָעוֹן names the lions' haunt and מְעֹנָה their dens, which is generally taken as poetic variation rather than a lexical distinction. The form מְעֹנָה in Deuteronomy 33:27 is anomalous: BDB and the BHS apparatus note the possibility of reading the simple noun מָעוֹן, while others explain the final ה as an archaic ending or a locative, and Driver's ICC commentary surveys the older proposals. Nothing exegetical turns on the choice, since every reading predicates a dwelling or refuge of the God of old.
Sources
BDB, s.v. מְעֹנָהlexicon
HALOT, s.v. מְעֹנָהlexicon
DCH, s.v. מְעֹנָהlexicon
NIDOTTE, s.v. מָעוֹןdictionary
S. R. Driver, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Deuteronomy (ICC), on 33:27commentary