merḥav

• Names a wide-open, roomy PLACE rather than a measurement: somewhere with room to move, the opposite of being hemmed in.2Sa 22:20Psa 18:19
• Used figuratively for rescue and freedom: being brought into a broad place pictures relief from distress and deliverance from a tight, trapped situation.Psa 31:8Psa 118:5
• Can describe open country as a setting, with the spaciousness itself the point, as of cattle turned loose in a wide field.Hos 4:16

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• Names a measured WIDTH, the side-to-side dimension of an object given alongside its length and height, usually stated in cubits.Gen 6:15Exo 25:10
• Is the standard term for breadth in building and furnishing accounts: the tabernacle, the temple, and their fittings are specified by it.Exo 26:21Ki 6:2Ezk 40:5

• This word names openness itself rather than any particular spot on a map, and the Psalms use it for rescue: someone is trapped in a tight place, and God brings them out where there is finally room to move and breathe.2Sa 22:20Psa 18:19Psa 31:8Psa 118:5
• It can also mean sheer open country that nobody has built or fenced, such as the wide stretches of the earth that an invading army sweeps across, or open ground where a flock can graze.Hab 1:6Hos 4:16

• Both words rest on the same picture of width: a space with room in it, as opposed to being hemmed in or squeezed into a corner. That is why English versions reach for similar wording, one rendered "a broad place" and the other "open square".Psa 118:5Hos 4:16Zec 8:5Neh 8:1

• This word is a named place in a town: the wide clearing just inside the gate, where the community gathered for public business such as assemblies, national readings, and organizing work on the temple.Ezr 10:9Neh 8:12Ch 29:4
• It is where ordinary daily life happens in public view: travelers look there for somewhere to spend the night, old people sit out, and children play.Gen 19:2Jdg 19:15Zec 8:4Zec 8:5
• Because it is the most public part of a town, it is also where its grief and disgrace are on display: the prophets picture wailing in these squares and starving children collapsing in them.Amo 5:16Lam 2:11Lam 2:12

• It names real ground that people and animals move across, land you can be turned out into and travel over. Israel is grazed "like a lamb in a broad place", an open field with no fold around it, and a brutal army marches through the wide stretches of the earth to seize homes that are not its own.Hos 4:16Hab 1:6
• Room can be bad news with this word. Turning a stubborn animal loose in the open is a rebuke rather than a kindness, since nothing is left to fence or guard it, and the earth's wide stretches are exactly what let a violent invader roam and take what it wants.Hos 4:16Hab 1:6
• This is the word Israel's songs of thanksgiving settle on for what rescue feels like, and a rescued person uses it of himself: God brought me out into the open, God stood my feet in the open, God answered me and gave me room.2Sa 22:20Psa 18:19Psa 31:8

• Both name the plain opposite of being hemmed in: a person is moved out of a tight, pressing spot into somewhere with room to breathe. One psalm calls out from the narrow place and is answered in the wide one, and Job is described as being drawn from the mouth of distress into open space.Psa 118:52Sa 22:20Job 36:16
• Both pair with "earth" in almost the same phrase to name the world's wide reaches, so the two words overlap directly at their broadest use.Hab 1:6Job 38:18

• It can name sheer extent, how far something reaches, held up as a size beyond anyone's grasp. God asks Job whether he has taken in the wide reaches of the earth, which is a question about scale rather than an invitation to go anywhere.Job 38:18
• Where it does describe relief, the open room is spoken of from the outside, as something held out to a sufferer rather than something he reports having received: Elihu tells Job that God was drawing him out of the jaws of distress into open room with nothing pressing down on it.Job 36:16