the spot where a person stands: the place someone occupies, or the post someone has been given.
This is a rare word, used only nine times, and every one of them attaches it to a person: his standing place, their standing place, my standing place. It is a noun built from the ordinary verb for standing (עָמַד), but where the verb names the act, the noun names the ground under a person's feet. No single English word covers all nine uses, which is why versions swing between "in their place," "at their post," and "where I stood."
Six of the nine come out of one setting: a reforming king, a gathered crowd, and a written law being put back into force.
- Priests and Levites take up their posts at Hezekiah's Passover and again at Josiah's.
- The people stay standing in their own places while the law is read aloud and explained to them.
- Nehemiah puts the Levites back where they belong after their support had been cut off.
In each case the word quietly insists that everyone is where they are supposed to be, and that order in worship means each person keeping the spot given to them.
The three uses in Daniel are more personal. Twice Daniel is flattened by a vision and has to be helped up, and the wording is literally "stand on your standing place," which English fairly turns into "stand up" or "stand upright." The picture is not of going somewhere new but of being set back on the ground he was already on.
One verse is worth watching. When Josiah makes his covenant he does it at his standing place (2 Chronicles 34:31), while the parallel account in 2 Kings 23:3 says he stood by the pillar (עַמּוּד). Some read the Chronicles wording as a raised royal platform in the temple court, others as simply the king's usual position, and English versions divide accordingly.