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penimah

פְּנִימָה

HebrewH6441within, inside, ...

Appears 13 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Lev 10:181Ki 6:181Ki 6:191Ki 6:211Ki 6:302Ki 7:112Ch 3:42Ch 29:162Ch 29:18Psa 45:13(14)Ezk 40:16 (2×)
Root family
Word studypeh-NEE-mahadverb

What penimah means

inside: on the interior of a building, or going in there, as opposed to outside

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

This is a small word with one job: it tells you that something is on the inside. It does not name a room, and it does not label one of two spaces as the inner one; the word for that is פְּנִימִי, "inner." It simply marks the inside, and it is regularly set against the word for what is outer (חִיצוֹן) in the same breath. Solomon overlaid the floor of the temple with gold "inside and outside" (1 Kings 6:30).

It is built from the ordinary word for "face" or "front" with an ending that means "toward," so it can say where something sits or which way it is going, and the two shade into each other. Most of its uses describe a building, and above all the temple: cedar lining the walls inside, gold laid over the interior, windows set on the inner side of a gateway, the inner room made ready for the ark. Where the sentence has a verb of movement, the same word carries a person or an offering across the threshold and further in.

That threshold is often the whole point. Blood that should have been brought inside the holy place was not (Leviticus 10:18); priests go inside the temple to carry out what does not belong there (2 Chronicles 29:16); a guide walks further in to measure the innermost room (Ezekiel 41:3). Inside, here, is the space not everyone may enter.

One thing this word almost never does is turn inward toward a person. The Greek words for "inside" that stand in for it (ἔσω and ἔσωθεν) readily describe the hidden self, the heart underneath the surface. The Hebrew word stays with rooms and thresholds, and even in Psalm 45:13, where the king's daughter is "all glorious within," the likeliest picture is a woman indoors in the palace rather than a comment on her character.

Nuances

1aon the inside of a building: its interior surfaces and inner rooms, as opposed to its outside
1Ki 6:181Ki 6:191Ki 6:211Ki 6:302Ch 3:4Ezk 40:16 (2×)
1bgoing in: crossing into the inner part of a building, or bringing something in there
Lev 10:182Ch 29:162Ch 29:18Ezk 41:3
1cindoors: inside a house or palace, away from what is public and outside
2Ki 7:11Psa 45:13(14)

What scholars say about penimah

The standard lexica (BDB, HALOT, DCH) treat פְּנִימָה as a single adverbial lexeme, the locative form of פָּנִים with the directional ending, glossed "to the inside, within." They record it both with verbs of motion (Lev 10:18; 2 Chr 29:16, 18; Ezek 41:3) and in stative descriptions of a structure (1 Kgs 6:18, 19, 21, 30; 2 Chr 3:4; Ezek 40:16), and note that the prefixed forms לִפְנִימָה and מִפְּנִימָה carry no appreciable change of sense. The distribution is heavily architectural: eight of the twelve verses belong to the temple accounts of Kings, Chronicles, and Ezekiel, with 2 Kgs 7:11 the one clearly domestic use. Psalm 45:13 (Hebrew 45:14) is the only occurrence outside a building description or an entry into one, and commentators generally locate the princess in the palace interior rather than reading a statement about inward character; the older devotional reading of the verse has no lexical support. The word is regularly paired with its antonyms חִיצוֹן and חוּצָה, which is the clearest evidence for its spatial sense.

Sources

  • HALOT, s.v. פְּנִימָהlexicon
  • BDB, s.v. פָּנִים (פְּנִימָה)lexicon
  • DCH, s.v. פְּנִימָהlexicon
  • Peter C. Craigie, Psalms 1-50, Word Biblical Commentary, on Psalm 45commentary
  • Mordechai Cogan, I Kings, Anchor Yale Bible, on 1 Kings 6commentary

All attested forms of פְּנִימָה

adv

פְּנִימָה

Lev 10:18, 1Ki 6:18, 1Ki 6:19, 1Ki 6:21, 1Ki 6:30, 2Ki 7:11, 2Ch 3:4, 2Ch 29:16