a small guard chamber: a recessed cell along a gateway, or the room where a royal escort was stationed
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong
Ta names a small enclosed room, almost always one tied to guarding a doorway. It is a rare word: nearly every appearance sits in Ezekiel's vision of a future temple, where it labels the recessed cells built into the sides of the great gateways, and only two other passages use it, both for the room where the king's bodyguard was posted.
In Ezekiel these cells run in a row down each side of the gate passage, evenly spaced posts a guard could step into. In Kings and Chronicles the word points instead to a single guardroom off the temple entrance, the place where the royal escort stored the bronze shields they carried whenever the king went up to worship. What ties the two together is not the shape of the space but its use: it is where those who watch an entrance are kept.
This sets it apart from a broader chamber word like לִשְׁכָּה, the larger temple hall used by priests for meals and storage, and from חֶדֶר, the private inner room of a house. Ta is narrower than either: a guard's post at a gate.
Nuances
1aa recessed guard cell set into the side of a gateway passage
Names a small recess cell built into the gateway structure, appearing in measured rows as part of the architecture rather than as a room people work in.Ezk 40:7Ezk 40:12Ezk 40:29
Outside Ezekiel's temple plan it is the guardroom where the royal escort runners kept the bronze shields, a small chamber off the king's route.1Ki 14:282Ch 12:11
Both
Both name an enclosed room within a larger sacred or royal building, set off from the main hall for a defined use.Ezk 40:17Ezk 40:10
Names a sizable working room of the temple precinct, used for real activity: storing the offerings and tithes, lodging temple staff, holding meetings, and housing officials.Neh 13:51Ch 9:26Jer 36:10
Often belongs to or is assigned to a named person, marking it as someone's office or quarters within the complex.Neh 13:4Jer 35:42Ki 23:11
חֶדֶרan inner private room of a house, a bedroom or innermost chamber, defined by seclusion rather than by watching an entrance
Names a private, intimate inner room a person withdraws into alone: a bedchamber for sleeping, a room to weep unseen, a place to hide.Gen 43:302Sa 4:72Ki 6:12
Stretches figuratively to the hidden depths of a thing: the innermost recesses of the body, of death, of the far sky.Pro 18:8Pro 7:27Job 9:9
ta in the other biblical languages
ταμεῖονGreek“inner room”the Greek word for a private inner room or storeroom; it shares the idea of a small enclosed space but carries none of this word's guard or gateway setting
Is a built guardroom, the recess in a royal gateway where the escort stored their shields and took them up again for duty.1Ki 14:282Ch 12:11
Names the measured side cells of the temple gateway in the vision, each a defined chamber set into the structure with its own dimensions.Ezk 40:7Ezk 40:10
Both
Both name an enclosed room set inside a larger building rather than the building itself.Mat 6:61Ki 14:28
Names the inner, private room of a house, the place someone withdraws to behind a shut door to pray unseen or where words meant for no one else are whispered.Mat 6:6Luk 12:3
Reaches beyond a dwelling to a storeroom, the place where provisions are laid up and kept back.Luk 12:24
What scholars say about ta
Standard lexica (BDB; HALOT) gloss תָּא as "guardroom, (side-)chamber," a rare noun concentrated in Ezekiel's temple-gate vision (Ezekiel 40), with two further occurrences in the parallel royal notices (1 Kings 14:28;2 Chronicles 12:11) for the chamber of the royal runners. Its etymology is uncertain; a link to a root meaning "to mark or measure off" has been proposed but is not secure. Commentators on Ezekiel (Zimmerli; Block) take the plural תָּאִים as the guard cells flanking the gate passage, with discussion only of their precise dimensions and reconstruction.