To build (literally and figuratively)
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בָּנָה (banah) is the Hebrew verb for building — constructing, establishing, raising up. The local Hebrew index currently counts about 377 occurrences and covers the full range from building altars and cities to building families and nations, from the construction of the tabernacle and temple to the divine rebuilding of Israel after judgment.
Reader summary
Full entry for בָּנָה (H1129) · Open the biblical lexicon
בָּנָה (banah) is the Hebrew verb for building — constructing, establishing, raising up. The local Hebrew index currently counts about 377 occurrences and covers the full range from building altars and cities to building families and nations, from the construction of the tabernacle and temple to the divine rebuilding of Israel after judgment.
The BSB source-word alignment has 375 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include to build (32), built (27), he built (17), build (12), I have built (11).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 2:22. Its strongest book concentrations include 1 Kings (67), 2 Chronicles (60), 1 Chronicles (29), Nehemiah (24).
This entry includes 1 verse guide that explain exact original-language forms in context.
בָּנָה (banah) is the Hebrew verb for building — constructing, establishing, raising up. The local Hebrew index currently counts about 377 occurrences and covers the full range from building altars and cities to building families and nations, from the construction of the tabernacle and temple to the divine rebuilding of Israel after judgment. The theological center of banah is not human ingenuity but divine sovereignty: who builds and why determines whether the building stands.
Psalm 127:1 is the foundational statement: 'Unless the Lord builds (yibne) the house (bayit), those who build (bonu) it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.' The contrast is between human building and divine building — the human builders work hard, but if the Lord is not the one building, the work is vain (shav — empty, worthless). The psalm names three areas of anxiety (the house, the city, the dawn-to-dusk labor) and declares the same principle for each: God is the one whose building succeeds; the human builder without God is the watchman waking without God — awake, working, but without the security that only God provides.
First Kings 5-8 gives banah its most extended OT narrative: Solomon builds (banah) the temple — the house (bayit) for the name of the Lord. But the Davidic covenant that precedes it (2 Sam 7) contains a banah-reversal: David wants to build a house (bayit) for God; God says he will build a house (bayit/dynasty) for David. 'The Lord will build a house for you' (7:11) — the builder-God is the one who establishes the Davidic line, not the human king who builds the physical structure. The temple Solomon builds is a gift to God; the dynasty God builds for David is the greater gift to the king.
Amos 9:11 gives banah its eschatological dimension: 'In that day I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen and repair its breaches, and raise up its ruins and rebuild (baniti) it as in the days of old.' The rebuilding of the Davidic dynasty after its apparent ruin is the OT's prophetic promise that God's own building project will not be abandoned. The NT explicitly applies this to the resurrection of Christ and the mission to the nations — Acts 15:16 quotes Amos 9:11-12 as the justification for including the Gentiles in the people of God. The rebuilt booth of David is the risen Christ and the community gathered in him.
For the preacher, בָּנָה (banah) is the word that insists that only the building God builds lasts, and that the greatest building project in history is not any human construction but God's own — the house of David, the temple not made with hands, the community of the Spirit.
בָּנָה (banah) is counted at about 377 occurrences in the local Hebrew index. Genesis uses it for the building of cities (Babel, Gen 11:4), altars (Gen 12:7), and the woman built from the rib (Gen 2:22). Exodus uses it for the tabernacle construction. First Kings uses it for Solomon's temple. The prophets use it for the divine rebuilding after judgment (Jer 31:4; Amos 9:11).
The Psalms use it theologically: Psalm 127:1 for the divine-human building relationship, and Psalm 89:4 for God building up the Davidic covenant 'to all generations.'
Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain; unless the Lord protects the city, its watchmen stand guard in vain.
The foundational banah theology: human building without divine building is vanity (shav). The house (bayit) is both literal dwelling and figurative dynasty — the same word covers both, and the psalm may intend both. The watchman analogy doubles the point: the watchman who stays awake all night is useless if the Lord is not protecting the city. The application to all human effort is explicit in vv.
2-3: The one whom the Lord blesses receives what others work for without obtaining. Rest and fruitfulness come from the Lord's building, not human striving.
And have done since the day I appointed judges over My people Israel. I will give you rest from all your enemies. The Lord declares to you that He Himself will establish a house for you.
The banah reversal at the heart of the Davidic covenant: David wants to build a house for God; God says he will build a house for David. The divine building (bayit/dynasty) is greater than the human building (the temple David proposed). Nathan's oracle (2 Sam 7:4-17) is one of the OT's most important texts: from David's seed, God will establish a son whose kingdom will be forever (7:13, 7:16).
The NT reads this as the ground of Christ's Davidic identity: the messianic son of David whose kingdom God has established forever.
“In that day I will restore the fallen tent of David. I will repair its gaps, restore its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old,
The eschatological banah of the Davidic line: God will rebuild (baniti) what appeared ruined. The booth (sukkah) of David — the Davidic dynasty in its fragile, tent-like state after the exile — will be rebuilt. The Acts 15:16 quotation applies this to the inclusion of the Gentiles: after the Davidic booth is rebuilt, 'the rest of mankind may seek the Lord, even all the Gentiles who are called by my name' (15:17).
The risen Christ is the rebuilt booth — the Davidic line restored — and the nations gathering to him are the fulfillment of Amos 9:12.
And from the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, He made a woman and brought her to him.
The banah of the woman: God builds (yiben — the same verb used for constructing cities and temples) the rib into the woman. The use of banah for the creation of the woman is significant — she is built, not merely formed (yatsar, the word for forming from clay). Building implies careful design, structural integrity, and purposeful construction. The woman is God's most deliberate building act in the creation narrative: built from what was taken from the man, brought to the man, and immediately celebrated as 'bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh' (2:23).
Again I will build you, and you will be rebuilt, O Virgin Israel. Again you will take up your tambourines and go out in joyful dancing.
The divine banah of restoration after exile: 'I will build you, and you shall be built.' The passive 'you shall be built' acknowledges that the rebuilding is God's act, received by Israel. The restoration is not merely the return from exile; it is the restoration of the joy and vitality symbolized by the tambourines and dances — the rebuilding of what was broken at the deepest level.
Jeremiah 31's new covenant (31:31-34) is the ultimate context: God rebuilds his people not just geographically but covenantally, writing the law on their hearts.
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Verse-level guides showing how this original-language form works in its specific context, including grammar, verse function, and guarded interpretation.
Hebrew word. Builds structures and dynasties alike; fundamental act of creation and establishment in covenant history
Builds structures and dynasties alike; fundamental act of creation and establishment in covenant history
to build (literally and figuratively) BDB: build Usage: (begin to) build(-er), obtain children, make, repair, set (up), × surely.
How the stem changes the meaning of this verb across the biblical text.
This verb appears through different tense, voice, mood, or stem patterns. Those forms help readers see how the action is presented in context.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 1 selected witness from 377 lexical occurrence verses.
בָּנָה is a primitive root - no further derivation.
It symbolizes covenant renewal and restored security. Micah 7:11-13
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
בָּנָה (banah) is the word that asks who is building and with whose resources. Psalm 127:1 answers the question definitively: unless the Lord builds, the builders labor in vain. This is not an argument against human effort — the builders are building; the watchman is watching. It is an argument about the source of what makes the building stand. The human building project that is not under God's building is the most futile possible activity: labor without lasting result.
The banah of God reverses this: the Davidic covenant (2 Sam 7:11 — 'the Lord will build you a house') makes God the builder and the human king the recipient. The temple that Solomon builds is magnificent, but God's building of the Davidic dynasty is greater. The Amos 9:11 prophecy of the rebuilt booth of David — applied in Acts 15 to the risen Christ and the nations gathering to him — shows that God's own building project is not derailed by ruin, exile, or death.
The resurrection of Christ is one climactic divine-building fulfillment: God raises what human hands and human sin had broken down. The church is the building God is building (Mat 16:18 — 'on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it'). The preacher who handles banah faithfully will direct the congregation away from the anxiety of the self-building life to the rest of the God-built life: 'he gives sleep to his beloved' (Ps 127:2).
Ps.127.1
בָּנָה (banah) is a Qal verb whose root BNH is one of the most productive roots in Hebrew — the noun ben (son, H1121) is from the same root, as is the related noun bayit (house, H1004). The connection between 'son,' 'house,' and 'build' is deeply embedded in the OT: a son is the one who builds the family/dynasty; the house is what the son builds. The Nathan oracle in 2 Samuel 7 exploits this triple connection: David wants to build a bayit (house/temple) for God; God says he will build a bayit (house/dynasty) for David through a ben (son) who will build the bayit (temple).
The play between the three cognates is intentional and theologically rich. The noun binyan (building, construction) from the same root appears in Ezekiel's temple vision (Ezek 40:2; 41:12-15) for the structures of the restored temple.
The NT's inheritance of banah is most explicit in Matthew 16:18: 'On this rock I will build (oikodomeso) my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.' Jesus is the builder; the church is the building. The Greek verb oikodomeo (to build, G3618) is the standard NT equivalent of banah, and it carries the same range: physical building, community building, and the divine building project.
Ephesians 2:19-22 develops the building metaphor: the community of Jews and Gentiles is 'built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.' The 'holy temple' is the maqom (place) where the Spirit dwells — the human community as the building God is constructing.
Acts 15:16-17 quotes Amos 9:11 — 'I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen' — as the scriptural justification for the Gentile mission: God's rebuilding of the Davidic line in Christ creates the community that all nations can join. The resurrection is one climactic divine-building fulfillment: what was torn down (the body of Christ, Jhn 2:19-21) is rebuilt in three days, and the building God raises is indestructible.
First Corinthians 3:9-15 makes every preacher a builder: 'we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building... each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire.' The banah that will stand the fire is the one built on the foundation, which is Christ Jesus.
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