A tent (as clearly conspicuous from a distance)
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H168 names a tent or tent-like dwelling, from ordinary family shelter to the Tent of Meeting associated with Israel's worship. Genesis 12:8 shows Abram pitching his tent while building an altar and calling on the LORD.
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Full entry for אֹהֶל (H168) · Open the biblical lexicon
H168 names a tent or tent-like dwelling, from ordinary family shelter to the Tent of Meeting associated with Israel's worship. Genesis 12:8 shows Abram pitching his tent while building an altar and calling on the LORD.
The BSB source-word alignment has 346 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include the tent (74), to the tent (56), at the Tent (24), of the tent (18), in the tent (15).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 4:20. Its strongest book concentrations include Numbers (76), Exodus (62), Leviticus (44), Genesis (23).
H168 names a tent or tent-like dwelling, from ordinary family shelter to the Tent of Meeting associated with Israel's worship. Genesis 12:8 shows Abram pitching his tent while building an altar and calling on the Lord. Exodus 33:7 names the tent set outside the camp where those seeking the Lord went, while 2 Samuel 7:6 recalls God's movement with Israel in a tent before the temple.
Psalm 84:10 contrasts humble service at God's threshold with dwelling in wickedness. The noun does not make every tent sacred, temporary, safe, or spiritually superior to a house. Context distinguishes home, military camp, pastoral shelter, royal pavilion, and sanctuary language. H168 can help teachers speak honestly about mobility, hospitality, worship, displacement, and the longing for secure dwelling without romanticizing instability or treating material shelter as unimportant.
H168 appears in household life, ancestral journeys, military camps, royal settings, and Israel's worship. Its uses join real shelter and mobility with hospitality, vulnerability, communal order, and God's gracious presence among a traveling people.
From there Abram moved on to the hill country east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel to the west and Ai to the east. There he built an altar to the Lord, and he called on the name of the Lord.
Abram pitches his tent, builds an altar, and calls on the Lord, placing ordinary mobile shelter beside worship and pilgrimage without confusing the two.
Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it at a distance outside the camp. He called it the Tent of Meeting, and anyone inquiring of the Lord would go to the Tent of Meeting outside the camp.
Moses sets the tent outside the camp as a place of inquiry, so location, access, and the covenant crisis govern this use of H168.
For I have not dwelt in a house from the day I brought the Israelites up out of Egypt until this day, but I have moved about with a tent as My dwelling.
God reminds David that He moved with Israel in a tent and dwelling, correcting any assumption that a permanent royal building can contain or domesticate Him.
For better is one day in Your courts than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked.
The psalmist prefers a humble place at God's house to dwelling among wickedness, using shelter language to express ordered desire rather than contempt for ordinary homes.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. Portable dwelling that functions as visible marker of presence and belonging, especially in nomadic covenant community contexts
Portable dwelling that functions as visible marker of presence and belonging, especially in nomadic covenant community contexts
a tent (as clearly conspicuous from a distance) BDB: tent Usage: covering, (dwelling) (place), home, tabernacle, tent.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 1 selected witness from 348 lexical occurrence verses.
אֹהֶל is built from this root:
Recalls wilderness dependence.Hosea 12:7-14
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
H168 gives Scripture a flexible but concrete vocabulary for life under fabric rather than masonry. The patriarchs pitch tents as they travel, raise households, receive visitors, encounter conflict, and call on the Lord. Their mobility can express pilgrimage, but it also involves land pressures, exposed families, and dependence on water and pasture. In Exodus, tent language becomes central to ordered worship and divine meeting.
The sacred tent is carefully distinguished by its purpose and covenant setting; its holiness does not turn every household tent into a sanctuary. In 2 Samuel 7, God's history of moving with Israel unsettles David's assumption that royal permanence places God under human patronage. God is graciously present without being contained by a building project. Elsewhere, tents may belong to soldiers, shepherds, rulers, refugees, or enemies, and may be places of welcome, secrecy, violence, grief, or rest.
Faithful teaching therefore resists a single sentimental meaning. H168 can honor the dignity of temporary shelter and the faith of mobile communities while refusing to idealize homelessness, unsafe housing, or forced displacement. It can also remind settled congregations that costly buildings serve worship and neighbor love only when they remain accountable to the God who cannot be housed by human prestige.
2Sam.7.6
H168 is a common Hebrew noun for a tent or tent-dwelling. Possessors, construct phrases, verbs of pitching or entering, and sanctuary titles determine whether the referent is domestic, military, royal, pastoral, or cultic.
The New Testament draws on tabernacle, pilgrimage, and embodied dwelling language when speaking about Christ, the church, mortal life, and God's final presence. Those connections deepen the canonical story, but they do not erase the Old Testament noun's ordinary domestic and social uses.