The shrine or innermost part of the sanctuary
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The *dəbîr* is the innermost chamber of the tabernacle and later the Solomonic temple — the place English translations render as the Most Holy Place, the inner sanctuary, or the oracle. It measured twenty cubits on each side in Solomon's construction (1 Kgs 6:20), housed the ark of the covenant beneath the outstretched wings of the cherubim, and was separated from the outer holy place by a thick veil.
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Full entry for דְּבִיר (H1687) · Open the biblical lexicon
The *dəbîr* is the innermost chamber of the tabernacle and later the Solomonic temple — the place English translations render as the Most Holy Place, the inner sanctuary, or the oracle. It measured twenty cubits on each side in Solomon's construction (1 Kgs 6:20), housed the ark of the covenant beneath the outstretched wings of the cherubim, and was.
The BSB source-word alignment has 16 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include of the inner sanctuary (5), the inner sanctuary (4), sanctuary (2), an inner sanctuary (1), and the inner sanctuary (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at 1 Kings 6:5. Its strongest book concentrations include 1 Kings (11), 2 Chronicles (4), Psalms (1).
The *dəbîr* is the innermost chamber of the tabernacle and later the Solomonic temple — the place English translations render as the Most Holy Place, the inner sanctuary, or the oracle. It measured twenty cubits on each side in Solomon's construction (1 Kgs 6:20), housed the ark of the covenant beneath the outstretched wings of the cherubim, and was separated from the outer holy place by a thick veil.
No furniture for human use existed there — no lampstand, no table, no altar of incense. It was a space for the divine presence alone. The Levitical legislation governing Yom Kippur (Lev 16) makes the inaccessibility of the *dəbîr* the organizing theological premise of the entire day: Aaron could enter only once a year, only with blood, only behind a cloud of incense that obscured the mercy seat lest he die in the divine presence.
Every other Israelite waited outside. The annual drama of the high priest disappearing behind the veil — and the congregation's relief when he emerged — was a yearly rehearsal of the basic posture of sinful humanity before the holiness of God: we cannot draw near on our own terms. The *dəbîr* is not merely an architectural feature. It is a theological statement about the distance that sin creates and the conditions under which that distance may be crossed — a statement that Hebrews 9–10 and the torn veil of Matthew 27:51 interpret as finally and permanently resolved in Christ.
The local Hebrew index currently counts about 16 occurrences in the Hebrew Bible, concentrated in the architectural description of Solomon's temple (1 Kgs 6–8) and the parallel account in 2 Chronicles 3–5, with additional appearances in Psalms where the word describes the direction of prayer. It functions as a technical term for the innermost chamber of the sanctuary, with the Levitical legislation providing its theological weight through the Day of Atonement legislation.
Solomon also prepared the inner sanctuary within the temple to set the ark of the covenant of the Lord there.
The *dəbîr*'s defining purpose is stated plainly: it exists to house the ark, the tangible symbol of Yahweh's covenant presence with Israel. The entire architectural elaboration of the temple — courts, porches, side chambers, the great hall — serves a single purpose: to create the conditions under which God's people may approach the place where he has chosen to dwell. The *dəbîr* is the goal of all that surrounds it.
And the Lord said to Moses: “Tell your brother Aaron not to enter freely into the Most Holy Place behind the veil in front of the mercy seat on the ark, or else he will die, because I appear in the cloud above the mercy seat.
The Levitical regulation establishes the primary theological meaning of the *dəbîr*: it is the place of divine holiness that cannot be approached casually, without preparation, without blood. The threat of death is not rhetorical — Nadab and Abihu had already demonstrated the consequences of unsanctioned approach (Lev 10). The *dəbîr* is not a symbol of God's remoteness but of his holiness, which demands that any approach be made on his terms.
Aaron shall then slaughter the goat for the sin offering for the people and bring its blood behind the veil, and with its blood he must do as he did with the bull’s blood: He is to sprinkle it against the mercy seat and in front of it.
The high priest's entry into the *dəbîr* on Yom Kippur was not entry into an empty room but into the place where atonement was accomplished. The sprinkling of blood on the mercy seat — the cover of the ark, the place associated with divine presence — was the central act of the entire sacrificial calendar. What happened in the *dəbîr* on that day determined the covenant status of the whole people for another year.
Then the priests brought the ark of the covenant of the Lord to its place in the inner sanctuary of the temple, the Most Holy Place, beneath the wings of the cherubim.
The installation of the ark in the *dəbîr* is the theological climax of Solomon's entire building project. The elaborate preparation, the vast labor, the assembled congregation — all of it reaches its fulfillment in this moment of placement. That the *dəbîr* is described as the 'most holy place' (qodesh haqqodashim) signals its position at the apex of a graduated holiness that structured all of Israel's worship space.
Hear my cry for mercy when I call to You for help, when I lift up my hands toward Your holy sanctuary.
The *dəbîr* as the direction of prayer — the place toward which hands are lifted — shows how the theology of the sanctuary organized Israel's devotional life even outside formal ritual. The psalmist's prayer is oriented spatially: it is not prayer into the void but toward the place where God has made himself accessible. This spatial theology of prayer reaches its NT expression in Jesus as the one through whom all prayer now passes (Heb 4:14-16).
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Hebrew word. The innermost sanctuary chamber where God's presence dwells and oracles are delivered
The innermost sanctuary chamber where God's presence dwells and oracles are delivered
the shrine or innermost part of the sanctuary BDB: hindmost chamber Usage: oracle.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
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Showing 1 selected witness from 16 lexical occurrence verses.
דְּבִיר is built from this root:
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The *dəbîr* confronts every sentimental account of prayer and access to God with a single architectural reality: the place of divine presence was closed, guarded by a veil, and approachable only under the most precise conditions, by one person, once a year. The preacher who takes this seriously cannot speak about 'coming boldly to God' (Heb 4:16) without first accounting for why boldness was previously impossible.
The torn veil in Matthew 27:51 — ripped from top to bottom, which is to say from God's side downward — is only intelligible against the background of the *dəbîr*'s inaccessibility. What tore was not a curtain but a theology: the theology that God's holiness and human sinfulness cannot coexist without blood-mediated access. Christ's death did not make God more approachable in a relational sense alone; it resolved the structural problem that the *dəbîr*'s architecture had maintained for centuries.
Hebrews 6:19-20 presses the point further: the Christian's hope is described as 'an anchor of the soul, entering into that which is within the veil' — the hope itself is located in the *dəbîr*, where Jesus as forerunner has already gone. This is not metaphor. It is the author of Hebrews insisting that the most inaccessible space in the entire Levitical system is now the address of Christian confidence.
Heb.6.19
The etymology of *dəbîr* is debated: BDB suggests a connection to the root *dbr* (to speak), reading it as the 'oracle' or 'speaking place' where God communicated from between the cherubim. If this root connection holds, the *dəbîr* is not merely the innermost room but the place where the divine word was heard — which gives added weight to Hebrews' presentation of Christ as both the great high priest who enters the sanctuary and the word through whom God has spoken (Heb 1:1-2).
The *dəbîr* is the Old Testament's most concentrated architectural expression of what sin does to the relationship between God and humanity: it creates a distance that cannot be crossed without mediation, blood, and divine permission. The entire sacrificial system exists to make controlled access possible, and the *dəbîr* is the endpoint of that access. When Hebrews 9-10 develops its sustained comparison between the Levitical priesthood and Christ's high priesthood, the *dəbîr* is not incidental backdrop — it is the theological load-bearing structure.
Christ's blood did not open a new way into the same closed room; it dissolved the category of the closed room altogether. The author's point in Hebrews 10:19-22 is that what the high priest did once a year, with trembling, behind a veil, every believer now does with confidence, through the body of Christ. The *dəbîr* has not been relocated — it has been transformed into the entirety of the new covenant's access to God.
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