Something swinging , i.e. the valve of a door
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H1817 usually names a swinging door, door leaf, gate panel, or similar closure, and it can also name a column or panel of written scroll text. The noun marks a real boundary that may be opened, shut, guarded, decorated, or destroyed.
Reader summary
Full entry for דֶּלֶת (H1817) · Open the biblical lexicon
H1817 usually names a swinging door, door leaf, gate panel, or similar closure, and it can also name a column or panel of written scroll text. The noun marks a real boundary that may be opened, shut, guarded, decorated, or destroyed.
The BSB source-word alignment has 88 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include the door (17), the doors (16), doors (6), its doors (6), - (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 19:6. Its strongest book concentrations include Nehemiah (11), 2 Chronicles (10), 2 Kings (9), Ezekiel (9).
H1817 usually names a swinging door, door leaf, gate panel, or similar closure, and it can also name a column or panel of written scroll text. The noun marks a real boundary that may be opened, shut, guarded, decorated, or destroyed. In 1Sam. 3. 15, Samuel opens the doors of the Lord's house after receiving a difficult word and fearing to tell Eli the vision.
In Jer. 36. 23, King Jehoiakim cuts each read column from Jeremiah's scroll and burns it, so a material section of writing becomes the site of defiant rejection. In Mal. 1. 10, the Lord wishes someone would shut the temple doors rather than continue useless worship. H1817 opens teaching on access, responsibility, revelation, and boundaries. It does not teach that every opportunity is a door from God, that every closed door is protection, or that sacred buildings guarantee acceptable worship.
What happens at or to the door must be interpreted from the speaker, covenant setting, and action.
H1817 appears in houses, city defenses, sanctuaries, visions, poetry, and scroll manufacture. Doors can protect, exclude, admit, conceal, or frame responsibility, while the scroll-column sense shows that English context may activate a less familiar member of the range.
Samuel lay down until the morning; then he opened the doors of the house of the Lord. He was afraid to tell Eli the vision,
Samuel opens the sanctuary doors in the morning after hearing the Lord's judgment and remains afraid to report the vision to Eli.
And as soon as Jehudi had read three or four columns, Jehoiakim would cut them off with a scribe’s knife and throw them into the firepot, until the entire scroll had been consumed by the fire.
Jehoiakim repeatedly cuts the newly read columns from Jeremiah's scroll and burns them, visibly rejecting the prophetic word section by section.
“Oh, that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would no longer kindle useless fires on My altar! I take no pleasure in you,” says the Lord of Hosts, “and I will accept no offering from your hands.
The Lord desires the temple doors shut rather than priests continuing fires and offerings He rejects because their worship dishonors His name.
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. Hinged barrier marking household or city threshold; figuratively, access point or vulnerable entry to inner space.
Hinged barrier marking household or city threshold; figuratively, access point or vulnerable entry to inner space.
something swinging, i.e. the valve of a door BDB: door Usage: door (two-leaved), gate, leaf, lid. (Psalm 141:3).
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 89 lexical occurrence verses.
דֶּלֶת is built from this root:
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
H1817 reminds readers that a boundary can serve obedience or rebellion depending on what people do with it. Samuel opens the sanctuary doors after a night in which God has spoken judgment, but his ordinary service does not remove the burden of speaking truth to Eli. Jehoiakim treats the columns of Jeremiah's scroll as disposable material, cutting and burning them as each section is read; destroying the visible page cannot nullify the word, which God commands Jeremiah to write again.
Malachi imagines shutting the temple doors because continued ritual without honor for God's name is worse than an honest cessation. Doors and panels are therefore neither automatically welcoming nor oppressive, sacred nor secular. Their moral significance comes from the truth, people, and worship they admit, resist, protect, or exclude. Responsible application honors necessary boundaries, challenges manipulative gatekeeping, and refuses to call mere opportunity divine guidance.
God's revealed word judges the use of the threshold; the threshold does not judge the word.
Jer.36.23
H1817 is a Hebrew noun commonly referring to a door, door leaf, gate panel, or lid. In a scribal context it can designate a column or panel of scroll text, so the surrounding verbs and object control translation.
New Testament door language can describe ordinary thresholds, opportunities for ministry, guarded access, and Christ's unique saving claims. These themes invite canonical reflection, but no later metaphor should be read back into every H1817 occurrence or used to bypass its historical setting.