Properly, separate by a wall , i.e. outside , outdoors
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H2351, ḥûṣ, is a Hebrew masculine noun that locates someone or something outside, outdoors, beyond an interior space, or in a street or open public area. Its reference point may be a house, tent, camp, city, sanctuary room, or another bounded place.
Reader summary
Full entry for חוּץ (H2351) · Open the biblical lexicon
H2351, ḥûṣ, is a Hebrew masculine noun that locates someone or something outside, outdoors, beyond an interior space, or in a street or open public area. Its reference point may be a house, tent, camp, city, sanctuary room, or another bounded place.
The BSB source-word alignment has 164 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include outside (60), in the streets (13), out (8), and in the streets (7), . . . (5).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 6:14. Its strongest book concentrations include Leviticus (20), Ezekiel (18), Jeremiah (16), Numbers (13).
H2351, ḥûṣ, is a Hebrew masculine noun that locates someone or something outside, outdoors, beyond an interior space, or in a street or open public area. Its reference point may be a house, tent, camp, city, sanctuary room, or another bounded place. Singular forms often appear with prepositions or a directional ending, while plural forms can refer to streets, marketplaces, or open spaces.
The word names spatial relation; it is not itself a territorial border, a moral verdict, or a permanent social identity. Exodus 33 places the Tent of Meeting outside Israel’s camp after the golden-calf crisis, yet anyone seeking the Lord goes there. Deuteronomy 23 designates an outside place for bodily sanitation within the camp’s holiness and protection. Leviticus 13 places a person with a diagnosed skin condition outside the camp for a period of ritual uncleanness, while Leviticus 14 sends the priest outside to examine the person and provides a path toward restored participation.
Those laws belong to Israel’s covenant and priestly order. They do not label disabled, chronically ill, scarred, contagious, poor, or socially isolated people as morally guilty or spiritually inferior. Job 31 turns the outside street into a test of hospitality: the stranger does not have to remain there because Job opens his door. Lamentations 4 shows the streets as places where siege and exile expose hunger, social reversal, and human vulnerability.
These scenes keep outside space morally complex. It may provide necessary separation, public movement, refuge, work, lament, or encounter; it may also expose someone to abandonment and harm. Churches and households should therefore practice welcome that is tangible, safe, accessible, and attentive to consent. A call to hospitality does not require unrestricted entry, neglect of abuse prevention, or placing vulnerable people in danger.
H2351 helps teachers ask who has been left outside, why the separation exists, how restoration is pursued, and whether shelter, transportation, communication, ramps, quiet space, or another accommodation is needed for genuine participation. Those questions arise from the passages’ concern for holiness, mercy, neighbor care, and truthful responsibility, not from treating “outside” as a slogan.
H2351 appears across domestic, camp, sanctuary, city, street, field, and lament settings. It can mark movement from an interior, a location beyond a camp or house, or the public streets themselves. Because the reference point changes, interpreters must ask outside what, for what purpose, for how long, and with what provision for safety, dignity, or return.
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.
After Israel’s grave covenant breach, Moses pitches the Tent of Meeting outside the camp, where anyone seeking the Lord may go.
You must have a place outside the camp to go and relieve yourself.
The camp receives a designated outside place for bodily sanitation, joining ordinary physical care to communal holiness and protection.
As long as he has the infection, he remains unclean. He must live alone in a place outside the camp.
A priestly diagnosis leads to temporary life outside the camp, a ritual-health setting that must not become a modern stigma against disability or illness.
But no stranger had to lodge on the street, for my door has been open to the traveler—
Job describes hospitality by saying that a stranger did not remain in the street because his door stood open to the traveler.
Those who once ate delicacies are destitute in the streets; those brought up in crimson huddle in ash heaps.
Jerusalem’s siege leaves formerly privileged people destitute in the streets, making outside space a scene of public hunger and social collapse.
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. Spatial boundary marker: outside the protective wall, thus excluded, exposed, or in public view rather than sheltered.
Spatial boundary marker: outside the protective wall, thus excluded, exposed, or in public view rather than sheltered.
properly, separate by a wall, i.e. outside, outdoors BDB: the outside Usage: abroad, field, forth, highway, more, out(-side, -ward), street, without.
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 3 selected witnesses from 164 lexical occurrence verses.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Job 31:32 makes ḥûṣ pastorally concrete. In Job’s account of his conduct, the stranger is not left to lodge in the street; an open door turns exposed public space into received hospitality. That action neither erases the household’s boundary nor treats the traveler as a threat by definition. It uses the boundary responsibly by making welcome real. Other passages keep the term from becoming sentimental.
Deuteronomy 23 locates sanitation outside the camp for the community’s holiness and well-being. Leviticus 13 records a painful period of ritual separation, while the next chapter sends the priest outside and describes a path back. Exodus 33 places the meeting tent beyond the camp after Israel’s sin, yet seekers go there and God speaks with Moses. Lamentations 4 shows streets filled with the visible suffering of siege, hunger, and displacement.
Together these uses ask readers to distinguish necessary separation from abandonment. Christian teaching may also notice Hebrews 13, which uses different Greek vocabulary when it speaks of Jesus suffering outside the gate and calls believers toward Him, hospitality, and solidarity with mistreated people. That canonical connection does not make every outsider Christlike or every interior corrupt.
It does press churches to examine whether their welcome reaches the actual street. Safe reception can include trained hosts, clear safeguarding, accessible entrances, transportation help, interpreters, quiet rooms, and respectful alternatives for people who cannot enter in the usual way. Hospitality is not reckless access, and protection is not permission to ignore the person left outside.
Job.31.32
H2351 is a masculine noun used in singular and plural forms, frequently with prepositions and the directional form ḥûṣāh. The plural can denote streets or open public places, while a singular expression often means outside a named enclosure. Syntax supplies the reference point, so outside must not be mistaken for a territorial boundary or a fixed class of people.
Old Testament uses of H2351 locate worship, sanitation, ritual separation, hospitality, danger, and lament outside particular spaces. Hebrews 13 later speaks of Jesus suffering outside the gate with different Greek words and calls believers to bear His reproach, remember prisoners, and practice hospitality. The connection is canonical and thematic, not a claim that H2351 itself predicts the cross or that every ancient camp rule becomes a church access policy.