רָבַע râbaʻ — properly, to be four (sided)
Translated in the KJV as square.
a primitive root (rather identical with H7250 through the idea of sprawling 'at all fours' (or possibly the reverse is the order of deriv.); compare H702); properly, to be four (sided); used only as denominative of H7253; to be quadrate.
râbaʻ in each stem
Qal (Pa'al)
Participle (passive) 9
And thou shalt make an altar of shittim wood, five cubits long, and five cubits broad; the altar shall be foursquare: and the height thereof shall be three cubits.
Foursquare it shall be being doubled; a span shall be the length thereof, and a span shall be the breadth thereof.
A cubit shall be the length thereof, and a cubit the breadth thereof; foursquare shall it be: and two cubits shall be the height thereof: the horns thereof shall be of the same.
Pu'al
Participle (passive) 3
And the mouth of it within the chapiter and above was a cubit: but the mouth thereof was round after the work of the base, a cubit and an half: and also upon the mouth of it were gravings with their borders, foursquare, not round.
So he measured the court, an hundred cubits long, and an hundred cubits broad, foursquare; and the altar that was before the house.
Of this there shall be for the sanctuary five hundred in length, with five hundred in breadth, square round about; and fifty cubits round about for the suburbs thereof.
What the stems mean
A Hebrew verb is its root letters set into a pattern. The pattern — the binyan — is the grammar's way of saying three things at once: whether the action is simple, intensive or causative, and whether its subject is active, passive or reflexive. That is why one Hebrew word can need six English ones. All seven binyanim, explained ›