סֶמֶלçemel

image, statue, image, figure, of anything (Ezekiel 8:5; 2 Chronicles 33:7; 2 Chronicles 33:15; Deuteronomy 4:16; Ezekiel 8:3)

Pronunciation: seh'-mel · Hebrew/Aramaic (Old Testament) · H5566

Same root

Where it appears

Appears 5 times in the Bible.

  • Deuteronomy 4:16 So do not corrupt yourselves by making an idol in any form—whether of a man or a woman,
  • 2 Chronicles 33:7 Manasseh even took a carved idol he had made and set it up in God’s Temple, the very place where God had told David and his son Solomon: “My name will be honored forever in this Temple and in Jerusalem—the city I have chosen from among all the tribes of Israel.
  • 2 Chronicles 33:15 Manasseh also removed the foreign gods and the idol from the Lord’s Temple. He tore down all the altars he had built on the hill where the Temple stood and all the altars that were in Jerusalem, and he dumped them outside the city.
  • Ezekiel 8:3 He reached out what seemed to be a hand and took me by the hair. Then the Spirit lifted me up into the sky and transported me to Jerusalem in a vision from God. I was taken to the north gate of the inner courtyard of the Temple, where there is a large idol that has made the Lord very jealous.
  • Ezekiel 8:5 Then the Lord said to me, “Son of man, look toward the north.” So I looked, and there to the north, beside the entrance to the gate near the altar, stood the idol that had made the Lord so jealous.

Source: Brown, Driver and Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), public domain; markup by unfoldingWord, CC BY (github.com/unfoldingWord/Brown-Driver-Briggs-Enhanced).