Bible word study

Ammah (Strong’s H520): Meaning in the Bible

Ammah (אַמָּה) is the Hebrew word numbered H520 in Strong’s concordance of the Bible. Strong’s defines it as properly, a mother (i.e. unit of measure, or the fore-arm (below the elbow), i.e. a cubit; also a door-base (as a bond of the entrance). In the King James Bible it is translated cubit, + hundred (by exchange for H3967), measure, post..

• Original wordאַמָּה
• Transliterationʼammâh
• Pronunciationam-maw'
• Part of speechnoun (feminine) (n-f)
• Strong’s numberH520
• LanguageHebrew

The full Strong’s definition

Derivation. prolonged from H517;

How the King James Bible translates it

Where Ammah appears in the Bible

In the King James Bible’s text tagged with Strong’s numbers, Ammah (H520) stands behind 244 English renderings in 131 verses across 16 of the 66 books. It is most frequent in Ezekiel (88), Exodus (57), 1 Kings (44).

How the King James Bible renders Ammah, by count

• cubits200 of 244 (82 percent)
• cubit42 of 244 (17 percent)
• measure1 of 244 (0 percent)
• posts1 of 244 (0 percent)

Three places to read Ammah

• Genesis 6:15 And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.
• 1 Kings 6:16 And he built twenty cubits on the sides of the house, both the floor and the walls with boards of cedar: he even built them for it within, even for the oracle, even for the most holy place.
• Ezekiel 40:9 Then measured he the porch of the gate, eight cubits; and the posts thereof, two cubits; and the porch of the gate was inward.

Counts are made at build time from the King James text tagged with Strong’s numbers (eBible.org, public domain). Verses are read from the stored King James text, never typed.

Why the word matters

Every word the biblical writers chose carries weight. Studying Ammah in the original Hebrew lets you read the passages where it appears more carefully, closer to what the first hearers understood, so the meaning is drawn from the text itself rather than from the English alone.

The lexical data on this page comes from the public-domain Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890), a Hebrew and Greek dictionary keyed to the King James Bible. It is a reference tool, not a settled verdict: no single word decides a doctrine, and meaning is finally shaped by how a word is used in its sentences. Read the passages themselves, prayerfully, and in full.

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