Bible word study

Arabah (Strong’s H6160): Meaning in the Bible

Arabah (עֲרָבָה) is the Hebrew word numbered H6160 in Strong’s concordance of the Bible. Strong’s defines it as a desert; especially (with the article prefix) the (generally) sterile valley of the Jordan and its continuation to the Red Sea. In the King James Bible it is translated Arabah, champaign, desert, evening, heaven.

• Original wordעֲרָבָה
• Transliterationʻărâbâh
• Pronunciationar-aw-baw'
• Part of speechnoun (feminine) (n-f)
• Strong’s numberH6160
• LanguageHebrew

The full Strong’s definition

Derivation. from H6150 (in the sense of sterility);

How the King James Bible translates it

Where Arabah appears in the Bible

In the King James Bible’s text tagged with Strong’s numbers, Arabah (H6160) stands behind 61 English renderings in 57 verses across 13 of the 66 books. It is most frequent in Joshua (13), Deuteronomy (10), Numbers (9).

How the King James Bible renders Arabah, by count

• plain22 of 61 (36 percent)
• plains20 of 61 (33 percent)
• desert8 of 61 (13 percent)
• wilderness5 of 61 (8 percent)
• arabah2 of 61 (3 percent)
• champaign1 of 61 (2 percent)

Three places to read Arabah

• Numbers 22:1 And the children of Israel set forward, and pitched in the plains of Moab on this side Jordan by Jericho.
• Joshua 5:10 And the children of Israel encamped in Gilgal, and kept the passover on the fourteenth day of the month at even in the plains of Jericho.
• Psalms 68:4 Sing unto God, sing praises to his name: extol him that rideth upon the heavens by his name JAH, and rejoice before him.

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 Arabah 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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