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Bible Dictionaries
Between
Vine's Expository Dictionary of OT Words
or Bêyn (בַּיִן, Strong's #996), “between; in the midst of; among; within; in the interval of.” A cognate of this word is found in Arabic, Aramaic, and Ethiopic. The approximately 375 biblical appearances of this word occur in every period of biblical Hebrew. Scholars believe that the pure form of this word is bayin but this form never occurs in biblical Hebrew.This word nearly always (except in 1 Sam. 17:4, 23) is a preposition meaning “in the interval of” or “between.” The word may represent “the area between” in general: “And it shall be for a sign unto thee upon thine hand, and for a memorial between thine eyes …” (Exod. 13:9). Sometimes the word means “within,” in the sense of a person’s or a thing’s “being in the area of”: “The slothful man saith, There is a lion in the way; a lion is in the streets” (Prov. 26:13). In other places, bêyn means “among”: “Shall the companions make a banquet of him [Leviathan]? Shall they part him among [give each a part] the merchants?” (Job 41:6). In Job 34:37, the word means “in the midst of,” in the sense of “one among a group”: “For he addeth rebellion unto his sin, he clappeth his hands among us.…”
The area separating two particular objects is indicated in several ways. First, by repeating bêyn before each object: “And God divided the light from the darkness” [literally, “between the light and between the darkness”] (Gen. 1:4); that is, He put an interval or space between them. In other places (more rarely), this concept is represented by putting bêyn before one object and the preposition le before the second object: “Let there be a firmament in the midst [bêyn] of the waters, and let it divide the waters from [le] the waters” (Gen. 1:6). In still other instances, this idea is represented by placing bêyn before the first object plus the phrase meaning “with reference to” before the second (Joel 2:17), or by bêyn before the first object and the phrase “with reference to the interval of” before the second (Isa. 59:2).
Bêyn is used in the sense of “distinguishing between” in many passages: “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from [bêyn] the night” (Gen. 1:14).
Sometimes bêyn signifies a metaphorical relationship. For example, “This is the token of the covenant which I make between [bêyn] me and you and every living creature …” (Gen. 9:12). The covenant is a contractual relationship. Similarly, the Bible speaks of an oath (Gen. 26:28) and of goodwill (Prov. 14:9) filling the metaphorical “space” between two parties.
This word is used to signify an “interval of days,” or “a period of time”: “Now that which was prepared for me was … once in ten days [literally, “at ten-day intervals”] store of all sorts of wine …” (Neh. 5:18).
In the dual form, bêyn represents “the space between two armies”: “And there went out a champion [literally, “a man between the two armies”] out of the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath …” (1 Sam. 17:4). In ancient warfare, a battle or even an entire war could be decided by a contest between two champions.
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Vines, W. E., M. A. Entry for 'Between'. Vine's Expository Dictionary of OT Words. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/vot/b/between.html. 1940.
