A CHAMBER of some kind — and nobody can say what kind. It stands in one verse, Numbers 25:8, where Phinehas follows a man into it. ⭐ A consonantal search returns exactly one other verse, Deuteronomy 18:3, where the same letters spell the MAW — an animal's stomach, listed among the priest's portions — and that near-homonym is almost certainly the point, because the same sentence goes on to pierce the woman through her qevah, her belly, a word found nowhere else in the Bible. ⚠ The shelf guesses four ways: a tent (KJV, Geneva, NIV, TLB, and the whole Spanish shelf), a pavilion (ASV), a vaulted tent (NWT 1984, TNM 1987 «la tienda abovedada»), and — the Douay-Rheims, from the Vulgate — a BROTHEL, which interprets the room rather than translating the word. The Arabic qubba, a dome, is the usual comparison and is where the vaulted readings come from. → first discussed at Num 25:8