BULWARK, five Heb. words are so tr. in the VSS. They each appear only once in the KJV and only slightly more in the RSV, ASV and JPS. מָצֹ֗ור, tr. “bulwark” in Ecclesiastes 9:14, KJV, appears also in 7:26 and in Psalm 116:3 where it is in parallelism, “A” death // “B” bulwark. This is true also of several other passages and it seems to indicate a place of great difficulty—a “strait” or “natural defense.” In Deuteronomy 20:20 a similar term Heb. מָצֹ֗ור, appears. Its meaning is primarily “fortress,” “siege tower” as in 2 Chronicles 8:5. The Heb. terms, חֵיל, H2658, and חֵ֥ל, are military terms denoting a wall as a “rampart” or possibly a “moat” (Ps 48:13; KJV reads “bulwark”). The basic concept of the word is one of containment or surrounding, semantically equivalent to Gr. προτείχισμα, Lat. antemurale. The Heb. term פִּנָּה, H7157, usually refer to corners of architectural constructs but it appears in 2 Chronicles 26:15 in the specific sense of a corner defense to war. The RSV tr. “bulwark” in 1 Timothy 3:15 for Gr. ἕδραίομα, found only here in the NT or the LXX and unknown from any contemporary Hel. source. KJV reads “ground”; Phillips reads “foundation” which is most likely the exact rendering of the Gr. term. The ultimate origin of the word is obscure and possibly of foreign, Asiatic origin.