House in the Old Testament

In the period up to the Babylonian exile, the so-called four-room house was the most common type of house in Israel and Judah. This type of house was found in villages as well as the cities, though houses in the countryside tended to be larger than those in the cities. Archaeologists think that city dwellings were occupied by a single family, while houses in the countryside were occupied by several families from a single clan.

A four-room house generally consisted of three oblong rooms in a row, with a fourth room at right angles behind them, across the full width of the building. There were also variants of this type, such as three-room houses or five-room houses. Archaeologists used to think that the central room was not covered, a sort of inner court. But these days it is thought that the houses were completely covered by a flat roof. The houses probably also had a second floor on top of the whole or part of the house, the so-called upper room.

The ground floor rooms were mainly used for cooking, household activities like spinning and weaving, and for storage. In some houses one of the rooms was used as a stable. Living accommodation was on the upper floor. But that is also where people would eat and sleep. The roof was also used for sitting or sleeping on warm summer nights.