Qahal is the Hebrew word the Septuagint translates as ekklesia, which your English Bible translates as "church." And in that double translation, from qahal to ekklesia to "church," one of the most important concepts in the Bible was stolen from the people it belonged to and handed to an institution it was never meant to describe.

Qahal means assembly, the gathered community of God's covenant people. In Deuteronomy 9:10, HaShem speaks to Israel on the day of the qahal, the assembly at Sinai. In 1 Kings 8:14, Solomon addresses the qahal of Israel at the Temple dedication. In Psalm 22:22, the psalmist says "I will declare Your name to my brothers; in the midst of the qahal I will praise You," a verse quoted by the writer of Hebrews (2:12) using ekklesia. Stephen, in Acts 7:38, calls Israel in the wilderness "the ekklesia in the desert," because he was thinking in Hebrew. The qahal was Israel. It was never a building. It was never a denomination. It was never a Sunday morning institution with a parking lot and a 501(c)(3).

William Tyndale translated ekklesia as "congregation" in his 1526 English New Testament. The institutional church was so threatened by that translation that it was listed among the heresies at his trial. He was strangled and burned at the stake in 1536. The KJV translators, under instructions from King James himself, were required to use "church" instead of "congregation." That political decision, not a linguistic one, is why every English reader for the last five centuries has read "church" and pictured a building instead of a people. The ESV, NASB, and NIV all perpetuate it. The Hebrew was never talking about a building. It was talking about you, standing in the assembly, gathered with the covenant people of HaShem.