Hebrew word · H3307
יָפֵחַ
vifeach
breathing
Disputed. (1) From the root p-w-ch / n-p-ch, 'breathe, blow', it would mean 'one who breathes out, snorts, puffs out' (BDB, which lists it as an adjective). (2) As a noun meaning 'witness', it would match Ugaritic yph, a witness in legal documents (HALOT; Pardee, VT 28 [1978]).
Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
a breathing out, exhaling, puffing out (subst)
Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).
In depth
- Range of meaning
Disputed. (1) From the root p-w-ch / n-p-ch, 'breathe, blow', it would mean 'one who breathes out, snorts, puffs out' (BDB, which lists it as an adjective). (2) As a noun meaning 'witness', it would match Ugaritic yph, a witness in legal documents (HALOT; Pardee, VT 28 [1978]).
- Against the English
KJV, WEB, BSB, YLT, ESV and NASB all follow the 'breathing out' reading. NIV's 'spouting malicious accusations' keeps the breath image and spells out the legal sense.
- How it drifted
Not drift in the usual sense. The English simply follows the older of two possible readings of a rare word.
- Used elsewhere in the period
The related form yafiach in Proverbs appears in clear parallel with 'witness': Prov 6:19, 'a false witness who yafiach lies'; Prov 14:5, 'a faithful witness does not lie, but a false witness yafiach lies'; also 14:25; 19:5, 9. Ugaritic legal texts list a yph alongside the parties to a contract.
Where it appears
Psalms · 1
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Psalm 27:12 וִיפֵ֥חַ and a witness of
Do not hand me over to the will of my foes, for false witnesses rise up against me, breathing out violence.
Here: 'And a yafeach of.' The traditional reading takes it from the verb 'breathe, blow', giving 'one who breathes out (violence)'. A word with the same root in Ugaritic, a language closely related to Hebrew, means 'witness' in legal texts. That gives 'a witness of violence', which matches the 'false witnesses' of the line before. The supplied source data takes this second view.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.