Hebrew word · H6284

פָּאָה

'af'eihem

to cleave

Found only here, so the meaning is reconstructed.

Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

1) to cleave in pieces, break into pieces, shatter

1a) (Hiphil) to cleave in pieces, dash to pieces

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

From the study of Deuteronomy 32:26

Range of meaning

Found only here, so the meaning is reconstructed. Proposals: (1) 'cleave / dash to pieces' (the line of BDB and HALOT, often with a question mark); (2) a verb made from pēʾāh, 'corner, edge', meaning 'drive into corners, scatter to the far edges'; (3) 'blow away, puff away', from comparisons with Arabic; (4) not a verb at all, but the consonants split differently as 'in anger … where are they?'

Against the English

KJV 'scatter them into corners' takes the pēʾāh line. WEB 'scatter them afar' and the Septuagint simply say 'scatter'. YLT 'blow them away' takes the 'blow' line. BSB, ESV and NASB 'cut them to pieces' follow the modern 'cleave' line. Each English version makes confident a word that is really uncertain.

Used elsewhere in the period

No other use in biblical Hebrew. The Septuagint renders it διασπερῶ αὐτούς, 'I will scatter them'. The Vulgate has ubinam sunt?, 'where are they?', apparently reading ʾayyēh hēm. Targum Onkelos paraphrases with God's anger resting on them and destroying them, hearing ʾap, 'anger', in the word. Rabbinic interpretation (Sifre, reported by Rashi) also plays on 'anger' and 'where are they', and Rashi offers a link to pēʾāh, the field-corner left for anyone to take (Lev 19:9).

Where it appears

Deuteronomy · 1

  1. Deuteronomy 32:26 אַפְאֵיהֶ֑ם I will cut in pieces them

    I would have said that I would cut them to pieces and blot out their memory from mankind,

    Here: The verb occurs only here in the Hebrew Bible, so we have to work out its meaning. It clearly describes destroying Israel as a people. Whether the picture is hacking them to pieces, scattering them to the far corners, or blowing them away like chaff is uncertain. In the ear it may also echo ʾap, 'anger' (compare 'my anger' in v. 22).

Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.