Aramaic word · H6537
פְּרֵס
peres
half
A fractional unit of weight or money: a 'half' or 'portion', from a root meaning 'to divide'. In the scale of weights it sits below the mina (mene) and is related to the shekel (tekel). Most scholars take it as a half-mina; some argue for a half-shekel.
A Biblical Aramaic word, from the parts of the Old Testament written in Aramaic. Why Aramaic?
Appears 3 times in 2 verses of the Aramaic of the Old Testament. ·
What it means
1) half-mina, half-shekel
1a) a unit of measure and weight
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
A fractional unit of weight or money: a 'half' or 'portion', from a root meaning 'to divide'. In the scale of weights it sits below the mina (mene) and is related to the shekel (tekel). Most scholars take it as a half-mina; some argue for a half-shekel. It is related to later Jewish Aramaic and Mishnaic Hebrew peras, 'half, portion'.
- Against the English
English versions leave it untranslated ('PERES') and turn it into a mysterious word. YLT translates it outright ('Divided'). That keeps one meaning but loses the coin-and-weight picture and the pun on Persia. No single English word can carry all three meanings.
- How it drifted
The words entered English as a spooky proverb ('the writing on the wall'), cut off from their everyday commercial sense. A Babylonian or Judean reader would have recognised ordinary market terms, the kind of thing a merchant said while weighing silver.
- Used elsewhere in the period
In 1886 Charles Clermont-Ganneau first argued that mene, tekel, peres are the weights mina, shekel and half. Most later commentators accept this (Montgomery, ICC; Collins, Hermeneia; Goldingay, WBC). Josephus (Antiquities 10.243–244) explains phares as Greek klasma, 'a broken piece, fragment', and says God will break the kingdom and divide it among the Medes and Persians.
Where it appears
Daniel · 3
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Daniel 5:25 וּפַרְסִֽין׃ and pharsin
Now this is the inscription that was written: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN.
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Daniel 5:28 פְּרֵ֑ס פְּרִיסַת֙ peres, it has been broken in two
PERES means that your kingdom has been divided and given over to the Medes and Persians.”
Here: The word Daniel is explaining. It is a real term for a fractional weight, usually taken as half a mina, possibly half a shekel. It names a fragment, a portion, and its consonants (p-r-s) set up the two puns that follow.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.