Aramaic word · H6573

פַּרְשֶׁ֫גֶן

parshegen

copy

A copy or duplicate of a written document, especially an official one. It is a Persian loanword (probably from an Old Iranian word meaning 'counterpart, copy'). Its Hebrew form patshegen appears in Esther (3:14; 4:8; 8:13) for copies of royal edicts.

A Biblical Aramaic word, from the parts of the Old Testament written in Aramaic. Why Aramaic?

Appears 3 times in 3 verses of the Aramaic of the Old Testament. ·

What it means

copy

Aramaic of pat.she.gen (פַּתְשֶׁ֫גֶן "copy" H6572B)

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 Ezra 5:6

Range of meaning

A copy or duplicate of a written document, especially an official one. It is a Persian loanword (probably from an Old Iranian word meaning 'counterpart, copy'). Its Hebrew form patshegen appears in Esther (3:14; 4:8; 8:13) for copies of royal edicts.

Against the English

KJV, WEB and YLT keep 'copy'; BSB says 'the text of'. Both are fine. 'Copy' preserves the point that this is presented as a file copy; 'text' stresses that the words that follow are the letter's actual wording.

Used elsewhere in the period

In the Bible it occurs only in the Persian-period books: Ezra 4:11, 4:23, 5:6, 7:11 (Aramaic) and Esther (Hebrew form). The Achaemenid (Persian imperial) administration routinely kept copies of correspondence; Ezra 6:1–2 itself describes a search in the royal archives that turns up a scroll in Ecbatana.

Where it appears

Ezra · 3

  1. Ezra 4:11 פַּרְשֶׁ֣גֶן [is] [the] copy of

    (This is the text of the letter they sent to him.) To King Artaxerxes, From your servants, the men west of the Euphrates:

  2. Ezra 4:23 פַּרְשֶׁ֤גֶן [the] copy of

    When the text of the letter from King Artaxerxes was read to Rehum, Shimshai the scribe, and their associates, they went immediately to the Jews in Jerusalem and forcibly stopped them.

  3. Ezra 5:6 פַּרְשֶׁ֣גֶן <the> copy of

    This is the text of the letter that Tattenai the governor of the region west of the Euphrates, Shethar-bozenai, and their associates, the officials in the region, sent to King Darius.

    Here: A Persian loanword from government offices: a written copy of an official document. It tells the reader that what follows is presented as the actual wording of a letter kept on file, not a summary.

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