Aramaic word · H6600

פִּתְגָם

pitgam

edict

Word, message, report, official reply, edict, sentence or verdict. By extension it can mean the matter under discussion. The word comes from Old Persian (probably *patigāma, “message, what comes back”).

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

Appears 6 times in 6 verses of the Aramaic of the Old Testament. ·

What it means

1) command, work, affair, decree

1a) word, report

1b) decree

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 Daniel 3:16

Range of meaning

Word, message, report, official reply, edict, sentence or verdict. By extension it can mean the matter under discussion. The word comes from Old Persian (probably *patigāma, “message, what comes back”).

Against the English

English “matter” or “affair” makes it vague. Its home is official correspondence and judgments, so it carries a sense of an official word: a case, a reply to the crown.

Used elsewhere in the period

Ezra 4:17 (the king “sent an answer,” pitgāmāʾ); Ezra 5:7, 11 (“thus they returned us a word”); Ezra 6:11 (a royal decree); Daniel 4:17 (the “sentence” is by decree of the watchers). It was borrowed into Hebrew in Esther 1:20 (the king's edict) and Ecclesiastes 8:11 (a sentence against an evil deed). It is a typical word of Persian-period Aramaic administration.

Where it appears

Ezra · 4

  1. Ezra 4:17 פִּתְגָמָ֞א word the

    Then the king sent this reply: To Rehum the commander, Shimshai the scribe, and the rest of your associates living in Samaria and elsewhere in the region west of the Euphrates: Greetings.

  2. Ezra 5:7 פִּתְגָמָ֖א word the

    The report they sent him read as follows: To King Darius: All peace.

  3. Ezra 5:11 פִתְגָמָ֖א word the

    And this is the answer they returned: “We are servants of the God of heaven and earth, and we are rebuilding the temple that was built many years ago, which a great king of Israel built and completed.

  4. Ezra 6:11 פִּתְגָמָ֣א command the

    I also decree that if any man interferes with this directive, a beam is to be torn from his house and raised up, and he is to be impaled on it. And his own house shall be made a pile of rubble for this offense.

Daniel · 2

  1. Daniel 3:16 פִּתְגָ֖ם affair

    Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego replied to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter.

    Here: A Persian loanword used for official words: a report, a reply, a decree, a verdict. Here it means either “this matter” (the case against them) or “a word” as the object of “send back” (“to return you a word”).

  2. Daniel 4:17 פִּתְגָמָ֔א command the

    This decision is the decree of the watchers, the verdict declared by the holy ones, so that the living will know that the Most High rules over the kingdom of mankind and gives it to whom He wishes, setting over it the lowliest of men.’

    Here: "The sentence." A Persian loanword used for official messages, royal edicts and formal replies. Here it means the judicial word just spoken against the tree, which stands for the king.

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