פֶּחָה
governor
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Noun type
- Common
- A common noun — a general class of person, place, or thing (“king,” “city,” “water”), not a specific name.
State
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H6347 appears in the Book of Daniel — 4 distinct verses. Click any verse to open its interlinear word-by-word view. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context — . Each verse’s Hebrew form is shown with its reference; the English is not keyword-highlighted, since the data carries no word-level English alignment. Use “Compare translations” on any verse to read it across multiple English versions. This concordance covers the Hebrew Bible; Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) occurrences are not indexed here.
Daniel
- Daniel 3:2 וּֽ/פַחֲוָתָ֡/א conj + n c mp det + ptcl def.art Then Nebuchadnezzar the king sent to gather together the satraps, the deputies, and the governors, the judges, the treasurers, the counselors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the provinces, to come to the dedication of the image which Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up.
- Daniel 3:3 וּֽ/פַחֲוָתָ֡/א conj + n c mp det + ptcl def.art Then the satraps, the deputies, and the governors, the judges, the treasurers, the counselors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the provinces, were gathered together to the dedication of the image that Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up; and they stood before the image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up.
- Daniel 3:27 וּ/פַחֲוָתָ/א֮ conj + n c mp det + ptcl def.art The satraps, the deputies, and the governors, and the king's counselors, being gathered together, saw these men, that the fire had no power on their bodies, nor was the hair of their head singed, neither were their pants changed, nor had the smell of fire passed on them.
- Daniel 6:7 וּ/פַחֲוָתָ֔/א conj + n c mp det + ptcl def.art All the presidents of the kingdom, the deputies and the satraps, the counselors and the governors, have consulted together to establish a royal statute, and to make a strong interdict, that whoever shall ask a petition of any god or man for thirty days, save of you, O king, he shall be cast into the den of lions.
About this entry
At a glance — auto-summarized from this page’s data, not written by a person. Every figure links to its source below. This summary describes the numbers; it doesn’t interpret them.
At its core, פחה (pechâh) means “governor.” Its uses cluster heavily in Ezra (60% of all occurrences). Spanning 10 verses in 2 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. Scripture first uses it in Ezra 5:3. The King James Version usually renders it “governor,” while modern versions prefer “governor of” (unfoldingWord Literal Text) — see the renderings breakdown. Dig into 10-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H6347 catalogs a Hebrew word from the Hebrew Old Testament.
These counts are not copied from any lexicon or concordance. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged Hebrew Old Testament. What Lemma adds →
- 10
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 10 distinct verses.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,342
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,342 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 10 occurrences in the concordance →
By traditional corpus
Conventional, traditional groupings — biblical authorship is debated, so this is a traditional corpus grouping, not an authorship claim. Each share is this word’s portion of its verses in that division of the Hebrew canon. Each figure is a share of the word’s 10 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 10 verses · 100%
How translations render this word
Counts come from each version’s own published word-to-Strong’s tagging or interlinear alignment — an approximate guide to how each version renders this word, not a word-level alignment the data otherwise carries. Because each total is that version’s own tagged count, the per-version totals vary from one another and need not match the appearance or distinct-verse counts above. These counts may also differ from a printed concordance because Lemma counts each distinctly tagged rendering and does not collapse phrase taggings into a single head-word total. This is a fixed set of word-tagged versions (KJV, ASV, BSB, ULT) and does not change with the reading translation you choose elsewhere. Each version’s license is shown beside its name below (and on Sources).
- King James Version: Governor 5×, Captains 4×
- American Standard Version: Governors 4×, Tattenai 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Governor 5×, Governors 4×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Governor of 5×, Governors 4×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H6347 across 10 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H6347 across 10 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H6347 across 10 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H6347 across 10 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Senses in BDB
The 1 sense BDB distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency or importance). The full entry — with sub-senses — is in the Lexicon Entry tab.
- governor
Word origin
n.m. 2 K 18:24 governor (loan-word from Assyrian paḫâti [abbrev. from bêl paḫâti], lord of a district; cf. perhaps Old Aramaic פחי governor);—abs. הַפּ׳ Ne 5:14, cstr. פַּחַ֫ת Hg 1:1 +, פַּחַת־ 2:21; sf. פֶּחָתֶ֑ךָ Mal 1:8, פֶּחֶם Ne 5:14 (but read prob. פֶּחָה); pl. abs. פַּחוֹת 1 K 20:24 +; cstr. פַּחוֹת 10:15 = 2 Ch 9:14, פַּחֲווֹת Ezr 8:36 +; sf. פַּחוֹתֶיהָ Je 51:28, 57;—as Assyrian captains 2 K 18:24 = Is 36:9 (פ׳, cf. StaZAW vi (1886), 182 al.), cf. Ez 23:6, 12; of Babylon Je 51:23, 57, and Bab. allies Ez 23:23; of Media Je 51:28; Pers. governor of עֵבֶר הַנָּהָר, i.e. in Pal., Hg 1:1, 14; 2:2, 21; Ne 2:7, 9 + 8 times; Pers. satraps in gen. Est 3:12; 8:9; 9:3; applied (by late writer) to Sol.’s governors 1 K 10:15 = 2 Ch 9:14; Benhadad’s captains 1 K 20:24 (del. v., Sta al.).—cf. Biblical Aramaic
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from פחה (pechâh) (H6346) — governor.
Jastrow Dictionary
A second Hebrew/Aramaic lexicon for comparison, covering Aramaic and post-biblical (Talmudic, Targumic, Midrashic) usage that the biblical-Hebrew BDB does not. Matched by lemma rather than by Strong’s number, so a lemma may carry more than one Jastrow headword (shown separately below), and the entries cover usage well beyond the Bible.
פֶּחָה
- (b. h.; = בעל פ׳, v. Del. Assyr. Handw. p. 519; פחה to be large, grandee, high officer, governor. Y. Bets. IV, 62ᶜ (R. Ḥiya addressing Rab) בן פי׳ אחריהם son of nobility, follow them (the example of thy kindred)!—Pl. פַּחוֹת. Bicc. III, 3 הפ׳ הסגנים וכ׳ the grandees, the chiefs, and the treasurers (of the Temple) went out to meet them. Num. R. s. 14; a. e.
פֶּחָה ²
- , pl. פַּחְוָותָא ch. same. Targ. II Chr. IX, 14 ed. Beck (oth. ed. שלטוני).
A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (Marcus Jastrow; London, Luzac, 1903) — Public Domain. Digitized via Sefaria. Digitized via Sefaria. Full attribution on Sources.
Forms in the corpus
The 8 distinct written forms H6347 takes in the Hebrew Bible, most frequent first — each parse links to that state’s occurrences in the concordance. Hebrew forms include their vowel points and cantillation, so a single lemma takes many written forms.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| וּֽ/פַחֲוָתָ֡/א | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 3:2 | 2 |
| פַּחַ֧ת | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Ezra 5:3 | 2 |
| וּ/פַחֲוָתָ/א֮ | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 3:27 | 1 |
| וּ/פַחֲוָתָ֔/א | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 6:7 | 1 |
| פֶחָ֖ה | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Ezra 5:14 | 1 |
| פַּחַ֣ת | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Ezra 5:6 | 1 |
| פַּחַ֤ת | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Ezra 6:7 | 1 |
| פַּחַ֨ת | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Ezra 6:6 | 1 |
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 10 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 10 Hebrew verses it occurs in. You can read those verses in Greek by switching the Old Testament edition to the Septuagint.
Read these verses in the Septuagint
This is a verse-level parallel only — the same verses exist in both the Hebrew and Greek Old Testaments. No word-level Hebrew↔Greek correspondence is claimed: the data carries no such alignment, so no Greek word is shown as this Hebrew word’s translation. Coverage is not total — the Septuagint omits the deuterocanon and renumbers the Psalms, so some Hebrew verses have no direct Greek parallel.
