פָּלַח
to cleave
‘to cleave’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Piel verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Piel
- An intensive or resultative active stem. Here: ‘cleave open’
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
Form
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 2 times (40%)
- Verb, Piel, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (20%)
- Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Plural 1 time (20%)
- Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 1 time (20%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 5 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H6398 appears — 5 distinct verses across 4 books. 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.
2 Kings 1 verse
Job 2 verses
Psalms 1 verse
Proverbs 1 verse
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, פלח (pâlach) means “to cleave.” The Hebrew Bible uses it only 5 verses. Its uses concentrate in Job (40% of all occurrences). Scripture first uses it in 2 Kings 4:39. As a verb its force shifts by stem, across 2 stems (Qal, Piel, and more). Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H6398 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 →
- 5
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 5 distinct verses.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #3,337
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,337 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 5 occurrences in the concordance →
By section of the Old Testament
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 5 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 4 verses · 80%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 1 verse · 20%
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: Asunder 1×, He cleaveth 1×, One cutteth 1×
- American Standard Version: Asunder 1×, He cleaveth 1×, One ploweth 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Bring forth 1×, Cut them up 1×, He pierces 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: He pierces 1×, He sliced 1×, Splits 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H6398 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H6398 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H6398 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H6398 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Senses in the full BDB
Hebrew verbs can shift meaning by stem (binyan): Qal is the basic action, Niphal is often passive or reflexive, Piel often intensifies or makes it factitive, and Hiphil is typically causative. The senses below are grouped under the stem BDB assigns to each.
What do BDB’s symbols mean?
BDB uses these scholarly abbreviations:
| Symbol | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 𝔊 | the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation, LXX) |
| 𝔙 | the Vulgate (the Latin translation) |
| 𝔖 | the Syriac version (the Peshitta) |
| 𝔗 | the Targum (the Aramaic translation) |
| ψ | the Psalms |
| √ | root (the underlying root or stem) |
| ‖ | parallel passage (a synonymous or contrasted parallel) |
| † | the dagger: every passage where the word occurs is cited |
The 4 senses and sub-senses the full Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency), with BDB’s own verbatim wording and sub-sense lettering. Shown in Hebrew script with BDB’s own scholarly abbreviations. The condensed entry is in the Lexicon Entry tab. See also the Forms in the corpus table below.
Qal
- Pt. פֹּלֵהַ ψ 141:7 of cleaving, ploughing, בָּאָרֶץ (‖בקע). e.g. Psalms 141:7
Piel
- Impf.
- 1. cleave open, through, 3 ms. יְפַלַּח of piercing kidneys Jb 16:13, liver Pr 7:23 (both fig.); וַיְּפַלַּח אֶל 2 K 4:39 of cutting up (fruit) into pot. e.g. Job 16:13
- 2. cause to cleave open, 3 fpl. יַלְדֵיהֶן תְּפַלַּחְנָה Jb 39:3 of animals bringing forth young, read perhaps תְּפַלַּטְנָה (21:10). e.g. Job 39:3
Senses from the full Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon (Brown, Driver, Briggs; Oxford 1906 — public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). Full attribution on Sources.
Word origin
vb. cleave (Arabic فَلَحَ cleave; Aramaic פְּלַח (usually), ܦܠܰܚ, are till, work, serve [= עָבַד]);—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Origin: a primitive root
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.
פָּלַח
- (b. h.) to split; to dig, till; to cut out. Ex. R. s. 27 על מנת לפוֹלְחָהּ will you take this field with the condition that you will till it?; a. e.—2) to work for, serve, v. פּוֹלֵחַ.—3) to worship. Tosef. Ab. Zar. I, 4 אינו אסור אלא לפוֹלְחִין בלבד it is forbidden to deal with those only who worship (on the Calendæ), contrad. to עושין who observe it as a holiday; (Ab. Zar. 8ᵃ לעובריה; Y. ib. I, 39ᶜ top לפלחין בה, Chald.).
פְּלַח
- 1. to till, work. Targ. Ex. XX, 9 (Y. ed. Vien. Pa.). Targ. Prov. X, 5 (h. text אגר). Targ. Gen. IV, 12; a. fr.—3) to serve (man or deity); to worship. Ib. XIV, 4. Ib. XVII, 1 (h. text התהלך); a. fr.—Y. Ab. Zar. I, 39ᶜ top לפָלְחִין בה, v. preced. Ib. נשי דפלחין כפלחין the wives of those who worship (on the Roman festivals) are to be treated like those who worship. Ib. כפלחין היא (not כפלחון), v. שָׁמְרַיִין. Bab. Ab. Zar. 11ᵃ פָּלְחֵי בה לע"א they worship the idol on it (the anniversary of death). Ib. 22ᵇ אם איתא דפַלְחֵיה וכ׳ if he had worshipped it, he would not sell it. Snh. 102ᵇ מ"כ פַּלְחִיתוּ לע"א why do you worship idols? Gitt. 57ᵇ פְּלַח לע"א worship (bow down) to &c.!; a. fr.—4) פ׳ ב־ [to work with,] to compel to serve or work, to subject. Targ. Lev. XXV, 39. Targ. O. ib. 43. Targ. O. Gen. XV, 14; a. fr.—5) to split, distribute. Ab. Zar. 18ᵃ bot. פלגא פְלַח ופלגא וכ׳ one half distribute (as bribe), and one half be thine.
- same, to dig, till, work. Targ. Y. Ex. XX, 9 (v. supra). Targ. Ps. CXLI, 7. Targ. Is. XXXII, 17; a. e.
- to make work, to subject, rule. Targ. O. Ex. I, 13. Targ. I Kings V, 4; a. fr.
- 1. to be worked, tilled; (with ב) to be worked with. Targ. Deut. XXI, 3. Targ. O. ib. 4. Targ. Ez. XXXVI, 9; a. e.
- 2. to break through, be born. Targ. Job XXXIX, 3.
פֶּלַח
- c. (b. h.; preced. wds.) segment, slice; (sub. רכב) millstone. Yalk. Num. 787 הכהו בגוש … או בפ׳ של דבילה if he killed a man with a lump of salt or a slice of a fig-cake.—Pl. פְּלָחוֹת, constr. פִּלְחֵי. Dem. V, 5 פ׳ דבלה slices of &c. Yalk. l. c. שיכו אותו … ובפ׳ that they may kill him (the murderer) with stones, arrows or millstones.—V. פֶּלֶךְ.
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 5 distinct written forms H6398 takes in the Hebrew Bible, most frequent first — each parse links to that stem’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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| וַ/יְפַלַּ֛ח | Verb, Piel, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | 2 Kings 4:39 | 1 |
| יְפַלַּ֣ח | Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Job 16:13 | 1 |
| יְפַלַּ֪ח | Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Proverbs 7:23 | 1 |
| פֹלֵ֣חַ | Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Psalms 141:7 | 1 |
| תְּפַלַּ֑חְנָה | Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Plural | Job 39:3 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H6398, grouped by Strong’s listed origin. These share a root / origin per the lexicon — not necessarily a shared meaning. Each links to that word’s own entry.
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 5 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 5 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.
