פֶּ֫לֶג
pe.leg
stream
Lexicon Entry
Lexicon data from STEPBible TIPNR, Tyndale House, Cambridge. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
What Original Readers Understood
Supported# H6388 (Peleg): A Stream in Biblical Geography The Hebrew word *peleg* denotes a stream—a body of flowing water smaller than a major river. With ten occurrences in the biblical text, this term appears regularly enough to indicate it was a standard vocabulary item for describing the landscape of ancient Israel and its surroundings. The word's consistent designation as "stream" across biblical uses suggests a stable, recognizable natural feature that ancient readers would have understood as distinct from larger waterways. The moderate frequency of *peleg* in Scripture reflects the practical importance of streams in the arid and semi-arid environment of the Levant. Such watercourses would have served essential functions—providing water for drinking, irrigation, and travel—making them noteworthy enough to mention in biblical narratives and descriptions. The straightforward definition suggests the term carried no metaphorical or specialized religious significance; it simply named a geographical reality that biblical writers needed to reference when describing locations, journeys, or land features.
Source data & methodology
Occurrences in Scripture
10 total occurrences across the text
when my steps were washed with butter, and the rock poured out streams of oil for me,
Psalms 1:3He will be like a tree planted by the streams of water, that produces its fruit in its season, whose leaf also does not wither. Whatever he does shall prosper.
Psalms 46:4There is a river, the streams of which make the city of God glad, the holy place of the tents of the Most High.
Psalms 65:9You visit the earth, and water it. You greatly enrich it. The river of God is full of water. You provide them grain, for so you have ordained it.
Psalms 119:136Streams of tears run down my eyes, because they don’t observe your law.
Proverbs 5:16Should your springs overflow in the streets, streams of water in the public squares?
Proverbs 21:1The king’s heart is in Yahweh’s hand like the watercourses. He turns it wherever he desires.
Isaiah 32:2A man shall be as a hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the storm, as streams of water in a dry place, as the shade of a large rock in a weary land.
Isaiah 30:25There will be brooks and streams of water on every lofty mountain and on every high hill in the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall.
Lamentations 3:48My eye runs down with streams of water, for the destruction of the daughter of my people.