פָּרַח
pa.rach
to break out
Lexicon Entry
Lexicon data from STEPBible TIPNR, Tyndale House, Cambridge. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
What Original Readers Understood
Supported# Analytical Synthesis of פָּרַח (parach) The Hebrew verb פָּרַח carries the fundamental meaning "to break out," describing an action of sudden emergence or eruption. This physical sense of breaking forth appears across its nine biblical occurrences, establishing it as a straightforward verb for abrupt, forceful emergence. The word suggests not a gradual process but rather a swift, often dramatic breaking through a boundary or constraint. Given its limited nine occurrences in the Hebrew Bible, this verb occupies a specialized semantic niche. Rather than being a common everyday term, it functions as a precise descriptor for specific moments when something breaks forth—whether in concrete physical situations or in more figurative contexts. The rarity of the term suggests biblical writers selected it deliberately when they needed to express the particular quality of sudden, forceful emergence rather than more routine appearances or movements. The significance of this word lies in its specificity: when biblical authors chose פָּרַח, they were encoding a sense of eruption or breakthrough into their narrative. Without access to the specific contexts of its nine uses, the available data indicates this verb served biblical Hebrew as a technical term for depicting moments of breaking out rather than functioning as a general-purpose verb for emergence.
Source data & methodology
Occurrences in Scripture
9 total occurrences across the text
It shall become small dust over all the land of Egypt, and shall be a boils and blisters breaking out on man and on animal, throughout all the land of Egypt.”
Exodus 9:10They took ashes of the furnace, and stood before Pharaoh; and Moses sprinkled it up toward the sky; and it became boils and blisters breaking on man and on animal.
Leviticus 13:12“If the leprosy breaks out all over the skin, and the leprosy covers all the skin of the infected person from his head even to his feet, as far as it appears to the priest,
Leviticus 13:12“If the leprosy breaks out all over the skin, and the leprosy covers all the skin of the infected person from his head even to his feet, as far as it appears to the priest,
Leviticus 13:20The priest shall examine it. Behold, if its appearance is deeper than the skin, and its hair has turned white, then the priest shall pronounce him unclean. It is the plague of leprosy. It has broken out in the boil.
Leviticus 13:25then the priest shall examine it; and behold, if the hair in the bright spot has turned white, and its appearance is deeper than the skin, it is leprosy. It has broken out in the burning, and the priest shall pronounce him unclean. It is the plague of leprosy.
Leviticus 13:39then the priest shall examine them. Behold, if the bright spots on the skin of their body are a dull white, it is a harmless rash. It has broken out in the skin. He is clean.
Leviticus 13:42But if a reddish-white plague is in the bald head or the bald forehead, it is leprosy breaking out in his bald head or his bald forehead.
Leviticus 14:43“If the plague comes again, and breaks out in the house after he has taken out the stones, and after he has scraped the house, and after it was plastered,