pe'orah

• These are the boughs that living things move into. Birds nest among the great cedar's limbs and wild animals give birth in their shelter, and once the tree has been felled the same animals come and settle on those boughs where they lie.Ezk 31:6Ezk 31:13
• This is the growth a blade is aimed at. God lops off "the bough" with terrifying force, and when the giant cedar comes down its boughs are left snapped across every ravine in the land. Where the other word turns up in a scene of ruin it is only part of a phrase for total loss, not the limb being taken off.Isa 10:33Ezk 31:12

• Both name the leafy limbs a plant spreads out, and neither is tied to one kind of plant. Each is used of a vine as readily as of a tree: the vine brought out of Egypt spreads branches like the mightiest cedars, and the low, sprawling vine of the parable sends out its boughs.Psa 80:10Ezk 17:6
• For both, the limbs are how the size and splendor of a tree get measured. Assyria stands as a cedar beautiful in its branches, and in the same poem no plane tree in the garden of God can match that cedar's boughs.Ezk 31:3Ezk 31:8
• Both are what plenty of water produces. A vine is planted by abundant streams precisely so that it will make branches, and the cedar's boughs grow long because so much water feeds it.Ezk 17:8Ezk 31:5

• This is the branch that goes with fruit. Wherever a plant or a land is doing what it should, branches and fruit arrive in the same breath: a vine set in good soil so that it will make branches and bear fruit, a cedar shoot that will lift up branches and produce fruit, and the mountains of Israel promised that they will put out their branches and give their fruit to the people coming home. The other word never appears beside fruit at all.Ezk 17:8Ezk 17:23Ezk 36:8
• Only this word names a branch that a person cuts and carries. At the autumn festival, worshipers gather leafy boughs of real trees and hold them through the week, and that is the one place either word shows up in an instruction for daily life rather than inside a poem about a nation.Lev 23:40
• It fills out the fixed phrase for total ruin. Naming the bottom and the top of a plant together, "neither root nor branch", is a way of saying that nothing whatever survives, and the other word is never used in a paired phrase like it.Mal 4:1

• Only this word is used of something other than the towering cedar. In Ezekiel's other picture, a low vine planted by the water sends out its growth toward the one who planted it, so the word covers modest new limbs and not only the huge ones.Ezk 17:6
• Only this word carries on after the tree has been cut down. Its limbs fall across the mountains and lie broken in the valleys, and then the animals of the field settle on them where they have fallen.Ezk 31:12Ezk 31:13
• Only this word is found outside Ezekiel, and there it is singular, naming the whole leafy top of the tree as one mass, the crown that gets lopped away when the forest is cleared.Isa 10:33

• Both name the limbs of one and the same tree, and Ezekiel sets them in neighboring lines rather than choosing between them: the birds nest in the limbs named by the first word, and the animals give birth under the limbs named by the second.Ezk 31:6
• Both serve as the measure of that tree's greatness when it is set beside the other trees of the garden, each matched against a rival species that could not equal it.Ezk 31:8

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• This is the word for the boughs that shelter other living things. While the cedar stands, every wild animal of the field gives birth beneath these boughs, and once the tree has fallen the same animals come to them where they lie.Ezk 31:6Ezk 31:13
• It carries the comparison against every rival tree: no plane tree in the garden of God had boughs to match these, which is how the poem says that nothing anywhere grew like this cedar.Ezk 31:8
• It is also the word for what is lost when the tree comes down. Foreigners fell the cedar and its boughs lie snapped in every ravine of the land, and in Isaiah the tall trees have their leafy tops lopped away with terrifying force.Ezk 31:12Isa 10:33
• It is not tied to towering trees at all. A low, sprawling vine puts out this same growth, so the word fits a humble plant as readily as the greatest cedar in the story.Ezk 17:6
• It ranges across a whole story and beyond it, describing the tree while it grows, while it towers, and after it is cut down, and turning up in Isaiah as well; the other word never leaves the single line it appears in.Ezk 31:6Ezk 31:12Isa 10:33

• Both name the limbs of one and the same cedar, and they do it in a single line: the tree outgrew every tree of the field, its boughs multiplied and its boughs grew long, all of it fed by plentiful water. Ezekiel gives each word its own verb, so he clearly heard them as two words rather than one, but he is describing one crown.Ezk 31:5
• Neither one is the everyday Hebrew word for a branch. Both are rare words kept for picture language, where a tree stands for a great power, and English versions render both of them "boughs" in the very same verse, so a reader cannot tell from the English which word is underneath.Ezk 31:5

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• Only this word steps outside Ezekiel's oracles, and there it is one limb taken off at a stroke: Isaiah pictures the LORD lopping off "the bough" with terrifying force. The other word never appears as a single limb marked out for cutting.Isa 10:33
• In the poem about the giant cedar this is the word for what plenty of water produces: the tree towered over every other tree of the field, and its boughs stretched out long because of the many streams feeding it.Ezk 31:5
• It carries the comparison against every rival tree. No cypress and no plane tree in the garden of God could match these boughs, which is how the poem states that nothing in the world grew like this cedar.Ezk 31:8
• The same boughs frame the tree both standing and fallen. While it towered, every bird of the sky nested in them; once it was cut down, the birds settled on the wreck and the animals of the field came to those same boughs.Ezk 31:6Ezk 31:13

• These two run closer than any other pair of Hebrew words for branches, and Ezekiel proves it by using both of the same plant in a single sentence: the low vine turned its branches toward the eagle and put out its boughs. Nothing in that verse marks the two off from each other.Ezk 17:6
• Both name what gets destroyed when the plant is cut down. In one line the branches of the great cedar fall on the mountains and in the valleys, and its boughs lie broken in every ravine of the land.Ezk 31:12
• Neither word is ever about gardening. Both belong to picture language in which a plant stands for a nation or its king, so the vine and the cedar are really a puppet king and the power of Egypt.Ezk 17:6Ezk 31:12
• Because they overlap so heavily, English versions trade "branches" and "boughs" back and forth between them, and a reader cannot tell from the English which word is underneath.Ezk 31:12Ezk 17:6

• This is the word for a vine's trailing shoots. One vine bends its roots and its branches toward the eagle who planted it, hoping to be watered, and another vine stands out for the sheer number of its branches. Outside the one verse where the two words appear together, the other word is never used of a vine.Ezk 17:7Ezk 19:11
• It is not tied to one towering tree. Jeremiah uses it of a fine olive whose branches are ruined when God sets fire to it, and Ezekiel uses it of a low spreading vine and of a young cedar planted on a high mountain where birds shelter in the shade.Jer 11:16Ezk 17:7Ezk 17:23
• Every use names the whole leafy spread belonging to one particular plant, always "its branches" and always more than one, never a single limb picked out on its own.Ezk 17:23Ezk 31:7Ezk 31:9