to meet: to come face to face with a person or thing, whether by chance on a road, in welcome, or in sudden attack
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
At its heart this verb names a simple event: two come face to face. It does not say in advance whether the meeting is welcome, accidental, or deadly. That coloring comes from who is doing the meeting and why, which is why one word can cover a brother's reunion, a stranger's chance encounter on a road, and a bear falling on its prey.
Three shades run through its uses:
a plain encounter, where one person simply comes upon another while traveling
a violent encounter, where the one who meets you means to do you harm
a converging, where two parties come together and are set side by side, often to make a point about them both
The last shade gives the word its memorable poetry. When love and faithfulness "meet together" (Psalm 85:10), or when "the rich and the poor meet together" because the LORD made them both (Proverbs 22:2), the verb puts two things in one place so the reader weighs them against each other.
Nuances
1ato meet or come upon someone, often while traveling
Gen 32:17(18)Gen 33:8Exo 4:271Sa 25:202Sa 2:13*Job 5:14*Isa 34:14Jer 41:6
1bto fall upon someone with deadly, hostile force
Exo 4:24Pro 17:12Hos 13:8
1cto meet one another, to come together as two parties converging
often names a sudden or unplanned coming-upon, and can be an outright assaultExo 4:24Hos 13:8
Both
both simply describe two parties coming face to faceExo 4:27Gen 32:17
Only meet
the English "meet" suggests something planned or friendly, a get-together, which this word does not require
“meet together”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“encounter”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“fall upon”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How pagash differs from similar Hebrew words
פָּגַעפגע reaches or touches its object and can shade into striking it, pleading with it, or arriving at a border; פגשׁ stays the plain face-to-face meeting.
Carries a violent sense the other word never has: to fall upon someone and strike them down, the standard verb for an ordered execution or a deadly assault.1Ki 2:25Jdg 8:212Sa 1:15
Develops a sense of pressing a request on someone: to plead with, urge, or stand between God and people to intercede for them.Isa 53:6Isa 59:16Jer 7:16
Used geographically of a border running up against a place, where one territory touches or reaches another.Jos 19:11Jos 19:22Jos 19:34
קָרָאקרא (and its idiom "to meet") is usually a deliberate going out to receive or confront someone; פגשׁ is the encounter that happens, whether sought or not.
Often an incidental or chance meeting, two parties falling in with each other, frequently of animals or in proverbs about who runs into whom.Pro 17:12Pro 22:2Pro 29:13
Used of fierce or hostile creatures coming upon someone, the meeting of a beast that attacks.Hos 13:8Isa 34:14
Both
Both name meeting someone on a road or journey, the encounter of travelers along the way.Exo 4:271Sa 25:20
The standard word for purposefully going out to meet an arriving person, the formal welcome or reception of a traveler or dignitary.Gen 14:17Gen 18:2Exo 18:7
Used of an event or calamity befalling a person, something that happens to someone rather than two parties meeting.Gen 42:4Gen 49:1
קָרָהקרה frames a meeting as something that befalls or happens by chance; פגשׁ names the concrete act of two coming face to face.
Names the concrete act of coming face to face with someone: Aaron goes out and meets Moses, Abigail's donkey brings her down to meet David.Exo 4:271Sa 25:20
Often the meeting of a hostile or dangerous confrontation, one party running straight into another: a bear robbed of her cubs, wild desert beasts converging.Pro 17:12Hos 13:8Isa 34:14
Used of two parties encountering one another as equals or opposites who converge in the same spot: rich and poor, the two bands of soldiers who sit down together at the pool.Pro 22:22Sa 2:13
Both
Both can be rendered "to meet" of one party encountering another, and both are used of a divine meeting: God meets Moses on the road, and God meets Balaam.Exo 4:24Num 23:16
Frames the encounter as chance or befalling: something simply happens to a person, as when Ruth's lot fell on Boaz's field or the Amalekites fell upon Israel on the road.Rut 2:3Deu 25:182Sa 1:6
Reaches beyond a personal meeting to whatever befalls someone, good or ill, so it names events and outcomes and not only face-to-face contact.Gen 42:29Gen 44:29Dan 10:14
Can name the impersonal event or lot that falls alike on everyone, with no meeting between persons at all.Ecc 2:14Ecc 9:11
Used of God arranging a meeting from behind the scenes, causing an encounter to fall out as He wills for Balaam or for Abraham's servant.Num 23:4Gen 24:12
pagash in the other biblical languages
συναντάωGreek“to meet”συναντάω is the ordinary Greek verb for falling in with someone along the way, close to the plain encounter sense of פגשׁ.
Names the sudden or hostile encounter, a meeting that threatens, where the one met comes as an attacker or a danger.Exo 4:24Pro 17:12Hos 13:8
Describes two parties converging as a mutual pair, the "X and Y meet together" idiom, where neither is simply the one who goes out to the other.Psa 85:10Pro 22:2Pro 29:13
Both
Both name the plain act of one person coming face to face with another, whether gone out to meet them or come upon them in passing.Act 10:25Luk 9:37Exo 4:27Gen 32:17
Carries the flavor of falling in with someone as paths cross on a journey, an encounter that simply happens along the way rather than a summons or a deliberate going out.Luk 22:10Heb 7:1
Stretches to a figurative "befall," of the events that will meet a person, so that circumstances, not people, are what one runs into.Act 20:22
ἀπαντάωGreek“to meet”ἀπαντάω is to go out and meet someone, leaning toward the purposeful reception that פגשׁ does not by itself imply.
Covers a sudden or hostile encounter, an attack or dangerous confrontation, not a welcome.Exo 4:24Pro 17:12Hos 13:8
Covers an unsought, incidental meeting, and even the figurative coming-together of two parties or qualities that simply find themselves side by side.Pro 22:2Pro 29:13Psa 85:10
Both
Both describe two people coming face to face while travelling or on the move, one party going out and meeting the other.Exo 4:27Mrk 14:13
Names going out or coming toward a person on purpose in order to meet or receive them, a directed approach rather than a chance crossing of paths.Mrk 14:13Luk 17:12
It covers the meeting nobody arranged, where two parties simply run into each other on the road. Abigail rides down under the cover of the hill and finds David and his men already coming down toward her, and Esau asks about the herds he has run into without knowing whose they were or why they were there.1Sa 25:20Gen 33:8
It can name the attack itself, so that the one met is prey rather than a traveller being greeted. The LORD meets Moses at the night stop and seeks to put him to death, God warns that he will fall on his people like a bear robbed of her cubs, and a proverb says it is safer to run into that bear than into a fool set on his folly.Exo 4:24Hos 13:8Pro 17:12
It is used of things and whole classes of people coming together, not only of one person walking up to another. Love and faithfulness meet each other, rich and poor meet as people the LORD alike made, and wild desert creatures meet among the ruins.Psa 85:10Pro 22:2Isa 34:14
Both
English Bibles render both words "meet", and the Greek word is the New Testament's nearest counterpart to the Old Testament picture of two people coming face to face on a journey and greeting each other. Aaron walks into the wilderness and meets Moses at the mountain of God and kisses him, and the risen Jesus meets the women on their way from the tomb and greets them.Exo 4:27Mat 28:9
Both can carry a hostile meeting between armed parties, where two sides come up against each other in the open. Joab's men and Abner's men go out and meet at the pool of Gibeon, and Jesus tells of a king who first sits down to weigh whether he can go out and meet the king marching against him.2Sa 2:13Luk 14:31
It describes leaving where you are and travelling out toward someone who is already on the way to you, so the meeting is arranged by the person who sets out. Martha hears that Jesus is coming and goes out of the house to reach him, a crowd walks out of the city because word of what he had done has already come to them, and a father's servants come out along the road to bring him news.Jhn 11:20Jhn 12:18Jhn 4:51
Even when the one doing the meeting is frightening, the Greek word reports the closing of the distance rather than any blow struck. The men from the tombs come straight out to Jesus as he steps ashore, and the slave girl who tells fortunes keeps coming out to Paul and his companions on their way to prayer, but in each case the word names the approach itself.Mat 8:28Mrk 5:2Act 16:16
What scholars say about pagash
The lexicons (HALOT, BDB, DCH) treat פגשׁ as a single verb meaning "to meet, encounter," attested in the qal, niphal, and once in the piel (Job 5:14). The qal takes a direct object and ranges across neutral encounters (Gen 32:18 [Eng 32:17]; 33:8; Exod 4:27;1 Sam 25:20;Jer 41:6; of animals, Isa 34:14) through to hostile ones, where the subject bears down on its object (Exod 4:24, with Yahweh; Hos 13:8 and Prov 17:12, of a bereaved bear). The niphal is reciprocal, "to meet one another," and clusters in wisdom and poetic texts that pair contrasting parties or personified qualities (Ps 85:11 [Eng 85:10]; Prov 22:2; 29:13). BDB and HALOT locate the hostility of the deadly encounters in context rather than in the verb itself, which remains semantically neutral. The root is common to Northwest Semitic and shows no competing homonym.