StrongerBible

peleg

פֶּלֶג

HebrewH6388“stream, channel, ...”

Appears 10 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Job 29:6Psa 1:3Psa 46:4(5)Psa 65:9(10)Psa 119:136Pro 5:16Pro 21:1Isa 30:25Isa 32:2Lam 3:48
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradePEH-legnoun

What peleg means

a channel of flowing liquid: a branch of water split off from a larger river to carry and distribute it.

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled

This word names a watercourse that has been split off from a bigger river to lead water somewhere it would not otherwise reach. The clearest picture is an irrigation channel: a small, branching ditch that an orchard keeper digs from a river so the water flows where the trees need it. That is why one proverb can compare a king's heart to such a channel in God's hand, since a person can open or close a hand-dug channel and send the water wherever they wish, something no wild river allows.

Notice that the heart of the word is the channel itself, not the water. The Bible can speak of a channel running with oil from a rock, or with tears, just as easily as with water. The most common pairing simply adds the word for "water" (streams of water), but that pairing is a habit, not a rule built into the word. The picture is always the flowing course that carries and divides whatever is poured into it.

From there the word does rich work in poetry.

  • It pictures the tree of the godly person planted beside steady channels of water, never running dry.
  • It pictures branches of a river gladdening the city of God, and a heaven-fed channel that God keeps full to water the earth.
  • And it pictures the restored future as parched land suddenly running with streams.

In each case the same idea carries the image: a course cut to bring life-giving flow where it is needed.

Job 29:6Psa 1:3Psa 46:4(5)Psa 65:9(10)Psa 119:136Pro 5:16Pro 21:1Isa 30:25Isa 32:2Lam 3:48

What scholars say about peleg

The standard lexica converge on a narrow core: BDB glosses peleg as a (cleft) channel or artificial canal; HALOT gives watercourse, irrigation channel, canal, and explicitly distinguishes it from nahar (river proper), nachal (wadi), and yubal (river-stream), reading peleg as a derivative, branching channel; Gesenius (18th ed., Donner/Renz) renders Bewasserungskanal and traces it to the idea of dividing; DCH alone declines to choose between natural and artificial. The noun belongs to a root pl-g ("to split, divide"), and the comparative Semitic evidence is unusually clean: Akkadian palgu denotes a small, branching, man-dug canal (CAD P 62-64; AHw 814), set in a hierarchy below naru (great river/main canal); Arabic falaj is an irrigation channel that exists precisely to divide flowing water into shares; Ge'ez falaga means "to flow, gush forth," preserving the water sense without the "divide" overlay. On this evidence Fronzaroli (1968) and Kogan (2008) argue for a Proto-Semitic primary noun *palg- ("torrent, channel, ditch") whose verbal counterpart meant "flow/channel off" before specializing into "divide" in Central Semitic. Job 29:6's palgey shamen (streams of oil) is lexically decisive that the noun is not water-specific; the default water association comes from the typical construct phrase palgey mayim, not from the noun itself. Schunck (TDOT 11:546-47) notes the word's place in Zion temple-stream theology (Ps 46:5; 65:10), feeding into Ezekiel 47, Joel 4:18, and Zechariah 14:8. Whether the noun "channel" and the verb "divide" are one root or two homonyms is a lexicographic convenience in HALOT (I pl-g verb vs II pl-g noun) rather than a claim of historical separation; BDB, Skinner, Speiser, Hamilton, and Wenham treat verb and noun as one etymological family, with Job 38:25 (the verb "cleaves" a channel for the torrent) as the decisive link. The Septuagint translated context-sensitively, rendering palgey mayim in Psalm 1:3 with the hydrologically precise diexodous (channels, outlets), elsewhere ploughing other words (hormema, potamos, apheseis).

In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), s.v. פלג Ilexicon
  • HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner-Stamm), s.v. פלגlexicon
  • W. Gesenius, Hebraisches und Aramaisches Handworterbuch uber das AT, 18th ed., ed. H. Donner and J. Renz (2013), s.v.lexicon
  • D. J. A. Clines, ed., Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. VI, s.v. פלג Ilexicon
  • K.-D. Schunck, "פלג," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT) 11:546-47dictionary
  • M. V. Fox, Proverbs 10-31 (Anchor Yale Bible 18B, 2009)commentary
  • B. K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs 15-31 (NICOT, 2005)commentary
  • D. J. A. Clines, Job 21-37 (WBC 18A, 2006)commentary
  • J. F. D. Creach, "Like a Tree Planted by the Temple Stream: The Portrait of the Righteous in Psalm 1:3," CBQ 61 (1999): 34-46article
  • L. Kogan, "On Proto-Semitic Deverbal Derivation," Aula Orientalis 26 (2008): 91-115article

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of פֶּלֶג

m p construct

פַּלְגֵי

Job 29:6, Psa 1:3, Psa 119:136, Pro 5:16, Pro 21:1, Isa 32:2, Lam 3:48

m p absolute

פְּלָגִים

Isa 30:25

m p construct

פְּלָגָיו

Psa 46:4

m s construct

פֶּלֶג

Psa 65:9