to break out with a shout, to have joy burst out of you as sound.
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
This is not a soft word. It pictures something splitting open so that what was bottled up inside comes bursting out. In seven of its eight appearances what comes out is noise: a shout of joy loud enough that the prophet calls on mountains, forests, and the ruins of a city to make it.
The joy itself usually belongs to the word standing next to it, a noun meaning a ringing cry (רִנָּה). Isaiah and the psalmist pair the outburst with the matching verb for that ringing cry (רָנַן), with loud shouting (רוּעַ), and once with a shrill cry of delight (צָהַל). This word supplies the suddenness; the words beside it supply the music.
Every use sits in a scene where rescue has just been announced:
The whole earth goes quiet when the tyrant falls, and then breaks out singing (Isaiah 14:7).
The heavens and the mountains are told to do it because God has bought his people back (Isaiah 44:23).
The ruins of Jerusalem are told to do it because God has comforted his people (Isaiah 52:9).
So the word belongs to the moment when good news lands and cannot be kept quiet. It is never used of ordinary cheerfulness or of a song someone sits down to compose.
Nuances
1ato break out with a ringing cry, where the cry itself is named as the thing that comes bursting out.
Isa 14:7Isa 44:23Isa 49:13Isa 54:1Isa 55:12
1bto burst out with no cry named, standing on its own among other calls to sing and shout.
Psa 98:4Isa 52:9
2
to break something up into pieces, to chop it apart.
TranslatabilityDirectCertaintyStrong
One verse keeps the word's plain, physical force. Micah accuses Israel's rulers of treating their own people as meat: they strip off the skin, chop the bones apart, and drop the pieces into a cooking pot (Micah 3:3). Nothing bursts out in song here. Something is broken up.
The ordinary word for shattering (שָׁבַר) covers breakage of every kind, from a smashed jar to a broken heart. This one is narrower: it splits something open into pieces. Because Micah 3:3 is its only use in that plain sense, dictionaries disagree over whether it is the same word as the shout of joy or a separate word that happens to be spelled the same. The picture in the verse is not in doubt either way.
the Hebrew keeps a physical edge that the English phrase has lost: something splits open and what is inside comes out, which is why the same word can be used of chopping bones apart.Isa 55:12Mic 3:3
Both
both describe something coming out all at once rather than gradually.Isa 14:7
Only break forth
"Break forth" is formal, old-fashioned English, and to a modern reader it can suggest a slow emergence, like light breaking through cloud, rather than a sudden crack.
the Hebrew word on its own only means to burst out; the singing usually comes from the separate noun for a ringing cry that sits next to it.Isa 54:1Isa 49:13
Both
both name joy that cannot be held in and comes out as sound.Psa 98:4
Only burst into song
"Burst into song" is a light and often comic phrase in English, the sort of thing that happens in a musical; the Hebrew is used of mountains and ruined cities erupting at the news that God has rescued his people.
“break out into joy”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“break in pieces”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How patsaḥ differs from similar Hebrew words
רָנַןto give a ringing cry, the common word for shouting or singing out loud. It names the sound being made; the other word names the sudden bursting that lets it out.
This word can mean plain physical breaking. Micah uses it for men who strip the skin off God's people and then crack their bones apart, a brutal picture that has nothing to do with sound.Mic 3:3
It names the bursting out, not the sound that comes out. It normally carries a separate word for song right beside it, so the sense is "break forth into singing" rather than "sing".Isa 14:7Isa 55:12
It marks the exact moment silence gives way. The whole earth has gone quiet and settled after the tyrant falls, and only then does it break out; the mountains and hills hold still until the people walk out free, and then they break out.Isa 14:7Isa 55:12
Both
Both are commands to erupt in praise, and the writers stack them back to back in one breath, so the two together read as "break out and sing for joy".Psa 98:4Isa 52:9
Both are addressed to the created world and not only to people. The heavens, the depths of the earth, the mountains, and the forest are all ordered to make this noise.Isa 44:23Isa 49:13
Both belong to the announcement of rescue. The reason given for the outburst is the same each time: God has comforted his people and bought them back.Isa 49:13Isa 52:9
Both get aimed at the very ones with nothing to celebrate, which is the point: a city lying in rubble and a woman who has never borne a child are the ones told to make the sound.Isa 52:9Isa 54:1
This word is the ringing cry itself, and it stands alone as the whole action. No second word is needed to say what comes out, because the crying out is already in the verb.Psa 33:1Psa 95:1Zep 3:14
It can take the thing being cried out as its object, so a tongue cries out God's saving justice and a crowd cries out his goodness.Psa 51:14Psa 145:7
It is not always joy. Jerusalem in ruins is told to raise this same loud cry through the night while she pours her heart out like water, so the word covers a wail of grief as readily as a shout of gladness.Lam 2:19
It is used for ordinary public calling, not only for worship. Wisdom raises this cry out in the open street and at the city gates, simply making herself heard.Pro 1:20Pro 8:3
It reaches into everyday noise: the harvest shout that used to ring out in the vineyards and has now fallen silent, and a fighting man waking up roaring with wine in him.Isa 16:10Psa 78:65
רִנָּהthe noun for that ringing cry, and in five verses it is the very thing said to burst out. It is the sound itself, not the bursting.
שָׂמַחthe general word for being glad, a state of the heart that can be perfectly quiet. This one never names the feeling at all, only the sound of it getting out.
It never names a feeling. What it describes is sound suddenly getting out: singing is what gets broken out (Isaiah 44:23;Isaiah 54:1;Isaiah 55:12), or the word stands directly beside the verb for singing so that the two together mean "break out and sing" (Psalm 98:4;Isaiah 52:9). The gladness behind the noise is left for another word to name.Isa 44:23Isa 54:1Psa 98:4Isa 55:12
Every joyful use of it is a summons or a promise, never a report of how someone actually felt. Mountains and the ruins of Jerusalem are told to do it (Isaiah 44:23;Isaiah 49:13;Isaiah 52:9), the hills will do it as the redeemed walk home (Isaiah 55:12), a childless woman is told to do it before there is any child (Isaiah 54:1), and even the one verse that puts it in the past is describing the day the tyrant finally falls (Isaiah 14:7).Isa 52:9Isa 55:12Isa 54:1Isa 14:7
Its whole joyful range is shut inside two settings, a call to praise God and the prophets' promises that Zion will be restored, with six of its eight verses in Isaiah alone (Isaiah 14:7;Isaiah 44:23;Isaiah 49:13;Isaiah 52:9;Isaiah 54:1;Isaiah 55:12;Psalm 98:4). It never turns up in the ordinary business of living, where the other word is thoroughly at home.Isa 49:13Isa 14:7Isa 52:9Psa 98:4
One of its verses has no joy in it at all: it is what corrupt rulers do to their people's bones, snapping them apart the way a butcher does before the pot (Micah 3:3). Nothing anywhere in the other word's range turns violent like that.Mic 3:3
Both
Both are used to call on creation itself, not only people, to celebrate what God has done. Mountains are told to break out in song (Isaiah 44:23;Isaiah 49:13), and the heavens are told to be glad (Psalm 96:11;1 Chronicles 16:31).Isa 44:23Isa 49:13Psa 96:111Ch 16:31
Both stand in the same line as the word for singing out loud, so with either one the joy is expected to be heard rather than kept inside: "break out and sing" in one psalm (Psalm 98:4), "let the nations be glad and sing for joy" in another (Psalm 67:4;Psalm 32:11).Psa 98:4Psa 67:4Psa 32:11
Both carry the prophets' promise that Jerusalem's grief is going to turn into celebration. The city's ruined places are told to break out in song (Isaiah 52:9), and the very people who mourned over her are told to be glad with her (Isaiah 66:10;Zephaniah 3:14).Isa 52:9Isa 66:10Zep 3:14
It names the gladness itself, and it can simply report that someone felt it. Aaron will be glad in his heart when he sees his brother coming (Exodus 4:14), the men of Jabesh were glad when word of rescue reached them (1 Samuel 11:9), and the city of Susa was glad the day Mordecai came out in royal clothes (Esther 8:15). No song or shout is required for the word to apply.Exo 4:141Sa 11:9Est 8:15
It is completely at ease in ordinary life, with no worship and no promise anywhere in view: wine makes a person's heart glad (Psalm 104:15), a sensible son makes his father glad (Proverbs 10:1;Proverbs 23:15), a newly married man is kept back from war for a year so he can make his wife glad (Deuteronomy 24:5), and the best a person can do is be glad in their own work (Ecclesiastes 3:22).Psa 104:15Pro 10:1Deu 24:5Ecc 3:22
It can be ugly, and often is. It is the word for enjoying someone else's ruin, which is why the Bible keeps forbidding it: do not be glad when your enemy falls (Proverbs 24:17), do not be glad over Judah on the day it is destroyed (Obadiah 1:12). The psalmist's whole complaint is that his enemies were glad when he stumbled (Psalm 35:15;Psalm 35:19).Pro 24:17Oba 1:12Psa 35:15Psa 35:19
It is the standard word for the gladness Israel's law actually commands at the appointed feasts, complete with a guest list of who has to be included in it (Deuteronomy 16:11;Deuteronomy 12:7;Deuteronomy 26:11;Leviticus 23:40). The other word never appears in a law or attaches to the festival calendar.Deu 16:11Deu 12:7Deu 26:11Lev 23:40
רוּעַto raise a loud shout, in war, in worship, or in alarm. It is about volume and carrying power rather than about the moment a sound breaks loose.
It can mean an ordinary physical breaking, with no sound in view at all: rulers who devour their people also break their bones. The shouting word is never used for smashing something apart.Mic 3:3
It names the sudden bursting out rather than the noise itself, so it normally leans on a companion word for the sound: the mountains and the ruined city are told to break out and sing.Isa 49:13Isa 52:9Isa 55:12
Its setting is the end of a long silence: a land that has finally come to rest, a city left in ruins, a woman who never had children, each suddenly loud with relief. It marks the turn from quiet into song rather than noise made in the middle of a crisis.Isa 14:7Isa 52:9Isa 54:1
Both
Both are commands to make an enormous public noise for God, and they stand side by side in the same call to praise, one word for the shout and one for bursting into song.Psa 98:4Isa 44:23
Both can be addressed to the created world as well as to people, and in these passages both are set off by something God has just done to rescue his people rather than by a passing mood.Isa 44:23Psa 98:4
It is the army's war cry: the roar troops raise as they charge, aimed straight at an enemy.Jos 6:20Jdg 7:211Sa 17:20Jer 50:15
It covers a signal as well as a human voice, naming the alarm sounded on trumpets to muster the camp or warn a town that danger is coming.Num 10:7Num 10:9Hos 5:8Jol 2:1
The cry is often not a happy one. It can carry panic, pain, or contempt: fighting men crying out in terror, a city crying like a woman in labor, people jeering at a man as though he were a thief.Isa 15:4Mic 4:9Job 30:5
It is the crowd's roar of acclamation at a great public moment: a new king hailed, a temple foundation greeted, a city called to welcome its coming king.1Sa 10:24Ezr 3:11Zec 9:9
צָהַלto give a high, shrill cry of delight, a sound close to a horse's neigh. It stands right beside the outburst in Isaiah 54:1 as what follows it.
It names the bursting open, not the sound. In most of its verses it governs a separate noun for a ringing cry, so the singing is the thing that comes out and this word is only the moment it breaks loose.Isa 44:23Isa 49:13Isa 55:12
The ones told to do it are usually not people at all. The heavens, the mountains, the whole earth, and the ruins of a city are summoned to break out.Isa 14:7Isa 44:23Isa 52:9
It can be used with no sound in view whatever, for breaking something apart physically: Micah accuses Israel's rulers of chopping their own people's bones apart like meat for the pot.Mic 3:3
Both
Both are commands to let joy out as noise the moment a rescue is announced. Isaiah 54:1 stacks them in one summons to the childless woman, telling her to break out and to cry aloud.Isa 54:1
Neither word names the feeling itself, only the noise it makes, which is why they can sit side by side in one line without repeating each other: the joy in Isaiah 54:1 is carried by the ringing cry standing between them.Isa 54:1
Underneath it is the sound a horse makes. Jeremiah uses it plainly of well fed stallions, and then of men chasing their neighbors' wives with the same abandon.Jer 5:8Jer 50:11
The feeling behind the cry is not fixed to joy. It can be a shriek of fear as an invading army comes down the road, or the gloating of plunderers over a ruined city.Isa 10:30Jer 50:11
It is always a living voice, a person or an animal with lungs, never a mountain or a heap of ruins.Est 8:15Isa 12:6Isa 24:14
שָׁבַרthe ordinary word for breaking or shattering anything, from a jar to a bone to a person's spirit. It is far broader and never means to break out in song.
In seven of its eight appearances the breaking is a breaking out of sound rather than damage: joy bursting into a shout or a song. Nothing is harmed, and what comes out is noise, not pieces.Psa 98:4Isa 52:9Isa 54:1
Its subjects are usually things that could never literally break apart, and they are summoned to burst out anyway: the whole earth, the mountains and hills, the trees of the forest.Isa 14:7Isa 44:23Isa 55:12
Almost every time, it stands next to a word for a ringing cry, so the object of the breaking is the cry itself. It is a poet's word for the moment relief becomes audible, not a general word for breaking something.Isa 49:13Isa 54:1Psa 98:4
Both
Both can name the violent breaking of bones in a body. Micah pictures rulers breaking the bones of their own people, and the commoner word covers a bone left unbroken and an arm snapped at the socket.Mic 3:3Psa 34:20Job 31:22
English Bibles reach for the same verb for both, so each is regularly rendered "break". That shared rendering hides the difference: one breaks a thing apart, the other breaks into sound.Isa 55:12Exo 32:19
It is the ordinary word for smashing a solid object so that it is ruined and useless: stone tablets flung down at the foot of the mountain, sacred pillars pulled apart, a clay pot that has to be destroyed.Exo 32:19Deu 7:5Lev 11:33
It carries over to people, where what gets broken is strength, pride, or the will to keep going: a broken heart, the arm of a violent man, the stubborn pride of a nation.Psa 34:18Psa 10:15Lev 26:19
It is also the word for snapping the equipment of power so that it can no longer be used, which is how a rescue gets described: the bars of a slave yoke, the war bow of the nations.Lev 26:13Psa 46:9
It is an everyday word that turns up all across the Hebrew Bible, in story, in law, and in poetry alike, where its counterpart is confined to a handful of poetic lines about joy.Gen 19:9Lev 6:28Job 24:20
פָּצָהto open the mouth wide, whether to speak, to swallow, or simply to gape. The two words sound alike and both involve an opening, but this one is about a mouth held open, not a sudden bursting.
Its home is joy that cannot be held in: to burst out into singing or a glad shout. It sits in the same line as words for a ringing cry, for shouting aloud, and for making music.Psa 98:4Isa 14:7Isa 54:1
The outburst is a reaction to rescue that has already been announced. The singing breaks out because the LORD has comforted his people, redeemed Jacob, and bought back Jerusalem, so the word carries the moment of relief with it.Isa 44:23Isa 49:13Isa 52:9
One use has no voice in it at all, only plain breaking: cruel leaders crack the bones of the people apart and cut them up like meat for the pot.Mic 3:3
Both
Both name a sudden, forceful giving way rather than a slow one. Jaws fly wide like a lion's, and bones are cracked apart in a single act. That shared core of violent opening, plus the near identical spelling, is what makes the two words easy to confuse.Psa 22:13Mic 3:3
Both let things that have no voice do the acting. The ground opens its mouth and takes rebels down alive, and the hills and mountains break out singing in front of a people going home.Num 16:30Isa 55:12
What comes open is a mouth. Almost every use names the mouth (or once the lips) as the thing that opens, so the picture is jaws or a face coming wide, not a sound leaving them. Even the negative case is about a beak: nothing stirred a wing or opened a mouth or chirped.Job 35:16Ezk 2:8Isa 10:14
It is the word used when the ground itself opens and swallows people whole, in the judgment on Cain and in the judgment on the men who challenged Moses.Gen 4:11Deu 11:6
An opened mouth here is often hostile. Enemies gape and jeer at someone already beaten down, and the line is about scorn rather than about sound.Lam 2:16Lam 3:46
Opening the mouth toward God means making a promise that cannot be pulled back. Jephthah says he has opened his mouth to the LORD, his daughter holds him to it, and a psalmist keeps the vow his lips opened on in trouble.Jdg 11:35Jdg 11:36Psa 66:14
In a few psalms it leaves the mouth behind and means opening a way out for someone, so English Bibles render it "rescue" or "deliver": God pulls his servant clear of a deadly sword and of foreign hands.Psa 144:7Psa 144:10Psa 144:11
patsaḥ in the other biblical languages
ῥήγνυμιGreek“to throw violently”the Greek verb for tearing or bursting something open, used of wineskins splitting and of a spirit throwing a boy to the ground. When Paul quotes Isaiah 54:1 in Galatians 4:27, this is the word that stands where the Hebrew calls the barren woman to break out in song.
Almost every use is about noise: a shout or a song bursting out, standing beside a word for singing or for a loud glad cry, so the whole force of the sentence is sound.Psa 98:4Isa 14:7Isa 49:13
The ones told to burst out are regularly places and features of creation, not people: heavens and mountains, a forest, the flattened streets of Jerusalem, the hills along the road home.Isa 44:23Isa 52:9Isa 55:12
The joy is not inside the word itself. Its one harsh use describes leaders breaking the bones of their own people apart to cook them, which shows the word means only that something is broken open and that the gladness elsewhere comes from the singing named alongside it.Mic 3:3
Both
Where the New Testament takes up this Hebrew call directly, the Greek word is what carries it: the command to the childless woman to burst into song is quoted with it word for word.Isa 54:1Gal 4:27
Both picture something suddenly giving way and coming out with force, all at once rather than gradually, whether that is hills erupting in song or skins splitting at the seams.Isa 55:12Mrk 2:22
It is the ordinary word for a container giving way under pressure: new wine swells and the old skins split open and are ruined. The Hebrew word is never used of a vessel splitting.Mat 9:17Mrk 2:22Luk 5:37
It can name violence flung at a person rather than something splitting apart: an unclean spirit slams a boy to the ground and throws him into convulsions.Mrk 9:18Luk 9:42
It covers what an animal does to someone who provokes it: the pigs turn on the man who threw them his pearls and maul him.Mat 7:6
What scholars say about patsaḥ
The standard critical lexicons agree on the qal sense, to break out with a ringing cry, and note that it is confined to Isaiah (14:7; 44:23; 49:13; 52:9; 54:1; 55:12) and Psalm 98:4. Five of the seven are imperatives belonging to the hymnic summons characteristic of Isaiah 40 to 66 and of the enthronement psalms, in which heaven, earth, mountains, and the ruins of Zion are called to acclaim an announced act of redemption (Isaiah 44:23; 49:13; 52:9; 54:1; Psalm 98:4);Isaiah 55:12 predicts the same acclamation and Isaiah 14:7 reports it. Blenkinsopp treats that summons to creation as a formal element of the Second Isaiah hymns rather than as ornament. The live lexical question concerns Micah 3:3, the sole piel: HALOT and DCH list two homonyms, פצח I "break out (in jubilation)" and פצח II "break up, crush," whereas BDB keeps one entry and glosses the piel as "break in pieces." Commentators on Micah (Hillers, Wolff) take the butchering sense in that verse as secure and do not make it depend on the lexical division.
Where scholars disagree about patsaḥ
Whether the jubilant "break out in a ringing cry" and the Micah 3:3 "break up, crush" are one word or two words that happen to be spelled the same.
majorityTwo separate roots. The modern critical lexicons list פצח I, to break out in jubilation, and פצח II, to break up or crush, and assign Micah 3:3 to the second.; HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner-Stamm), s.v. פצח I, פצח II; DCH (Clines, ed.), s.v. פצח I, פצח II
minorityOne root with a physical core sense of breaking or splitting, whose qal developed the sense of breaking out in sound while the piel kept the physical sense in Micah 3:3.; BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), s.v. פצח