a visitation: God's decisive coming to deal with a person or people, most often to punish and sometimes to help
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
This word comes from a verb that means to look into a matter and act on what is found. When God is the one looking in, the result is a visitation: a moment when he comes to settle accounts.
Most often that settling falls as judgment. The prophets speak of a fixed day or year of visitation, when a nation's guilt finally catches up with it. But the same coming can be gracious, as when Job says God's care kept his spirit alive. And once it simply names the common lot that reaches everyone, an ordinary death rather than a special stroke.
The senses share the picture of God drawing near with a purpose, so the surrounding words, not the term itself, tell whether the visit brings ruin or rescue.
Nuances
1aa coming in judgment: the appointed time when guilt is punished
1ba coming in care: God's watchful attention that sustains a life
Job 10:12
1cthe common lot that befalls everyone
Num 16:29*
2
oversight: a charge or office entrusted to someone, with responsibility to answer for it
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong
Here the word names a job put into someone's hands. It is the charge a person is answerable for, the position they hold, or the officials appointed to keep watch over something.
In the worship texts it is the assigned care of the sacred tent and its furnishings. Elsewhere it is a royal or temple post that another person can inherit, as in the psalm the New Testament later quotes about a vacated office. At times it points to the appointed officers themselves.
The thread running through these uses is accountability: a task committed to a person who must give an account for it.
Nuances
2athe charge or duty entrusted for something
Num 3:32Num 3:36Num 4:16 (2×)1Ch 24:31Ch 24:191Ch 26:302Ch 23:18Ezk 44:11
2ban office or post that a person holds
2Ch 24:11Psa 109:8Isa 60:17*
2cthe appointed officers themselves
2Ki 11:18Ezk 9:1*
3
a mustering: the counting of people and the numbered company it produces
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong
When people are counted for war or service, the count itself and the mustered ranks it produces are named by this word. The Chronicler uses it for army registers organized by family. It is the record-keeping side of the same root, the tallying and enrolling of a body of people.
1Ch 23:112Ch 17:142Ch 26:11
4
a store: goods laid up or set in reserve
TranslatabilityDirectCertaintyStrong
In one passage the word names goods that have been set aside: a store or hoard carried off by people fleeing disaster. It is what a household has saved up and put in reserve.
Isa 15:7*
5
custody: confinement under guard
TranslatabilityDirectCertaintyStrong
Once the word forms part of the phrase house of custody, a prison where a captive is kept under guard until he dies. It is the place where someone is held in charge, the confinement itself.
the Hebrew word does not itself mean penalty; it means God's visiting, which in these settings falls as judgment but elsewhere can be gracious careJob 10:12
Both
in the prophets' day of reckoning both point to deserved judgment falling on the guiltyJer 8:12
Only punishment
punishment fixes the idea of retribution and hides that the same word can name God's kindness
Names God's visitation: the fixed day or year of reckoning when a people's guilt finally catches up with them, most often falling as judgment.Jer 8:12Isa 10:3Hos 9:7
Names the office or charge itself, the assigned duty over the sacred tent or a post a person holds and can hand on, rather than the person who fills it.Num 3:32Psa 109:8
Names the counting of people and the mustered ranks it produces, the army registers organized by family.2Ch 17:142Ch 26:11
Reaches to plainly non-human things, a store of goods carried off in flight or a house of custody where a captive is held, so it is never bound to a person at all.Isa 15:7Jer 52:11
Both
Both belong to the language of appointed oversight and can name the officers set over the house of the LORD; they even meet in one verse about collecting the temple chest money.2Ki 11:182Ch 24:11
Both cover supervision of the temple and its administration, a charge someone is set over and must answer for.Ezk 44:112Ch 31:13
Always a concrete person: an individual appointed to a post, a deputy or commissioner acting on a superior's behalf.Gen 41:34Jdg 9:28
Names the chief officer who runs a temple, treasury, or prison, with power over money and personnel and even to jail and punish others.Jer 20:1Jer 29:26
Names the muster officer, the man set over the men of war to organize and enroll the army.2Ki 25:19Jer 52:25
pequddah in the other biblical languages
ἐπισκοπήGreek“oversight”the Greek word covering the same double range, a divine visitation and an appointed office; the New Testament uses it in Acts 1:20 to quote this very word's verse, Psalm 109:8.
Becomes the word for the punishment itself: the appointed time when God settles accounts and the guilty are brought down, so that it names the doom rather than merely the visit.Jer 8:12Jer 10:15Hos 9:7Isa 10:3
Covers the counting or mustering of a body of people, the tally taken when a group is reviewed.2Ch 17:142Ch 26:11
Names a place of custody or confinement, where someone is held under guard.Jer 52:11
Both
Both name an appointed charge or office of oversight, a responsibility assigned to someone that can pass to another when the holder is gone. Acts 1:20 quotes Psalm 109:8 and renders this Hebrew word with the Greek one.Act 1:20Psa 109:8Num 3:32
Both name a divine visitation, the moment God comes to attend to people and reckon with them, whether that turns out for their good or their ruin.Luk 19:441Pe 2:12Job 10:12
Narrows to a fixed leadership post in the church, the office an overseer aspires to, a settled role in the community rather than a one-time act.1Ti 3:1
What scholars say about pequddah
The noun is the substantive of the root pqd, whose semantic breadth is a classic problem in Hebrew lexicography. Standard reference works (BDB; HALOT) arrange the noun under distinct sense groups: visitation (punitive and, less often, benign), oversight or office (with a concrete extension to appointed officers), mustering or numbering, store, and custody. The theological dictionaries (TDOT, s.v. paqad, by G. Andre; TWOT, by L. J. Coppes) argue that these radiate from a single core notion of attending to someone or something with authority and acting on what one finds. The punitive visitation sense dominates the prophetic corpus, especially the recurring day and year of visitation formulas in Jeremiah; the administrative senses cluster in Numbers and Chronicles. The rendering of Psalm 109:8 with Greek episkope (H6486 to G1984) is carried into Acts 1:20.
Where scholars disagree about pequddah
Whether the wide range of the noun (and of its root pqd) derives from a single unifying notion or is better treated as several distinct lexical values.
majorityThe senses radiate from one core idea of attending to a person or thing with authority and acting on what is found, so visitation, oversight, mustering, and the rest are contextual outworkings of a single word.; G. Andre, "פקד paqad," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT); L. J. Coppes, "פקד," in Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (TWOT)
minorityNo single gloss captures the range, so the punitive-visitation, administrative-oversight, and numbering strands are best handled as separate senses, as the major lexica in fact arrange them.; BDB, s.v. פְּקֻדָּה; HALOT, s.v. פְּקֻדָּה
Sources
BDB, s.v. פְּקֻדָּהlexicon
HALOT, s.v. פְּקֻדָּהlexicon
G. Andre, "פקד paqad," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT)theological-dictionary
L. J. Coppes, "פקד," in Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (TWOT)theological-dictionary