paroh

Pharaoh is not a personal name but a borrowed Egyptian title that the Bible uses as if it were one. The Egyptian phrase behind it, "pr-aa," literally means "Great House," and at first it named the royal palace as an institution, the way we might say "the White House" to mean a government rather than a building. Over the centuries the Egyptians began using "Great House" for the man who lived in it, and eventually for the king himself. By the time Hebrew borrowed the word, it had already made that shift, so in the Bible Pharaoh always means the ruler, never the palace.

Hebrew treats Pharaoh as a proper name. It almost never adds the word "the" in front of it, which in Hebrew is the mark of a name rather than a common noun, and the phrase "Pharaoh king of Egypt" works just like "David the king," with the title standing in for the personal name. This is why so many different rulers across so many centuries all carry the same word: it is a job title doing the work of a name.

The senses below sort the occurrences by how the word is used rather than by which king is meant.

• Most often the Bible gives only the bare title for kings whose personal names it never records, from Abraham's day through Joseph, the exodus, and Solomon's reign.
• Late in the story, for two kings the writers actually knew, it joins the title to a personal name.
• And once, in a love song, the word is used not for a king at all but as shorthand for royal Egyptian splendor.