a breach: a gap broken open in a wall, and by extension a sudden bursting or breaking through.
At its heart this word names something broken open. The picture behind almost every use is a hole smashed in a city wall, the kind of gap an enemy pours through or a builder hurries to close. From Nehemiah's repaired walls to the shattered defenses the prophets describe, this is the ordinary meaning.
From that broken-open wall the word reaches out to the act of breaking through itself:
- water bursting through and pouring out in a flood
- a child suddenly pushing out at birth
- an army smashing through the enemy's line
It can also name a sudden, violent outburst, above all God "breaking out" against a person in judgment. Two Old Testament place-names still preserve this sense, one marking where God struck a man dead and one marking where he burst through an enemy army for David. The related verb פָּרַץ is the action that lies behind all of this: to break through or burst out.
Finally, the same gap in the wall gives Israel one of its great images of rescue: the person who "stands in the breach," planting himself in the undefended gap to hold back disaster and plead for others.