the Euphrates: the great river of Mesopotamia, which Israel's Scriptures treat as the far northern edge of the promised land
Perath is not really a Hebrew word at all. It is a Mesopotamian river name, handed down from Sumerian through Akkadian and taken into Hebrew and Aramaic just as it stood. That is why writers so often attach the ordinary word for a river to it (נָהָר), giving "the river Perath": a foreign name needed a plain label beside it. It also means the name says nothing in Hebrew, however much it may sound like the Hebrew verb meaning "to be fruitful." Because everyone knew which river was meant, Hebrew writers could also drop the name altogether and speak simply of "the River."
In a few places nothing more is meant than the river itself, a real waterway on a real map. Pharaoh Necho marches north to fight at Carchemish beside it, and Babylon's army meets him there. Far more often, though, the river marks a limit. It stands at the outer edge of the land promised to Abraham's descendants, at the outer edge of the ideal territory described to Israel before the conquest, and at the point David's northern campaign reached. Its great partner river, the Tigris (חִדֶּקֶל), never carries any of this weight. The Euphrates does, because for Israel it was where the known world ran out.
Followed through the Bible, the name traces an arc:
- in Eden it is one of four rivers watering the world
- in the promise and the conquest texts it is the far edge of the gift
- under David it is how far a king's arm could reach
- in Judah's final years it is where the empires collide and Judah's future is settled
- at the close of Jeremiah's oracles against Babylon it is the water that swallows a scroll as a sign that Babylon will sink and never rise
Nuances
Where Jeremiah was sent to bury the linen belt. The name is written without the usual word for river, and a literal round trip to the Euphrates from Anathoth would run some 700 miles and be made twice, whereas the Benjaminite village of Parah (Joshua 18:23), plausibly Khirbet Farah beside the spring of Ayn Fara, lies about three and a half miles from Anathoth and differs from the river name by one consonant. A further argument is structural: unlike Jeremiah's other sign acts, the meaning of this one is explained to the prophet himself (13:9-11) rather than performed before the people, which weakens the case for a literal long journey.
- majorityThe nearby village of Parah is meant, its name chosen as a deliberate near echo of the Euphrates so that the ruined belt points to Babylonian corruption.; W. McKane, Jeremiah, International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986), 1:285-292; J. R. Lundbom, Jeremiah 1-20, Anchor Bible 21A (New York: Doubleday, 1999), 670-671; J. Bright, Jeremiah, Anchor Bible 21 (Garden City: Doubleday, 1965), 96
- contestedThe Euphrates itself is meant literally, with Babylon in view as the agent of Judah's ruin.; R. P. Carroll, Jeremiah, Old Testament Library (London: SCM, 1986), on Jeremiah 13; Septuagint of Jeremiah 13, which renders the name Εὐφράτης
- minorityThe errand was never physically performed; the account is a symbolic vision.; B. Duhm, Das Buch Jeremia (Tübingen: Mohr, 1901), on Jeremiah 13; P. Volz, Der Prophet Jeremia, Kommentar zum Alten Testament (1922), on Jeremiah 13; W. Rudolph, Jeremia, Handbuch zum Alten Testament 12, 3rd ed. (Tübingen: Mohr, 1968), on Jeremiah 13
Disputed
Where the name itself came from, and whether it means anything in its own right. פְּרָת has no living Hebrew root, and the transmission chain is agreed in outline: Sumerian Buranun(a), written UD.KIB.NUN, was taken into Akkadian as Purattu, from which descend Hebrew פְּרָת, Syriac Prat, and Arabic al-Furat. What remains open is the origin of the Sumerian form. Two popular derivations are folk etymologies rather than live scholarly options: the link to Hebrew פרה "be fruitful" is a Hebrew reinterpretation, and the εὖ heard in Greek Εὐφράτης reflects Old Persian Ufratu(s), whose prothetic vowel Greek speakers read as their own word for "good" (Kent judged the Persian form itself a popular etymologizing of a local non-Iranian name).
- majorityThe name belongs to an unrecorded pre-Sumerian substrate language: Sumerian and Akkadian inherited it rather than coined it, so no meaning is recoverable.; BDB, s.v. פְּרָת; HALOT, s.v. פְּרָת; R. G. Kent, Old Persian: Grammar, Texts, Lexicon, 2nd ed. (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1953), 176
- minorityThe name derives from a proto-Sumerian word for copper, burudu, the Euphrates being the river down which copper ore was carried.; T. V. Gamkrelidze and V. V. Ivanov, proposal deriving the river name from proto-Sumerian burudu (copper)