to spread: (of a disease or blemish) to advance and cover more of a surface.
TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled
This is a specialist's word. Every time it appears in the Bible it sits in the priestly instructions of Leviticus 13-14, where it describes an affliction creeping outward, and the question the priest keeps asking is simply whether the mark "has spread."
What it spreads across shifts, but the picture stays the same:
a diseased patch widening on a person's skin,
a stain of mold working its way through a garment of wool, linen, or leather,
a greenish or reddish rot advancing across the plastered walls of a house.
In each case the spreading is the sign of something alive and active, not a surface blemish that will fade.
The spreading is also the moment of decision. After the priest shuts up the person or object for seven days and looks again, a mark that has spread is declared unclean, while one that has held still is pronounced clean or watched a while longer. The word names the outbreak's advance, and is paired with but distinct from פרח, which is the disease first breaking out or erupting: one word marks the appearance, this one marks the growth.
in these laws the word always names a living affliction advancing, and the fact that it has advanced is exactly what forces the priest's verdict of unclean.Lev 13:8Lev 14:44
Both
both words describe something extending to cover more area than before.Lev 13:5
Only spread
English "spread" is neutral and wide open (spread butter, spread news, spread wings), with no hint of disease, threat, or a decision hanging on it.
“spread abroad”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“spread further”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How pasah differs from similar Hebrew words
פָּרַחto break out or erupt, used in the same skin-disease laws for the affliction first appearing; where this word marks the outbreak, spreading is the outbreak growing.
This is the priest's technical word for a lesion advancing: a spot enlarging beyond its original border while it is kept under watch, and its spreading is the very sign that renders a person unclean.Lev 13:7Lev 13:8Lev 13:22
It reaches past skin to the spreading of mold in a garment and of a plaguing growth in the walls of a house, always the same idea of a blight extending its reach.Lev 13:51Lev 14:44Lev 14:39
Both
Both serve as diagnostic verbs in the skin-disease laws, terms the priest watches over days of quarantine to judge how a suspicious eruption is behaving, one for it breaking out over the surface and the other for it advancing beyond its edge.Lev 13:12Lev 13:7
At heart this is a word for plant life putting out new growth: buds, blossoms, and sprouts. This is its native home, a domain the spreading word never touches.Gen 40:10Num 17:8Isa 35:1
It pictures people and communities flourishing and thriving, a hopeful image of vigor and prosperity with no counterpart in the other word.Psa 92:12Psa 72:7Pro 14:11
Even of a skin eruption it means the outbreak breaking out and covering the whole surface at once, appearing everywhere rather than creeping outward from one spot, so that the priest may even pronounce such a full eruption clean.Lev 13:12Lev 13:39
פָּרַץto burst through or break out, as a wall is breached or a people grows and multiplies; it is about force and increase in general, not an affliction creeping across a surface.
Describes the slow creeping advance of a skin disease, watched over days to see whether it has crept further across the skin.Lev 13:5Lev 13:8Lev 13:22
Applies the same creeping spread to a contamination in a garment or in the walls of a house, a defiling growth that keeps encroaching.Lev 13:51Lev 14:44
Both
Both picture something extending outward beyond its starting bounds, one word for a blessing overflowing its borders and the other for a blemish encroaching across the skin.Gen 28:14Lev 13:8
Nobody spreads it. The sore or the stain is itself the thing that spreads, and it does so on its own while the priest simply waits and looks again.Lev 13:5Lev 13:8
Every use belongs to one procedure, the priest's inspection for skin disease and rot, and the word never appears outside those inspection rules.Lev 13:22Lev 14:39
Whether it has spread is the entire verdict: it has not spread and the person is pronounced clean, it has spread and he is pronounced unclean.Lev 13:6Lev 13:8
It is not limited to skin. The same word tracks a blight working through wool, linen, or leather, and rot creeping across the plastered walls of a house.Lev 13:51Lev 13:53Lev 14:44
Both
Both picture something reaching across a surface until it covers more of it than before, whether that is fabric drawn over a structure or a blemish creeping over a wall.Exo 40:19Lev 14:39
English Bibles render both with the same verb "spread", which hides the difference: with one word a person deliberately opens something out, with the other something simply grows on its own.Isa 1:15Lev 13:22
Someone always does the spreading, and what gets spread is named: hands lifted toward God, a cloth laid over the holy furniture, a letter opened out in the temple.Ezr 9:5Num 4:62Ki 19:14
Open palms are its signature picture. Spreading the hands toward heaven is the standard posture of prayer and appeal, so the word carries the whole act of praying with it.Exo 9:291Ki 8:22Isa 1:15Psa 143:6
It is the word for wings opening out: the cherubim over the ark, an eagle over its young, a hawk turning toward the south.Exo 25:20Deu 32:11Job 39:26
Spreading something over a person or place can be an act of shelter or of claim: a tent stretched over the dwelling, a cloud spread as a canopy, a man's garment spread over the woman he will redeem.Exo 40:19Psa 105:39Rut 3:9
It is also the word for laying a trap, since a net is set by being spread open: over the water for fish, or across the path of an unsuspecting neighbor.Isa 19:8Pro 29:5Psa 140:5
What scholars say about pasah
The verb is well understood and semantically narrow: it means "to spread, extend" and in the Hebrew Bible is confined entirely to the priestly diagnostic laws of Leviticus 13-14, where it functions as the technical criterion for tzaraʿat. HALOT and BDB give "spread" without qualification. Its subject is regularly the נגע (the mark or affliction), and its object of extension is the skin, a garment (wool, linen, or leather), or the plastered walls of a house. Commentators treat the spreading versus non-spreading of the lesion as the operative test governing the priest's declaration of clean or unclean and the intervening periods of quarantine; Milgrom's Leviticus commentary lays out how this verb anchors the diagnostic procedure. The root is attested with the sense "spread, extend" in cognate Semitic languages.
Sources
HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner), s.v. פשׂהlexicon
BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), s.v. פשׂהlexicon
DCH (Clines, ed.), s.v. פשׂהlexicon
Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, Anchor Bible (1991)commentary