StrongerBible

patar

פָּתַר

HebrewH6622“interpret, interpreter, ...”

Appears 9 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 40:8Gen 40:16Gen 40:22Gen 41:8Gen 41:12 (2×)Gen 41:13Gen 41:15 (2×)
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradepah-TAHRverb

What patar means

to interpret a dream: to unlock what a puzzling dream means and say what it announces

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

Every appearance of this verb in the Hebrew Bible sits inside one story. It occurs nine times, all of them in the account of Joseph in an Egyptian prison and then before Pharaoh (Genesis 40 and 41), and the matching noun for the interpretation itself (פִּתְרוֹן) is just as confined. No other book uses either word. That makes it a guiding word for those two chapters: wherever it appears, the story is turning.

Behind it lies a picture the English word "interpret" loses. In the languages spoken around ancient Israel, the matching verb meant to loosen or untie something that had been bound, and it was the working word for undoing the harm an ominous sign threatened. A dream in that world was a knot: saying what it meant and defusing what it carried were one act, not two. That is why some translators render it "solve" rather than "interpret".

Genesis keeps that specialist flavor and then turns it upside down. Three times the story stops to report that nobody can do this:

  • the king's two servants in prison have dreamed and have no one to interpret for them (Genesis 40:8);
  • Pharaoh tells his dreams to the magicians and wise men of Egypt and none of them can interpret them (Genesis 41:8);
  • Pharaoh repeats the same complaint to Joseph before asking him to try (Genesis 41:15).

Each time the gap is filled by a foreign slave who claims no training at all, and his answer in the first of those scenes frames all three: interpretations belong to God (Genesis 40:8).

The story also treats an interpretation as something that can be checked. Twice it looks back and reports that events happened exactly as Joseph had interpreted (Genesis 40:22; 41:13), and once it notes that he interpreted favorably for one of the two prisoners (Genesis 40:16). An interpretation here is not one reading among several: it either unlocks the dream or it does not.

Gen 40:8Gen 40:16Gen 40:22Gen 41:8Gen 41:12 (2×)Gen 41:13Gen 41:15 (2×)

Disputed

Whether the verb still carries the concrete force of loosening or untying in Genesis 40 to 41, or has flattened into the ordinary word for interpreting a dream.

  • contestedThe untying force is live: to interpret the dream is to loosen what binds the dreamer, and a rendering such as "solve" keeps that visible.; E. A. Speiser, Genesis (Anchor Bible, 1964), on Genesis 40-41; A. Leo Oppenheim, The Interpretation of Dreams in the Ancient Near East (1956), 217-225; Nili Shupak, Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 30 (2005); Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary (2004), on Genesis 40-41
  • contestedIn Genesis the verb simply means to interpret a dream, and the older picture of loosening should not be pressed into the translation.; Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (JPS Torah Commentary, 1989), on Genesis 40-41; Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 11:27-50:26 (New American Commentary, 2005)

Whether the verb is technical vocabulary taken over from the professional dream interpreters of the wider ancient world, or ordinary Hebrew that survives only in these chapters because this is the only story that needed it.

  • contestedIt is the trade term of dream divination, which the Joseph story takes over and redirects against the culture it came from.; H.-J. Fabry and U. Dahmen, TDOT, vol. 12 (2003), 150-157; Nili Shupak, Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 30 (2005); E. A. Speiser, Genesis (Anchor Bible, 1964), on Genesis 40-41
  • contestedIt is ordinary Hebrew, and its confinement to Genesis 40 and 41 reflects the subject matter of those chapters rather than a borrowed professional vocabulary.; Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (JPS Torah Commentary, 1989), on Genesis 40-41; Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (2001), on Genesis 40-41

What scholars say about patar

The verb פָּתַר (9x) and its noun פִּתְרוֹן (5x) occur only in Genesis 40-41, and the reference works agree on the base sense "interpret (a dream)": BDB 837 ("apparently = Aramaic פְּשַׁר, dissolve, figuratively solve, interpret"), HALOT (cognates in Jewish Aramaic, Syriac, and Akkadian pašāru), DCH descriptively, and TLOT, which classes it as a technical dream-interpretation term of the Joseph novella; Wenham (WBC) treats it as the Leitwort binding the two chapters. The comparative core is Akkadian pašāru, "loosen, untie, release, dissolve" (CAD P 236-246; AHw 842-843), the operative verb of the namburbû ritual, in which the ritual specialist both deciphered an ominous dream and dissolved its consequence. Oppenheim, The Interpretation of Dreams in the Ancient Near East (1956), 217-225, established that double force for the Assyrian Dream Book, and Noegel, Nocturnal Ciphers (2007), argued that the technique was paronomastic decoding, the interpreter being a mupaššir šunāti, a "loosener of dreams"; Shupak (JANES 30, 2005) applied this to the Joseph narrative alongside Egyptian wḥʿ, "loosen a knot", the verb the Coptic version uses for פתר. The etymology remains unsettled, because the standard interdental correspondence would predict Hebrew פשר beside Aramaic פתר, the reverse of the attested distribution, so the Hebrew consonantism cannot be derived regularly from Akkadian or from the usual Proto-Semitic reconstruction. Gesenius 18 treats the ת ~ ש relation as a regular *ṯ correspondence and hence shared inheritance; Fabry and Dahmen (TDOT 12:150-157) reject a sharp loan/inheritance dichotomy and take Hebrew פתר and Aramaic פשר as parallel branches of one root family; Kaufman, The Akkadian Influences on Aramaic (1974), 81-82, reads Aramaic פשר as a clean Neo-Assyrian-period loan, leaving Hebrew פתר as a separate and probably earlier channel; Horgan, Pesharim (1979), 235-237, posited a distinct root *ptr, which Young (JHS 8, 2008) criticized as theoretical since פתר is unattested in any Aramaic corpus, and Sperling (Columbia diss., 1973) separated the Hebrew verb from pašāru altogether; Mankowski, Akkadian Loanwords in Biblical Hebrew (2000), lists neither form among confirmed loans, and Wagner, Aramaismen (1966), no. 244, classes only פֵּשֶׁר at Qoheleth 8:1 as an Aramaism, not the Genesis verb. Exegetically, Wenham, Waltke, and Sarna read Gen 40:8 as polemic against Egyptian mantic professionalism (Wenham: "it is not learning but inspiration that matters"), while Speiser (AB) and Shupak stress that the narrative deploys the technical vocabulary of oneiromancy and reinterprets rather than replaces it; Hamilton (NICOT) canvasses the etymology and lands on shared Semitic inheritance; von Rad's wisdom-tale reading of the Joseph novella was contested by Coats (CBQ 35, 1973), and Westermann treats the term as a late Aramaism of a wisdom stratum. The downstream career is well mapped: Biblical Aramaic פְּשַׁר in Daniel 2-7 (about 31x) pairs the noun with the Persian loan רָז to yield a two-stage revelation model, extends the object from dream to written oracle at Daniel 5, and stands behind the Qumran פשרו על formula (Horgan; Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, 1985, 443-524; Nitzan on 1QpHab, 1986), with Brooke (RevQ, 1981) arguing that pesher is a subtype of Qumran midrash and Hartog (2017) and Machiela (DSD, 2012) cautioning that the Daniel-to-pesher genealogy is less unequivocal than Elliger supposed.

Where scholars disagree about patar

Where the Hebrew verb came from. Its middle consonant cannot be derived by the regular sound rules from either the Akkadian verb meaning "to loosen" or the Aramaic word for interpreting, so the route the word took into Hebrew is disputed.

  • contestedThe Hebrew and Aramaic words are parallel branches of one shared Semitic root family rather than the product of a single borrowing, and the consonantal difference is a regular inherited correspondence.; Gesenius 18 (Rüterswörden, Meyer, Donner), s.v. פתר; H.-J. Fabry and U. Dahmen, TDOT, vol. 12 (2003), 150-157; Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 18-50 (NICOT, 1995); Max Wagner, Die lexikalischen und grammatikalischen Aramaismen im alttestamentlichen Hebräisch (1966), no. 244
  • contestedThe Aramaic word is a straightforward borrowing from Akkadian in the Assyrian and Babylonian period, and the Hebrew form reflects a separate, probably earlier borrowing through another channel.; Stephen A. Kaufman, The Akkadian Influences on Aramaic (1974), 81-82
  • minorityThe Hebrew verb rests on a root of its own and should be kept apart from the Akkadian verb despite the close similarity of meaning.; Maurya P. Horgan, Pesharim: Qumran Interpretations of Biblical Books (1979), 235-237; S. D. Sperling, Columbia University dissertation (1973)
In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • BDB, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. פתר, 837lexicon
  • HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner), s.v. פתרlexicon
  • DCH (Clines), Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, s.v. פתרlexicon
  • Gesenius 18 (Rüterswörden, Meyer, Donner), Hebräisches und Aramäisches Handwörterbuch, s.v. פתרlexicon
  • H.-J. Fabry and U. Dahmen, "פשר / פתר / פִּתְרוֹן", TDOT, vol. 12 (2003), 150-157lexicon
  • The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), P, s.v. pašāru, 236-246lexicon
  • W. von Soden, Akkadisches Handwörterbuch (AHw), s.v. pašāru, 842-843lexicon
  • A. Leo Oppenheim, The Interpretation of Dreams in the Ancient Near East (1956), 217-225monograph
  • Scott B. Noegel, Nocturnal Ciphers: The Allusive Language of Dreams in the Ancient Near East (2007)monograph
  • Nili Shupak, Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 30 (2005)article
  • Stephen A. Kaufman, The Akkadian Influences on Aramaic (1974), 81-82monograph
  • Paul V. Mankowski, Akkadian Loanwords in Biblical Hebrew (2000)monograph
  • Max Wagner, Die lexikalischen und grammatikalischen Aramaismen im alttestamentlichen Hebräisch (1966), no. 244monograph
  • Maurya P. Horgan, Pesharim: Qumran Interpretations of Biblical Books (1979), 235-237monograph
  • Ian Young, Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 8 (2008)article
  • E. A. Speiser, Genesis (Anchor Bible, 1964)commentary
  • Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (JPS Torah Commentary, 1989)commentary
  • Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 16-50 (Word Biblical Commentary, 1994)commentary
  • Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (2001)commentary
  • Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 18-50 (NICOT, 1995)commentary
  • Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 11:27-50:26 (New American Commentary, 2005)commentary
  • Claus Westermann, Genesis 37-50: A Commentary (1986)commentary
  • George W. Coats, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 35 (1973)article
  • Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary (2004)commentary
  • John J. Collins, Daniel (Hermeneia, 1993), 39, 155-158commentary
  • Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (1985), 443-524monograph
  • Bilhah Nitzan, Pesher Habakkuk (Bialik, 1986)commentary

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of פָּתַר

qal perfect 3ms

פָּתַר, פָּתָר

Gen 40:22, Gen 41:13, Gen 40:16, Gen 41:12

qal participle m s absolute

פֹתֵר, פּוֹתֵר

Gen 40:8, Gen 41:15, Gen 41:8

qal consecutive-imperfect 3ms

וַיִּפְתָּר

Gen 41:12

qal infinitive-construct construct

פְתֹּר

Gen 41:15