to split in two: to cleave something apart down its length, or to be divided that way already, as a cloven hoof is.
The picture behind this word is a single clean split down the middle. Five of its nine appearances sit in the food laws, where it describes an animal's hoof that is not one solid pad but two, and there it always stands beside a second verb for a hoof being divided (פרס). The doubling is deliberate. A hoof that is merely notched will not do, and Deuteronomy 14:6 counts them out: two hooves, not one.
The other uses name the act rather than the finished state. Samson tore a young lion apart as easily as a person tears a young goat (Judges 14:6), and at the altar a priest splits a bird open by its wings (Leviticus 1:17). That second verse is careful about how far the split may go: the priest splits the bird but must not separate it (בדל), so the halves stay joined. The word by itself does not decide whether a split runs all the way through. The setting does.
Once the word leaves hooves and carcasses behind. In 1 Samuel 24:7 David turns it on his own men, who have just urged him to kill Saul in the cave, and he breaks their resolve apart with words. English versions scatter here, from "stayed" to "persuaded" to "rebuked", because no one English verb both tears and holds back.
Nuances
What the verb means in 1 Samuel 24:7, its only use where the thing split is a group of people rather than a body or a hoof.
- majorityIt is the ordinary verb for splitting apart, used figuratively: David broke up his men's resolve, checking them with words.; BDB, s.v. שָׁסַע; HALOT, s.v. שׁסע
- minorityThe verse is better read as David persuading or holding back his men, the sense behind the ancient Greek rendering and behind several modern versions.; Septuagint, 1 Kingdoms 24:8