Only You I Have Known of All the Families of the Earth: A Semantic and Theological Study of the Hebrew Root פעשׁ

Abstract

The meaning of the lexeme פעשׁ as yet lacks a convincing and consistent translation in the field of biblical study. Nor has it been the subject of a dedicated study. Even with the myriad lexical resources available to biblical interpreters today, there remains a wide range of meanings for this lexeme remains, and recent biblical interpreters still show the lacking of a convincing source that comprehensively explains how to treat the word when interpreting biblical passages that use the lexeme.

This dissertation is an attempt to find a deeper contextual understanding of the word פעשׁ through methods developed from the principles of Cognitive Linguistic that only became available in recent decades. This study searches and defines the core meaning of the lexeme, and how it is used by biblical authors and assesses the findings for translation and biblical-theological interpretation.

This study put forward the following thesis: “The essential meaning of פעשׁ is the breaching of a relationship by actions that interfere with the other party’s expectations or agenda to a degree that results in significant disappointment and a breach of trust”. A thorough investigation of the lexeme פעשׁ leads to the conclusion that in the Hebrew Bible the word involves “violation against a recipient” and that it is a hypernym meaning “an act or event that endangers or harms a relationship”.