What Does Daniel 5:28 Mean?
PERES; your kingdom is split and given to the Medes and Persians.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.THE KEY
Peres means divided, yet echoes Pāras, the Persia receiving the kingdom, so the word makes both the split and its destination audible.
THE MEANING
A power that seems whole can be divided, and its authority can pass to another hand. Here division names both fracture and transfer: what one power holds becomes another’s portion.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A settled or powerful order cannot be divided or displaced.
THE ROOT
פְּרֵס
pĕrēs
GROWS FROM
פרס
p-r-s
To split, divide, or break into portions.
“split” in this verse is pĕrēs. English makes “divided” sound only like damage, while this root can also describe breaking something into portions that pass elsewhere. Peres also echoes Pāras, Persia, so the word announces both the division and its destination through a consonant echo.
ALSO GROWS
perisat: Is divided; has been partitioned.
פְּרִיסַת
This is the Aramaic form in the statement that the kingdom is divided, showing the root at work in the kingdom’s changed shape.
pāras: To break or portion out.
פָּרַס
The Hebrew cognate appears in Isaiah 58:7, where bread is divided out for the hungry; division can transfer a portion as well as fracture a whole.
uPāras: And Persia; the Persian realm.
וּפָרָס
Its consonants and sound echo Peres in this line, placing the receiving power inside the pronouncement. This is a wordplay, not a claim that Persia derives from the verb.
THE PATTERN
Division breaks a whole’s single hold, and its authority or portions can pass into other hands.
And he changes the times and the seasons. He removes kings and raises up kings. He gives wisdom to the wise, and knowledge to those who know understanding.Is it not to break your bread for the hungry, and to bring the wandering poor into your house? When you see the naked, cover him, and do not hide yourself from your own flesh.But Jesus knew their thoughts, and said to them, Every governance divided against itself is laid empty, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand.THE THREAD
Is it not to break your bread for the hungry, and to bring the wandering poor into your house? When you see the naked, cover him, and do not hide yourself from your own flesh.The Hebrew word behind “deal” is פָּרַס (pāras), to break or portion out, a cognate of Aramaic Peres. Isaiah shows the same root dividing bread into a share for another, so Daniel’s division also carries the sense of a portion passing into new hands.
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