What Does Numbers 26:21 Mean?
And the sons of Pharez were these. Of Hezron, the family of the Hezronites. Of Hamul, the family of the Hamulites.
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
And the sons of Pharez were; of Hezron, the family of the Hezronites: of Hamul, the family of the Hamulites.THE KEY
Pharez’s name means “breach,” so this family line carries a rupture as part of its inheritance.
THE MEANING
A rupture does not erase your place in the life that continues. The line carries Pharez, “breach”, into named families; Hezron is often linked to an enclosure, and Hamul to one who is spared, holding rupture, boundary, and preservation together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A rupture puts a life outside the line of belonging. Here, the name meaning “breach” remains inside the counted family.
THE ROOT
פֶּרֶץ
perets
GROWS FROM
פרץ
p-r-ts
To break through; to burst forth.
“Pharez” in this verse is perets. The name carries the action: the one who breaks through is marked by the breach itself. Genesis pairs this verb and noun at Perez’s birth, and this verse carries that name forward in a family line.
ALSO GROWS
parats: To break through; burst forth.
פָּרַץ
Genesis 38:29 uses this verb for the child’s emergence, making the action inside Pharez’s name audible.
perets: A breach; a breakthrough.
פֶּרֶץ
This noun is also the name Pharez, so the rupture becomes part of the family’s identity.
ha-porets: The one who breaks through; the breaker.
הַפֹּרֵץ
Micah 2:13 uses this form for the one who opens a way through, extending the same root’s image of passage.
חָמוּל
ḥāmûl
GROWS FROM
חמל
ḥ-m-l
To spare; to show compassion or pity.
Hamul is connected to the verb for sparing, carrying the sense of one who is spared. Beside Pharez’s breach, the name adds preservation to the line’s story.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāmal: To spare; show compassion or pity.
חָמַל
The verb gives Hamul’s name its sense of being spared.
ḥemlāh: Compassion; pity.
חֶמְלָה
This noun shows the root’s movement from sparing someone to the compassion expressed in that act.
חֶצְרוֹן
ḥeṣrōn
GROWS FROM
חצר
ḥ-ṣ-r
Court or enclosure; by extension, an enclosed settlement. The name’s connection to this root is not certain.
Hezron is often connected to the Hebrew word for a courtyard or enclosure. If that connection is heard here, an image of a bounded place follows the breach in Pharez’s name.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāṣēr: A courtyard; an enclosure.
חָצֵר
This word is commonly linked to Hezron and offers an image of space held within bounds.
ḥaṣērîm: Courtyards; settlements.
חֲצֵרִים
This plural form extends the enclosure image to places where people live.
THE PATTERN
A breach can become a passage through which a new line or movement proceeds.
And it came to be, as he drew back his hand, and behold, his brother came out, and she said, How have you broken through? Let this breach be upon you. Therefore his name was called Pharez, the breach.The one who breaks through goes up before them. They break through, pass through the gate, and go out through it. Their king passes before them, and the LORD is at their head.And they went up to Baal-perazim, and David struck them there. Then David said, God has burst out upon my enemies by my hand, like a breach of waters. Therefore they called the name of that place Baal-perazim, master of breaches.THE THREAD
And it came to be, as he drew back his hand, and behold, his brother came out, and she said, How have you broken through? Let this breach be upon you. Therefore his name was called Pharez, the breach.This verse makes the root inside Pharez’s name explicit: “broken forth” and “breach” both grow from פרץ (parats), “to break through.” Numbers carries that breakthrough forward as the name of a family line.
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