Language Studies

Hebrew Thoughts

Pethach - פֶּתַח (Strong's #6607)
Door

The word פֶּתַח pethach (Strong's #6607) means the actual doorway, entrance or space which is closed by a door, rather than דֶּלֶת deleth (Strong's #1817) which refers to the physical door or hanging itself. It is derived from the root verb פָּתַח pâthach "to open or loose" (Strong's #6605). Its first few Biblical uses are quite interesting.

In Genesis 4:7 God says to Cain that "sin lies at the door" and that its desire is for you. Like a cat perhaps sat at the threshold of a mousehole, waiting to pounce. This is not dissimilar to Peter's description of the devil prowling around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8). The use of "opening" rather than the word for a physical door or gate suggests the voracious opened mouth of sin waiting to devour or of a tempting open doorway waiting to be gone through.

In Genesis 6:16 it is used of Noah's ark having a doorway in it, the door of salvation, which God Himself shuts (Genesis 7:16). Significantly, the ark is only seen as a vehicle of salvation, the end purpose is for all the animals to go out through the same doorway into the post-flood earth rather than stay in the ark forever. In John 10:7,9 Jesus describes himself as the doorway for the sheep. Again, he sees the image as a 2-way door, through which the sheep go "in and out" to find salvation from the wolf, thief and robber, and out to find pasture. In middle-eastern shepherding the shepherd himself lay across an entrance to a corral, so that he literally was "the door".

Genesis 18:1 has God coming down to meet Abraham whilst he is sitting in the doorway to his tent. John sees a similar image, as described in Revelation 3:20, of Jesus standing at the door and knocking in order for 2-way fellowship/dining to occur.

A significant use is in Exodus 12:23 where in the night of the plague on the firstborn in Egypt God passes over the "door", ûphâçach YHVH ‘al-happethach, of the houses on which the blood had been placed.

פֶּתַח pethach could describe the opening of doors, houses, tents, the ear, the mouth, the ground (as with a plough) and loosing from bonds, indeed it was used of the opening to the tabernacle/tent in Exodus 36:26.

Micah 7:5 uses the phrase pith'chêy-phîykhâ literally translated as the "doors of the mouth" by many versions, but as "lips" by the NAS and "words" by the NIV; Young's actually renders most accurately but particularly meaningfully by "openings of thy mouth".

Psalm 119:130's familiar, "the entrance of Your words gives light, it gives understanding to the simple", uses פֶּתַח pethach (Strong's #6608) for "entrance" and פֶּתִי pethîy (Strong's #6612) for "simple, naïve". Perhaps, the Hebrew wordplay could be preserved by translating as "the opening-up of Your words give light, they give understanding to the open-minded".

In Nahum 3:13 a typical use of Hebrew word doubling emphasises the vulnerability of the people, the men are described as women and the gates of the land as "opened so that they are really open!". In Hebrew this is just two words, pâthach repeated.

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