An edge, side, or corner identifies a part of an object or area rather than always naming the same kind of boundary. In the harvest instructions, the field's edge is the portion a landholder must leave for poor people and the foreign resident.
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Reader summary
Full entry for פֵּאָה (H6285) · Open the biblical lexicon
An edge, side, or corner identifies a part of an object or area rather than always naming the same kind of boundary. In the harvest instructions, the field's edge is the portion a landholder must leave for poor people and the foreign resident.
The BSB source-word alignment has 86 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include side (34), . . . (19), - (8), boundary (4), corners (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Exodus 25:26. Its strongest book concentrations include Ezekiel (47), Exodus (15), Joshua (6), Leviticus (6).
An edge, side, or corner identifies a part of an object or area rather than always naming the same kind of boundary. In the harvest instructions, the field's edge is the portion a landholder must leave for poor people and the foreign resident. In sanctuary construction, a side locates courtyard hangings with respect to the whole enclosure. The physical word is ordinary, but a command can give its location a significant social purpose.
A teacher can help readers notice how the harvest is restrained so that others may gather food, without treating every corner in Scripture as a command for charity. The surrounding noun and instruction supply the meaning. God's concern for the vulnerable is expressed through a specific practice in Israel's agricultural life, which must be understood before contemporary applications are proposed.
The field's unreaped edge makes provision available to vulnerable neighbors, while a courtyard side locates construction materials. The same spatial vocabulary receives different functions from the surrounding instruction.
When you reap the harvest of your land, you are not to reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest.
Landholders are told not to harvest to the field's edges; the next verse identifies poor people and the foreigner as intended beneficiaries of what remains.
When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap all the way to the edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the foreign resident. I am the Lord your God.’”
The harvest-edge requirement appears among festival instructions, joining sacred observance to food left for poor people and the foreign resident.
You are also to make a courtyard for the tabernacle. On the south side of the courtyard make curtains of finely spun linen, a hundred cubits long on one side,
The south side identifies the location and length of the courtyard's linen hangings, giving spatial orientation rather than a harvesting obligation.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. properly, mouth in a figurative sense, i.e. direction , region , extremity
properly, mouth in a figurative sense, i.e. direction, region, extremity BDB: corner Usage: corner, end, quarter, side.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
פֵּאָה is built from this root:
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
A field edge is significant in Leviticus because the Lord addresses how the harvest is gathered and who may benefit. The owner's right to reap is bounded by an instruction to leave something available for poor people and the foreign resident. Worship and agricultural practice therefore meet in an ordinary location. The same word's use for the side of a sanctuary court prevents us from turning the noun itself into a complete social doctrine.
Location does not carry a moral rule apart from the instruction attached to it. Contemporary teaching can ask how provision becomes practically accessible while remaining clear that today's setting differs from ancient Israel's field economy. The application should serve real neighbors with dignity, not become a symbolic gesture that leaves them unable to obtain help.
Lev.23.22
The Hebrew comparison identifies an extremity, side, or corner. The field and courtyard witnesses show that an ordinary spatial noun can receive different significance from the object and instructions around it.
The New Testament's accounts of generosity can be compared with the harvest provisions for vulnerable neighbors, while their own circumstances remain distinct. Second Corinthians 8 addresses willing giving and shared need, rather than reissuing the field-edge procedure as an identical rule for every occupation.