To break away (from just authority), i.e. trespass , apostatize , quarrel
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The Hebrew verb pāšaʿ names a specific quality of sin that the softer English word 'sin' does not fully convey: it is not merely missing a mark or falling short, but breaking away, revolting, defecting from legitimate authority. Its cognate noun (peša') is one of the three great Old Testament sin words, alongside chattāt (moral failure) and ʿāwōn (iniquity/guilt), and the distinction matters theologically.
Reader summary
Full entry for פָּשַׁע (H6586) · Open the biblical lexicon
The Hebrew verb pāšaʿ names a specific quality of sin that the softer English word 'sin' does not fully convey: it is not merely missing a mark or falling short, but breaking away, revolting, defecting from legitimate authority. Its cognate noun (peša') is one of the three great Old Testament sin words, alongside chattāt (moral failure) and ʿāwōn.
The BSB source-word alignment has 41 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include rebelled (9), has been in rebellion (4), and transgress (2), have rebelled (2), a rebel (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at 1 Kings 8:50. Its strongest book concentrations include Isaiah (9), 2 Kings (6), 2 Chronicles (4), Jeremiah (4).
The Hebrew verb pāšaʿ names a specific quality of sin that the softer English word 'sin' does not fully convey: it is not merely missing a mark or falling short, but breaking away, revolting, defecting from legitimate authority. Its cognate noun (peša') is one of the three great Old Testament sin words, alongside chattāt (moral failure) and ʿāwōn (iniquity/guilt), and the distinction matters theologically.
Where chattāt highlights the failure to meet a standard and ʿāwōn emphasizes the weight of guilt, peša'/pāšaʿ highlights the relational dimension: this is treason, not just error. It is the word used when children revolt against a father (Isa. 1:2), when Amos indicts the nations for their crimes against one another, when Micah's prophetic task is to declare Jacob's rebellion to his face (Mic.
3:8). This is not stumbling — it is defection. That sharper meaning is essential for understanding the full weight of the Isaiah 53 declaration that the Servant was pierced for our peša': the atonement must be adequate not merely to cover mistakes but to absorb the guilt of deliberate rebellion. It is equally essential for receiving Isaiah 43:25 and 44:22 with full force — God's promise to blot out Israel's transgressions 'for my own sake' is a promise to absorb what Israel has no capacity to undo.
Pāšaʿ is currently counted by the local OT index at about 41 uses in the Hebrew Bible as a verb, with the cognate noun peša' considerably more frequent. The verb appears in legal, prophetic, and wisdom contexts, regularly naming a willful departure from relationship with God or proper covenantal obligation between persons. Its heaviest concentration is in the prophets, where Israel's rebellion against Yahweh is the recurring theme.
But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.
This is the locus classicus for peša' in the context of substitutionary atonement. The Servant absorbs the consequence of Israel's rebellion — not mere mistake but willful departure from God. The parallel pairing with ʿāwōn (iniquities) confirms that both dimensions of sin (relational revolt and accumulated guilt) are in view. Every preacher who traces pāšaʿ will eventually arrive here.
Listen, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken: “I have raised children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against Me.
Isaiah opens with a parental grief: children who have been raised and nurtured have turned in revolt against the one who sustained them. The verb here establishes pāšaʿ as a betrayal of relationship, not merely a rule-violation. The prophetic imagination returns to this family image repeatedly because it captures the covenantal intimacy that rebellion ruptures.
For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.
David's penitential psalm uses the full trio of sin terms — peša' (transgression), chattāt (sin), ʿāwōn (iniquity) — across its opening verses. The acknowledgment of peša' here is an admission not merely of failure but of deliberate revolt: David owns that what he did was not accidental. This is one of the canonical texts that teaches Israel the difference between minimizing wrongdoing and genuinely confessing it.
I, yes I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake and remembers your sins no more.
The divine first-person emphasis is striking: 'I, even I.' God does not simply forgive pāšaʿ — he blots it out, and he does so 'for my own sake,' not because Israel has earned it. This is among the most radical forgiveness declarations in the Old Testament. The use of pāšaʿ here ensures we understand the scope of what is being forgiven: not merely accidental sin but revolt.
But as for me, I am full of power by Yahweh's Spirit, and of judgment, and of might, to declare to Jacob his disobedience, and to Israel his sin.
Micah's self-understanding as a prophet is to name what the people do not want named — their peša', their revolt against covenant. The prophetic vocation is not consolation but diagnosis. This occurrence shows that pāšaʿ needs to be named before it can be forgiven: there is no mercy without honest confession of what was actually done.
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. Rebellion against legitimate authority; covenant-breaking revolt that severs relationship with God or just ruler.
Rebellion against legitimate authority; covenant-breaking revolt that severs relationship with God or just ruler.
to break away (from just authority), i.e. trespass, apostatize, quarrel BDB: rebel Usage: offend, rebel, revolt, transgress(-ion, -or).
How the stem changes the meaning of this verb across the biblical text.
This verb appears through different tense, voice, mood, or stem patterns. Those forms help readers see how the action is presented in context.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 1 selected witness from 41 lexical occurrence verses.
פָּשַׁע is a primitive root - no further derivation.
Isaiah frames Judah’s problem not as minor failure but as high-handed revolt against their Father-King, underscoring why judgment is deserved and why only radical grace can restore them. Isaiah 1:1-9
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
The pastoral value of pāšaʿ is that it refuses to let sin be softened into 'struggle' or 'imperfection.' When Micah announces that his prophetic task is to declare Israel's peša', he is insisting on a diagnostic that the congregation would prefer to avoid. Genuine pastoral care sometimes requires the same courage — naming not just the symptom (this person is struggling) but the underlying reality (this is a pattern of choosing self over God, of breaking trust, of revolt against right authority).
The preacher who knows pāšaʿ will not be satisfied with shallow acknowledgment; he will press for the kind of confession that Psalm 51 models: 'I know my transgressions.' But that same preacher must immediately carry the word to Isaiah 43:25 and Isaiah 53:5, where the depth of the revolt is met by an even greater divine initiative. The weight of pāšaʿ makes the grace of Isaiah 43 more astonishing, not less.
What God promises to blot out is not a minor infraction but a record of rebellion — and he does so 'for my own sake,' grounding forgiveness in his own character rather than in Israel's (or our) worthiness. This is the pastoral arc: name the transgression clearly, then announce the divine absorption of it with equal clarity.
Isa.53.5
Pāšaʿ belongs to a small cluster of Hebrew verbs and nouns built on the sense of 'breaking away': to break off from, to separate from in defiance. The cognate noun peša' is considerably more frequent in the OT (about 93 occurrences) and appears in the great Suffering Servant passage, in David's confession (Ps. 51), and throughout the prophetic literature as the term for covenant-rupturing revolt.
The three great sin terms of the OT — peša' (transgression/rebellion), chattāt (sin/missing the mark), ʿāwōn (iniquity/guilt) — are sometimes used together as a trio for comprehensive confession (Lev. 16:21; Ps. 51:1-5; Exod. 34:7).
Isaiah 53:5 — 'pierced for our transgressions' — is one of the most-cited Old Testament passages in the New Testament's interpretation of the cross. The early church read the Servant Song as a prophetic script for what Jesus accomplished: absorbing the peša' of God's people as their substitute. Paul's language of 'sin' in his letters (using hamartia and paraptōma) covers the same semantic range, including the relational revolt dimension of pāšaʿ.
Romans 5:8 ('while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us') and Colossians 2:13 ('having forgiven us all our transgressions') reflect the NT appropriation of this vocabulary. The Letter to the Hebrews quotes Isaiah 43:25's promise of forgiveness directly in its argument for the finality of Christ's atonement (Heb. 8:12; 10:17).
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