A steed (as stretched out to a vehicle, not single nor for mounting ); also (by implication) a driver (in a chariot), i.e. (collectively) cavalry
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The Hebrew noun parash refers to a horseman, chariot horse, or cavalry force according to context. In the ancient world, cavalry and chariots represented speed, wealth, state power, pursuit, and battlefield threat.
Reader summary
Full entry for פָּרָשׁ (H6571) · Open the biblical lexicon
The Hebrew noun parash refers to a horseman, chariot horse, or cavalry force according to context. In the ancient world, cavalry and chariots represented speed, wealth, state power, pursuit, and battlefield threat.
The BSB source-word alignment has 57 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include and horsemen (16), horsemen (9), horses (5), and cavalry (4), - (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 50:9. Its strongest book concentrations include 1 Kings (7), 2 Chronicles (7), Exodus (7), Isaiah (7).
The Hebrew noun parash refers to a horseman, chariot horse, or cavalry force according to context. In the ancient world, cavalry and chariots represented speed, wealth, state power, pursuit, and battlefield threat. Scripture records rulers accumulating horses, kings taking sons for military service, armies terrifying cities, and fugitives facing mounted pursuit.
It also uses horsemen in a funeral procession and royal escort, and Elisha is called Israel's chariots and horsemen as a metaphor for his God-given significance. The noun itself neither praises nor condemns every mounted force. Narrative purpose, agent, target, and result determine its force. Prophets repeatedly challenge trust in military abundance, and Hosea locates Judah's deliverance in the Lord rather than bow, sword, war, horses, or cavalry.
Responsible teaching acknowledges the trauma and human cost of war, refuses to turn descriptive numbers into heroic spectacle, and rejects using ancient military imagery to bless modern violence, ethnic hatred, or coercive rule.
Parash names mounted military capacity, chariot personnel, horses, or horsemen in battle, procession, escort, warning, and metaphor. Its contexts expose conscription, accumulation, pursuit, terror, reliance, defeat, protection, and nonmilitary deliverance.
He said, “This will be the manner of the king who will reign over you: He will take your sons and appoint them to serve his own chariots and horses, and to run in front of his chariots.
Samuel warns that a king will take Israel's sons for his chariots, horses, and royal display.
Were not the Cushites and Libyans a vast army with many chariots and horsemen? Yet because you relied on the Lord, He delivered them into your hand.
A prophet recalls deliverance from a vast army with many chariots and horsemen when Judah relied on the Lord.
Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in their abundance of chariots and in their multitude of horsemen. They do not look to the Holy One of Israel; they do not seek the Lord.
The prophet pronounces woe on those trusting abundant horses and numerous horsemen instead of seeking the Lord.
Yet I will have compassion on the house of Judah, and I will save them—not by bow or sword or war, not by horses and cavalry, but by the Lord their God.”
God promises compassion and deliverance not by bow, sword, war, horses, or cavalry but by the Lord.
Every city flees at the sound of the horseman and archer. They enter the thickets and climb among the rocks. Every city is abandoned; no inhabitant is left.
The sound of horsemen and archers drives entire cities into flight and leaves them abandoned.
Charging horseman, flashing sword, shining spear; heaps of slain, mounds of corpses, dead bodies without end—they stumble over their dead—
Charging horsemen appear with flashing weapons and heaps of bodies in Nineveh's violent downfall.
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. Horse harnessed to chariot warfare, emphasizing military collective power rather than individual riding.
Horse harnessed to chariot warfare, emphasizing military collective power rather than individual riding.
a steed (as stretched out to a vehicle, not single nor for mounting ); also (by implication) a driver (in a chariot), i.e. (collectively) cavalry BDB: horseman Usage: horseman.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
Parash places visible military power under moral and theological scrutiny. First Samuel 8 presents cavalry within the king's taking: sons become runners and chariot servants for royal power, so military expansion carries a household cost. Second Chronicles 16 recalls a large enemy force not to celebrate weapons but to confront Asa's changed reliance. Isaiah 31 similarly condemns looking to Egypt's horses and horsemen without looking to the Holy One of Israel.
Hosea 1 states the contrast directly: promised deliverance will not be achieved by bow, sword, war, horses, or cavalry. Jeremiah 4 moves from equipment to civilians, recording whole cities fleeing at the sound of approaching riders and archers. Nahum 3 refuses sanitized victory language by placing charging horsemen beside heaps of slain and bodies without end.
Faithful application neither denies legitimate questions of public protection nor allows force to become ultimate security. It honors combatants and civilians as persons, tells the truth about trauma and death, resists conscription or nationalism disguised as discipleship, and centers God's justice rather than weaponry or spectacle.
Hos.1.7
Parash is a Hebrew masculine noun used in singular and plural forms for horseman, chariot horse, rider, or cavalry. Number and surrounding terms for horses, chariots, armies, and riders determine whether an individual, animal, role, or collective force is meant.
The New Testament presents Jesus entering Jerusalem humbly, forbids disciples from advancing His kingdom by the sword, and uses mounted figures symbolically in Revelation. These texts continue the distinction between God's reign and confidence in coercive force.