פָּלִיט
pa.lit (H6412A)
survivor
AI Word Study
# The Hebrew Word *Palit* (Survivor) The Hebrew word *palit* denotes a person who has escaped or survived a catastrophic event. Its nineteen occurrences across the biblical text establish it as a specialized term for those who emerge alive from situations involving danger, destruction, or threat. The word carries the fundamental sense of "survivor"—someone who has passed through peril and remained alive, distinguishing them from those who perished in the same circumstances. The relatively modest frequency of *palit* in the Bible (19 occurrences) suggests it was reserved for specific narrative contexts where survival itself became a notable detail. Rather than being used for everyday survival or mere continuance of life, the word appears to mark significant moments where individuals or groups escaped from warfare, judgment, exile, or divine punishment. This specialized usage indicates that ancient Hebrew speakers employed *palit* when survival against odds or from extraordinary circumstances warranted particular attention in the narrative. The existence and repeated use of this distinct term reflects how survival in ancient Near Eastern contexts—particularly from military defeat, divine judgment, or displacement—held significant importance in biblical storytelling and theology. By designating certain individuals explicitly as "survivors," the texts emphasize both the severity of events from which they escaped and the consequential status of those who endured them.
AI synthesis uses only provided lexicon data -- never training knowledge.
One who had escaped came and told Abram, the Hebrew. At that time, he lived by the oaks of Mamre, the Amorite, brother of Eshcol and brother of Aner. They were allies of Abram.
The others came out of the city against them, so they were in the middle of Israel, some on this side, and some on that side. They struck them, so that they let none of them remain or escape.
Then Jephthah gathered together all the men of Gilead, and fought with Ephraim. The men of Gilead struck Ephraim, because they said, “You are fugitives of Ephraim, you Gileadites, in the middle of Ephraim, and in the middle of Manasseh.”
The Gileadites took the fords of the Jordan against the Ephraimites. Whenever a fugitive of Ephraim said, “Let me go over,” the men of Gilead said to him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” If he said, “No;”
but king Joram had returned to be healed in Jezreel of the wounds which the Syrians had given him, when he fought with Hazael king of Syria.) Jehu said, “If this is your thinking, then let no one escape and go out of the city, to go to tell it in Jezreel.”
“Assemble yourselves and come. Draw near together, you who have escaped from the nations. Those have no knowledge who carry the wood of their engraved image, and pray to a god that can’t save.
So will it be with all the men who set their faces to go into Egypt to live there. They will die by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence. None of them will remain or escape from the evil that I will bring on them.’
so that none of the remnant of Judah, who have gone into the land of Egypt to live there, will escape or be left to return into the land of Judah, to which they have a desire to return to dwell there; for no one will return except those who will escape.’ ”
Those who escape the sword will return out of the land of Egypt into the land of Judah few in number. All the remnant of Judah, who have gone into the land of Egypt to live there, will know whose word will stand, mine or theirs.
“You have called, as in the day of a solemn assembly, my terrors on every side. There was no one that escaped or remained in the day of Yahweh’s anger. My enemy has consumed those whom I have cared for and brought up.
“ ‘ “Yet I will leave a remnant, in that you will have some that escape the sword among the nations, when you are scattered through the countries.
Those of you that escape will remember me among the nations where they are carried captive, how I have been broken with their lewd heart, which has departed from me, and with their eyes, which play the prostitute after their idols. Then they will loathe themselves in their own sight for the evils which they have committed in all their abominations.
But those of those who escape, they will escape and will be on the mountains like doves of the valleys, all of them moaning, everyone in his iniquity.
that in that day he who escapes will come to you, to cause you to hear it with your ears?
In that day your mouth will be opened to him who has escaped, and you will speak, and be no more mute. So you will be a sign to them. Then they will know that I am Yahweh.”
In the twelfth year of our captivity, in the tenth month, in the fifth day of the month, one who had escaped out of Jerusalem came to me, saying, “The city has been defeated!”
Now Yahweh’s hand had been on me in the evening, before he who had escaped came; and he had opened my mouth, until he came to me in the morning; and my mouth was opened, and I was no longer mute.
I saw the Lord standing beside the altar, and he said, “Strike the tops of the pillars, that the thresholds may shake; and break them in pieces on the head of all of them; and I will kill the last of them with the sword: there shall not one of them flee away, and there shall not one of them escape.
Don’t stand in the crossroads to cut off those of his who escape. Don’t deliver up those of his who remain in the day of distress.