Perat (Euphrates)

פרת


The river Euphrates, which rises in the Armenian mountains and runs through Syria into Mesopotamia, joining up with the Tigris south of Babylon before running into the Persian Gulf.

From the root Parat (פרת) = "to be sweet" (of water).

Porat (פורת), from the same root, is a fruit-bearing tree (from Parah/פרה = "to bear"; which also gives the famous phrase of Genesis 1:22: Peru u-revu (פרו ורבו) = "Go forth and multiply..."

The river is mentioned frequently in the Tanach, too frequently to list all the references. cf Genesis 2:14 and 15:18; Deuteronomy 1:7; Jeremiah 2:18 etc.

In Chaldean and Aramaic it was written Ephrat (אפרת) with an aleph (א) prefixed. It is this spelling that is reflected in the full name of the town of Bethlehem - Beit Lechem Ephratah (בית לחם אפרתה) = "the house (temple) of the corn god of the Euphrates", which is to say Tammuz or Dumuzi (Utu-Dumuzi).

From variant renderings in the Tanach, there is a case to be made that the Yehudit name for the Euphrates was pronounced with dialect variations, sometimes as Prat or Perat, sometimes Pherat (though sometimes the softening to Pherat is grammatical), or even that there were different pronunciations in different places and times - a parallel might be the river Avon in England, which today is phonetically Eyvon if you are in the London-Oxford-Cambridge triangle of "standard English", but might be Arven down in Dorest, or Ahfen if you are in Wales, or an abbreviated Aven (like "haven't") in Viking areas of Britain.

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