Fear Not — 150-Day Devotional
$ 24.99
A 150-day journey through Scripture designed to uproot fear and build unshakeable faith. Foundation, Formation, Fortification.
Hebrew Word Study · H8605 · Old Testament
תְּפִלָּה Tĕphillâ
Prayer · Intercession · Supplication
To step into the gap and speak.
H8605 Root: פָּלַל Feminine noun LXX: προσευχή
The Word at a Glance
Script תְּפִלָּה
Transliteration Tĕphillâ
Strong's Number
H8605 Root פָּלַל (pālal) — H6419
Root Meaning To intervene, interpose, mediate, plead — to place oneself in the gap
Part of Speech Feminine noun
Where It Concentrates The Psalms — where it is also used as a title (Psalm 17, 86, 90, 102, 142) — plus Solomon's temple prayer and Daniel 9
Primary Sources Strong's Hebrew · Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB) · TWOT · HALOT
LXX Equivalent προσευχή (proseuchē) — G4335
NT Equivalent προσευχή (proseuchē) — G4335
Core Meaning
Prayer Was Never Shouting at a Closed Sky
In English, "prayer" is a fairly thin word. It usually means asking — a request sent upward, hopefully received.
Hebrew is far more specific. Tĕphillâ is the standing Old Testament word for prayer, and it is built from the verb pālal — to intervene, to interpose, to mediate, to plead. That root does something the English word never does: it puts the person praying somewhere. Tĕphillâ describes a position before it describes a sentence.
The word carries a cluster of meanings that belong together:
- Prayer — the whole act of addressing God, the general Old Testament term
- Intercession — speaking into a situation on behalf of someone else
- Supplication — a specific request pressed out of a real need
- Mediation — standing between two parties, in the space where they meet
The most compact summary: tĕphillâ is a person stepping into the gap and speaking there.
That reframes everything. Prayer is not you attempting to get the attention of a distant God. It is a role God gave you inside a relationship He already opened — and the whole Old Testament assumes He is listening from the other side.
The Root
פָּלַל (Pālal) — To Interpose, To Plead
פָּלַל
Pālal H6419
The root of tĕphillâ is the verb pālal, and it almost always appears in the reflexive (hitpael) stem — a grammatical form that turns the action back on the one performing it. Literally: to place oneself in the position of one who intervenes.
You can watch it happen. God tells Abimelech that Abraham "shall pray for thee, and thou shalt live" (Genesis 20:7) — pālal. Hannah stands in the temple and pours out a request for a son (1 Samuel 1:26–27) — pālal. Daniel sets his face toward the Lord and takes the sin of a whole nation onto his own lips (Daniel 9:4) — pālal.
None of those are passive. Prayer in Hebrew is positional before it is verbal: you take a place, and then you speak from it.
Key Appearances
Tephillah in the Old Testament
Psalm 65:2 KJV
"O thou that hearest prayer, unto thee shall all flesh come."
Hearing tephillah is named as something God simply is — an attribute, not an occasional mood.
Psalm 141:2 KJV
"Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice."
Tephillah pictured as an offering that rises. Prayer is priestly work, not merely conversation.
1 Kings 8:28 KJV
"Yet have thou respect unto the prayer of thy servant, and to his supplication, O LORD my God, to hearken unto the cry and to the prayer, which thy servant prayeth before thee to day."
Solomon stacks tephillah beside techinnah at the temple dedication — the full vocabulary of approach in a single sentence.
Psalm 66:19 KJV
"But verily God hath heard me; he hath attended to the voice of my prayer."
Testimony after the fact. God did not merely register the tephillah — He gave it attention.
Psalm 102:17 KJV
"He will regard the prayer of the destitute, and not despise their prayer."
The prayer of the stripped and empty-handed is explicitly named as one God will not despise.
Daniel 9:3 KJV
"And I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes."
Daniel joins tephillah to fasting and confession while interceding for an entire nation.
Defining Verse
"O thou that hearest prayer, unto thee shall all flesh come."
Psalm 65:2 · KJV
David does not say God sometimes hears prayer. He addresses Him by it — "O thou that hearest tĕphillâ." Hearing prayer is treated as a name, a description of character, the way you would say "the God who made the mountains."
And then the reach of the verse: unto thee shall all flesh come. Not the qualified, not the articulate, not the religiously fluent. All flesh. The one attribute David names before opening the door that wide is the attribute that makes the door worth walking through — He hears.
How Tephillah Is Used
Four Dimensions of Tephillah in the Old Testament
1
Tephillah as a Title Over a Psalm
Several Psalms are labelled a tĕphillâ in their superscription — Psalm 17, Psalm 86, Psalm 90,
Psalm 102 and Psalm 142 among them. Read them together and one thing stands out: they are not tidy. They
contain complaint, exhaustion, fear, and long stretches with no request at all. The Bible was willing to
file all of that under the word "prayer."
Psalm 17:1 · Psalm 102 (title) · Psalm 142 (title)
2
Tephillah as Priestly Offering
"Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense" (Psalm 141:2). Tĕphillâ is repeatedly pictured rising —
the language of the altar rather than the courtroom. The verb ʿālâ, "to ascend," is the same root
behind the burnt offering. Prayer is something you lift, and God receives what is lifted.
Psalm 141:2 · Revelation 5:8 picks up the same image
3
Tephillah as Intercession for Others
The root's reflexive force comes fully into view when someone prays for another. Moses stands between God's
anger and a rebellious people (Exodus 32:11–14). Daniel confesses a nation's sin as though it were his own
(Daniel 9:3–19). Solomon asks God to hear the prayer of foreigners who turn toward the temple (1 Kings 8:41–43).
This is prayer as gap-standing.
Exodus 32:11–14 · 1 Kings 8:41–43 · Daniel 9:3–19
4
Tephillah From the Empty-Handed
"He will regard the prayer of the destitute, and not despise their prayer" (Psalm 102:17). The word is used
of people with nothing to offer and no leverage to apply. Tĕphillâ never assumes a bargaining position — which
is exactly why it is available to everyone.
Psalm 102:17 · Psalm 6:9 · Jonah 2:7
From Hebrew to Greek
Tephillah Becomes Proseuchē
When the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek, the translators reached for προσευχή (proseuchē) to carry tĕphillâ — and the New Testament kept it. So when Paul writes "in every thing by prayer and supplication" (Philippians 4:6), the first of those words is the Greek heir of the word the Psalms had been singing for centuries.
The two Testaments are not describing two different activities. They are describing the same door, opened wider. What changed between them is not the nature of prayer but the ground of access: pālal put a person in the gap; the cross put Christ there permanently, "who ever liveth to make intercession" (Hebrews 7:25).
Study Further
Where These Words Appear in the Library
Sources: Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (H8605, H6419, H6293, H8085, H8467, H7878, H5927); Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon (BDB); Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (TWOT); Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (HALOT); Vine's Expository Dictionary. Scripture quotations are from the King James Version (public domain). Occurrence tallies differ slightly between lexicon editions, so counts are given as ranges or omitted rather than stated flatly.