The Hebrew verb baqa means to cleave, split, or break through. It appears about 51 times in the Old Testament with a wide range of applications: splitting wood, hatching eggs, breaching city walls, breaking through enemy lines, and most dramatically — the miraculous parting of bodies of water.
The most theologically charged uses of baqa involve God's miraculous interventions. The parting of the Red Sea in Exodus 14 uses this verb (the waters were split), as does the parting of the Jordan River (Joshua 3). Moses striking the rock so that water gushes out (Numbers 20:11) uses the same word. The pattern is clear: baqa is God's word for breakthrough. When God's people are trapped — between the army and the sea, between thirst and stone — God cleaves a way through. This verb undergirds the great prophetic promise: "I will make a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland" (Isaiah 43:19). The Servant's suffering is also described with this word family — his skin was broken for our transgressions. For the believer, baqa is the verb of the impossible made possible by divine power.