Abarim Publications' online Biblical Hebrew Dictionary

פגר

The verb פגר (pagar) means to fall apart due to lack of consistency or structural support. It's used in the verbal sense with the meaning of getting physically exhausted due to fatigue or lack of nutrition, but with an implication of a mental or emotional compromise that results in a failure to stick together as a group or society (in Biblical jargon, a "body" may be both a single organic individual and a group that has a singular, cultural identity; hence the "body" of Christ).

Our verb is used only in one context, namely to describe the condition of the men who were so physically weary that they were unable to stay with David's group to pursue the Amalekites who had taken the women of Ziklag (1 Samuel 30:10 and 30:21 only). David's treatment of these men when he and his men returned victoriously is of course of immense theological significance (30:23-25).

The sole derivative of this verb is the noun פגר (peger), meaning corpse or carcass. Of the twenty 22 occurrences, this word is applied to animal carcasses only once, namely in Genesis 15:11, a passage which obviously tells of more than of a mere ritual. The rest of the usages of this noun describes human corpses in which decay has already set in (Numbers 14:29, Isaiah 34:3, Jeremiah 31:40, but see Ephesians 2:1).

Another exception may come in Leviticus 26:30 and Ezekiel 43:7-9, where our word applies to idols. In Ugaritic this root פגר indeed applies to stelae, which seems to suggest that the Hebrew usage of it illustrates the understanding that idols form the stench of rot from a society — and that a society without idols, but rather based on a knowledge of nature, smells sweet to the Creator: Genesis 8:21, 2 Corinthians 2:14.