The root (or perhaps better to say roots) ענה anah is generally said to have four meanings in Hebrew. Klein identifies them as follows::
answer
sing
afflict
occupy
Let’s look at each of them and the words deriving from them.
Answer
This includes the senses of “answer, reply, respond”. It’s the most popular use of the verb in Hebrew today. A particular type of response is responding as a witness, i.e., to testify. This is the sense found in the ninth commandment:
לֹא־תַעֲנֶה בְרֵעֲךָ עֵד שָׁקֶר
“You shall not testify against your neighbor as a false witness.” (Shemot 20:13)
Derivatives include: הֵעָנוּת he’anut - “response, consent” and מַעֲנֶה ma’aneh - “answer, reply, solution.”
Sing
Klein treats this as a distinct root. Others say that it reflects a form of singing - where one sings, and others respond with a refrain. This distinction can be found in translations of the phrase וַתַּעַן לָהֶם מִרְיָם (Shemot 15:21) describing the song Miriam led after the splitting of the Red Sea. Some translations render it as “And Miriam chanted for them” and others have “And Miriam answered them.”
One derivative of the verb is עַנּוֹת anot - “singing”, which only appears in one biblical verse, when Moshe tells Yehoshua what he hears from the activity around the Golden Calf:
וַיֹּאמֶר אֵין קוֹל עֲנוֹת גְּבוּרָה וְאֵין קוֹל עֲנוֹת חֲלוּשָׁה קוֹל עַנּוֹת אָנֹכִי שֹׁמֵעַ׃
“But he said: Not the sound of the song of prevailing, not the sound of the song of failing, it is the sound of choral-song that I hear!” (Shemot 32:18)
Afflict
Klein provides a number of different meanings for this verb sense: to be bowed down, be afflicted, was low, was humbled, or in the transitive sense, to humble, oppress, afflict, or violate (a woman). In Modern Hebrew, the most common meaning is “to torture.”
It has a number of common derivatives:
עָנָו anav - “humble, modest”
עֲנָוָה anava - “humility, modesty”
תַּעֲנִית ta’anit- “self-affliction, fasting” (today used almost always for religious fasts, with צום tzom being a more general term also used for things like medical fasts)
עָנִי ani - “poor (person)”
עֹנִי oni - “affliction, oppression, poverty”
This last meaning is familiar from the identification of matza as לֶ֣חֶם עֹ֑נִי lechem oni, or as it appears in the Aramaic translation in the Pesach Haggadah, לַחְמָא עַנְיָא lachma anya.
The Hebrew phrase appears in Devarim 16:3, in the laws of Pesach:
לֹא־תֹאכַל עָלָיו חָמֵץ שִׁבְעַת יָמִים תֹּאכַל־עָלָיו מַצּוֹת לֶחֶם עֹנִי כִּי בְחִפָּזוֹן יָצָאתָ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם לְמַעַן תִּזְכֹּר אֶת־יוֹם צֵאתְךָ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם כֹּל יְמֵי חַיֶּיךָ׃
JPS translates it as follows:
“You shall not eat anything leavened with it; for seven days thereafter you shall eat unleavened bread [matzot], bread of distress—for you departed from the land of Egypt hurriedly—so that you may remember the day of your departure from the land of Egypt as long as you live.”
Lechem oni is translated here as “bread of distress.” Similar translations by others include the popular “bread of affliction” and “bread of anguish.” These renderings reflect an understanding of the phrase as referring to the distress the Israelites suffered in Egypt (this is Rashi’s approach in his commentary on the verse). Support for this reading can be found in the occurrence of oni, describing the oppression they suffered found in Shemot 3:7, 3:17, 4:31 and Devarim 26:7.
Others say that lechem oni refers to the poor quality or taste of matza, as compared to the better tasting leavened bread. Perhaps aligned with this, Alter translates the phrase as “poverty’s bread.” This is the approach of Bekhor Shor and Hizzkuni.
A slightly different take is offered by Tigay, in the JPS Devarim, who notes that bread of poverty suggests “that it is eaten by the poor or those intentionally deprived, such as prisoners.” He mentions a theory that as such, matza was eaten by the Israelites while they were slaves (see Seforno on the verse), but then rejects it because “eating unleavened bread recalls the haste of the Exodus, not the bondage.”
In a footnote to his commentary, Tigay sees how this disagreement is reflected in different versions of the Haggadah. In the passage of ha lachma anya, some manuscripts have it as “this is the bread of affliction that our fathers ate in the Land of Egypt” (בְּאַרְעָא דְמִצְרָיִם) and others read “when they left the land of Egypt” (דנפקו מארעא דמצרים).
Occupy
Here occupy means “to busy oneself.” It only appears in Kohelet, along with its derivative עִנְיַן inyan, such as in this verse:
וְנָתַתִּי אֶת־לִבִּי לִדְרוֹשׁ וְלָתוּר בַּחׇכְמָה עַל כׇּל־אֲשֶׁר נַעֲשָׂה תַּחַת הַשָּׁמָיִם הוּא עִנְיַן רָע נָתַן אֱלֹהִים לִבְנֵי הָאָדָם לַעֲנוֹת בּוֹ׃
“I set my mind to study and to probe with wisdom all that happens under the sun.—An unhappy business, that, which God gave men to be concerned with!” (Kohelet 1:13)
Here the verb is translated as “to be concerned with” and the noun inyan as “business” However, others such as Ibn Ezra, prefer to translate the verb as “to be afflicted with” and the noun as “task.”
But even if in Kohelet it means to afflict (a claim I agree with in my book, based on parallels with other biblical texts - see pages 132-133), the meanings “occupy, occupation” certainly do continue throughout later Hebrew. Klein notes that in Talmudic Hebrew, inyan means “matter, subject”, and in Medieval Hebrew it gained the sense “meaning.” In Modern Hebrew it also means “interest” (as in something that draws attention), and from here we get the words הִתְעַנְיֵן hitanyen - “to express interest”, מְעַנְיֵן me’anyen - “interesting”, and מְעֻנְיָן me’unyan - “interested.”
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A possibly related word is עוֹנָה onah - meaning “marital duty, cohabitation” in Shemot 21:10, and later Hebrew “time, period, season.” The etymology of this word is seriously debated, and I won’t get into it in this post. For further reading, see Klein’s etymology, and these essays: Onah: A Husband’s Conjugal Duties? - TheTorah.com and The Etymology of “Onah” – The Seforim Blog.
