ezrach

In the post on simcha, we saw that there is a connection in Hebrew and other Semitic languages between words meaning light and sprouting, between “glow” and “grow” (these two aren’t related in English). I gave a few more examples in that post. However, recently I found a collection of YouTube videos of Avshalom Kor’s language segment on Israeli television, and he mentioned one I hadn’t seen.

He quoted his teacher Shlomo Morag as explaining the connection between the verb זרח – “to shine” (zarach) and ezrach אזרח, which in Modern Hebrew means “citizen” (and "civilian" as well, compared to a solider.)

Morag, in his 1972 Tarbiz article "ומתערה כאזרח רענן", reviews the various explanations of this  verse (Tehilim 37:35):

רָאִיתִי, רָשָׁע עָרִיץ;    וּמִתְעָרֶה, כְּאֶזְרָח רַעֲנָן.

The New JPS translates it as:

"I saw a wicked man, powerful, well-rooted like a robust native tree".

The Koren English Jerusalem Bible similarly translates:

"I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green tree in its native soil".

The verse is unusual because in the other 16 occurrences of the word ezrach in the Tanach, it means "an indigenous, permanent resident of the land", and is particularly used in contrast with ger גר - "the stranger." Only here does it seem to refer to a plant or tree. The translations above, following many of the medieval commentaries, assume that the connection between ezrach as citizen and ezrach as tree is that both are well-rooted in the soil.

However, Morag believes that Rabbi Saadia Gaon was closest to the truth. He writes that root זרח meant "to sprout, to appear". Prof. Morag, as we have noted, writes the root means both to “rise and shine” (that phrase actually comes from the translation of Yishaya 60:1, קומי אורי). The original meaning of ezrach was "an appearance of shining and light", but that sense was not preserved in the Bible. The usage here in Tehilim was the earlier one, where it meant "sprout, shoot". From there it was borrowed to mean one who rose and grew from the land, i.e. one who was born there. (This is in contrast to Rashi, and others, who seem to reverse the derivation - they say that the ezrach in Tehilim was a tree like a citizen, in that it was well rooted.)

We see in Latin (and later in English) a similar connection between birth and an ethnic group of people, in the words natal and nation, which share a common root (which also meant "to spring forth, to grow)". So perhaps the best translation for the biblical ezrach would be "native" (unlike citizen, which is related to "city").

Interestingly, Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, in The Living Torah, translates ezrach as a "person born into the nation", but then notes that it literally means "a native born in the land". The tension between these two meanings is felt more strongly regarding the translation of ger as either  "stranger" or  "convert". In any case, as Levine points out in his JPS commentary on Vayikra 19:34,"the term ezrah is never applied to the prior inhabitants of Canaan." (For further discussion see this interesting Hebrew article by Dr. Eliezer Hadad, or this English abstract).

Another derivative of זרח is mizrach מזרח – “east”. We discussed it briefly in this post about the Semitic origins of the word "Asia", but now it is not so clear (to me) whether mizrach means “where the sun rises” or “where the sun begins to shine”.

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tuval kayin and volcano

The volcano is in the news again, and its cloud may even be getting close to Israel. But are we close to an etymological connection between the word "volcano" and a Hebrew root?

Let's start by looking at the word "volcano". It gets its name from the Roman god Vulcan(us):

1610s, from It. vulcano "burning mountain," from L. Vulcanus "Vulcan," Roman god of fire, also "fire, flames, volcano" (see Vulcan). The name was first applied to Mt. Etna by the Romans, who believed it was the forge of Vulcan.

There is an interesting etymology that tries to connect "Vulcan" with the Biblical Tuval Kayin from Bereishit 4:22

וְצִלָּה גַם-הִוא יָלְדָה אֶת-תּוּבַל קַיִן לֹטֵשׁ כָּל-חֹרֵשׁ נְחֹשֶׁת וּבַרְזֶל וַאֲחוֹת תּוּבַל-קַיִן נַעֲמָה.

And Tzila, she bore Tuval-kayin, who forged all implements of copper and iron. And the sister of Tuval-Kayin was Na'ama.

Both based on the similarity of sound between (tu)val-kain and vulcan, and the fact that Tuval-Kayin was a smith (we've discussed the connection between Kayin and craftsmen and smiths here) there is an assumed connection between the two.

This is a very old theory, with perhaps Walter Raleigh being the first person to make the connection between the two figures. He wrote of Tuval Kayin:

whence came the name of Vulcan by aphaeresis of the two first letters

Many others promoted and developed this theory, and thousands of mentions can be found on the internet and in other sources. For example this 1825 book provides a number of "proofs":

M. De Lavaur, in his Conférence de la Fable avec l'Histoire Sainte, supposes that the Greeks and Romans, took their smith-god Vulcan, from Tubal-cain, the son of Lamech. The probability of this will appear —

1. From the name, which, by the omission of the Tu and turning the b into v, a change frequently made among the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans, makes Vulcain or Vulcan.

2. From his occupation, he was an artificer, a master smith in brass and iron.

3. He thinks this farther probable from the names and sounds in this verse. The melting metals in the fire, and hammering them, bears a near resemblance to the hissing sound of צלה tsillah, the mother of Tubal-cain; and צלל tsalal, signifies to tinkle or make a sound like a bell, 1 Sam. iii. II, 2 Kings xxi. 12.

4. Vulcan is said to have been lame: M. De Lavaur thinks that this notion was taken from the noun צלע tsela, which signifies a halting or lameness.

5. Vulcan had to wife Venus the goddess of beauty: Naamah, the sister of Tubal-cain, he thinks, may have given rise to this part of the fable, as her name, in Hebrew signifies beautiful or gracious.

6. Vulcan is reported to have been jealous of his wife, and to have forged nets in which he took Mars and her, and exposed them to the view of the whole celestial court; this idea he thinks was derived from the literal import of the name Tubal-cain; תבל tebel, signifies an incestuous mixture of relatives, Lev. xx. 12. and קנא kana, to burn with jealousy ; from these and concomitant circumstances, the case of the detected adultery of Mars and Venus might be easily deduced.

He is of opinion that a tradition of this kind might have readily found its way from the Egyptians to the Greeks, as the former had frequent intercourse with the Hebrews.

Even Shadal makes a connection, and I've heard (but not found) that Cassuto may have as well.

So with this long and impressive list - am I convinced? Not really.

Why not? First of all, Klein in his entry for  וולקני (the Modern Hebrew word for "volcanic" - even though the word for volcano, הר געש, har ga'ash, has an adjective, געשי, ga'ashi, for some reason the adjective vulkani is much more common) does not mention the theory, only saying that the name Vulcan probably has an Etruscan origin. And Avineri (Yad Halashon p. 343) also says he's very reluctant to accept the theory.

But mostly, although the theory seems attractive externally, it doesn't seem to make much sense historically. We've discussed many times how the Greeks borrowed words from their Semitic neighbors to to the East - including even one of their gods, Adonis. But the Romans had far fewer exchanges of this kind, and the names of their gods, who they adopted primarily from the Etruscans would be even more ancient. (There's much similarity between Greek and Roman mythology, but the Etruscan/Roman names predate the connection between the two.)

A discussion of more reasonable etymologies appear in this book:

Vulcan is the god of fire. The etymology of the name is difficult to determine. G. Dumezil (Fetes romaines d'ete et d'automme [Paris 1925], pp. 72-76) reviews all the principal attempts to elucidate it and shows how precarious they are. They include a comparison with the the Cretan welchanos; an explanation by way of the Ossetic noun (Kurd-alae)-waergon; and an Etruscan hypothesis based on the abbreviation Vel from the Piacenza liver, which is arbitrarily completed to yield Vel(chans), whereas the Etruscan homologue of Hephaestus is Sethlans. Dumezil prefers a derivation from the Vedic varcas ("brightness," or "flash," one of the properties of Agni, the god of fire), but as a good comparativist, he hastens to point out the difficulty: "no verbal or nominal derivative of this version of the root exists in Latin" (ibid, p. 74.).

While there may not be a Semitic origin to "volcano" or "Vulcan", the word does appear in Israel today - the Vulcan factory got its name from the Roman god of fire, and from the factory we get the nearby Tzomet Vulcan intersection. (The Volcani Institute of Agricultural Research is not related - it was named for its founder, Yitzhak Elazari Volcani, who Hebraized his name from Vilkanski.) Let's hope that this is the only volcanic impact in our area...

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