tzfardea

The Hebrew word for "frog", צְפַרְדֵּעַ tzfardea, appears 13 times in the Tanakh. All of them are related to the plague in Egypt. Eleven of them are in the book of Shemot during the narrative of that plague, and two are from separate chapters of Tehillim recounting the plagues - Tehillim 78:45 and Tehillim 105:30.

Klein provides the following etymology:

Related to JAram. אוּרְדּעָא, עוּרדְּעָא, Syr. אוּרְדְּעָא, Arab. ḍafda‘, ḍifdi‘ (= frog).

He also points to his entry for the verb ערדע:

to croak; lit.: ‘to make the sound of the frog’. [From Aram. עֻרדּעָא (= frog), which is related to Heb. צְפַרְדֵּע.]

While Klein doesn't say it explicitly, many scholars claim that the origin of tzfardea is ultimately onomatopoeic - it sounds like the sound of a frog croaking (for example, see Encyclopedia Mikrait, entry צפרדע). This is more clearly seen in the Aramaic form urda or the Arabic form dafda, which both sound like a frog. The assumption is that Hebrew might have added a consonant to the Semitic root - either a resh to the version expressed in the Arabic form or a tzade to the one in the Aramaic form, creating a longer word which doesn't immediately carry the association of a frog's croak. The five letters of tzfardea are rare in Hebrew words, which led some scholars to propose that it was borrowed from Egyptian or another non-Semitic language. But since no evidence has been found in those languages for such a word, the onomatopoeia theory is the most convincing.

In his book "Wordplay" in Ancient Near Eastern Texts, Scott B. Noegel describes the use of this onomatopoeia as a literary device in the story of the plague (page 61):

The narrative depicting the plague of frogs offers an extraordinary display of onomatopoeia. Not only do we hear croaking in the very word ְצַפְרְדִּעים ṣǝp̄ardǝʿīm “frogs,” itself an onomatopoeia, we hear it eleven times in only sixteen verses, far more often than the story demands. Three of the consonants in the noun “frog” (p, r, ʿ ) repeat eight times in the title ַפְּרֹעה parʿōh “pharaoh.” Four times we also hear the sounds /r/ and /ṣ/ repeated in ִמְצָרִים miṣrāyīm “Egypt” (Exod 8:2) and ֶאֶרץִ מְצָרִים ʾɛrɛṣ miṣrāyīm “the land of Egypt” (Exod 8:1, 2, 3). In Exod 8:5, Moses asks pharaoh, “do you glorify yourself ( ִהְתָפֵּאר hiṯpāʾēr)?,” using a verb that reverberates the consonants p and r. 

Perhaps surprisingly (considering the parallels in the other Semitic languages), not all scholars identify the tzfardea as "frog", instead proposing the more threatening "crocodile." This is suggested by the description of the tzfardea in Tehillim 78:45:

יְשַׁלַּח בָּהֶם עָרֹב וַיֹּאכְלֵם וּצְפַרְדֵּעַ וַתַּשְׁחִיתֵם׃

He sent against them [Egypt] the horde [arov] to consume them and the tzfardea to destroy them.

A plague of frogs might be disturbing, but they wouldn't fit the word "destroy" here. Saadia Gaon in his Arabic translation to Tehillim therefore identifies the tzfardea with "crocodile" (although not in his commentary and translation of Shemot), and Ibn Ezra in his commentary on Shemot 7:27 cites this opinion before rejecting it in favor of the more common identification with "frog." Other commentaries who mention this approach include Rabbeinu Chananel, Ramban, Abarbanel, and Rabbeinu Bachye.

Frogs seem like a more likely candidate than crocodiles particularly due to the description in Shemot 7:28, where Moshe warns Pharoah that the tzfardea will "enter your palace, your bedchamber and your bed, the houses of your courtiers and your people, and your ovens and your kneading bowls." Frogs could easily swarm into ovens and kneading bowls, but crocodiles obviously could not. Similar imagery is found in Tehillim 105, which says the tzfardea were "swarming" (more appropriate for smaller animals like frogs) in the room of the king:

שָׁרַץ אַרְצָם צְפַרְדְּעִים בְּחַדְרֵי מַלְכֵיהֶם׃ 

R. Samson Raphael Hirsch adds that had the tzfardea been crocodiles, no Egyptians would have survived that plague.

So how should the phrase "destroy them" in Tehillim 78 be understood? Daat Mikra on the verse suggests that "destroy them" applies to the arov [perhaps wild animals] and the tzfardea together. This is supported by the fact that the verb for destroy, שחת, appears in Shemot 8:20 in association with the arov. 

In the description of the plague, sometimes we find tzfardea in the singular, and other times in the plural - צְפַרְדְּעִים. In his commentary on Shemot 8:2, where the singular tzfardea is used, Rashi provides two explanations for this:

There was only one frog, but when they struck at it, it was split into many swarms. This is a Midrashic explanation. But as a literal explanation one must say that the swarm of the frogs is denoted by the singular form. 

He goes on to cite Shemot 8:14, which refers to lice in the singular, also meaning a swarm of lice. Chizkuni adds that we also find a group of snakes referred to in the singular in Bamidbar 21:7.

Further reading:

• "The Frog was a Crocodile" by Prof. Daniel Sperber
• TZEFARDE’A: FROGS OR CROCODILES? by by Rabbi Dr. Natan Slifkin (republished more recently here)
• צפרדע וקרפדה by the Academy of the Hebrew Language

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geula

When we think of the word גְּאֻלָּה geula - we typically think of a divine redemption or salvation, perhaps with a messianic bent. It could be spiritual or it could be physical, but God is the one doing the redeeming.

However, the root גאל - "to redeem" - doesn't have that meaning exclusively. In the Tanakh, we find it frequently referring to redemption by humans: redemption of land, or redemption of other humans (for example, slaves).

For example, in Vayikra 25:25, if an Israelite becomes poor and sells part of his ancestral property, the Torah says:

וּבָא גֹאֲלוֹ הַקָּרֹב אֵלָיו וְגָאַל אֵת מִמְכַּר אָחִיו
“His nearest goel shall come and redeem what his relative sold.”

The goel here is the close relative who has the right, and in some cases the responsibility, to recover property that has left the family.

The same chapter extends this role to a relative who has sold himself into servitude. A brother, uncle, cousin, or other close relative can redeem him.

This is also the background to the role of the goel in the book of Ruth. Boaz is a goel because he belongs to Naomi's family circle. There is an even closer relative who has the first claim, and when he declines, Boaz steps in.

In Ruth 4:6, the nearer relative tells Boaz:

גְּאַל־לְךָ אַתָּה אֶת־גְּאֻלָּתִי כִּי לֹא אוּכַל לִגְאֹל

 "You redeem my geula, for I cannot redeem."

Here גְּאֻלָּתִי does not mean “my salvation.” It means something like “my right [or obligation] of redemption,” the claim that belongs to him as the closer relative.

This helps explain another Biblical expression that otherwise seems quite far removed from “redemption”:  goel hadam גּוֹאֵל הַדָּם.

This is usually translated “the avenger of blood,” the relative who acts in response to the killing of a family member.

Why call such a person a goel?

The answer seems to lie in the role rather than in one specific action. The goel is the relative who represents the family's interests and is authorized to act when something has been lost, violated, or taken away.

Some linguists claimed that this legal sense of restoring family property was the original meaning of the root גאל, and it only later expanded to the divine one we're more familiar with today. However, there are early examples of supernatural redemption. For example, Yaakov says in Bereishit 48:16:

הַמַּלְאָךְ הַגֹּאֵל אֹתִי מִכָּל־רָע

“the angel who redeems me from all evil.”

In addition to the angel mentioned (as opposed to human intervention), there is no land transaction here, no purchase price, and no family property. The meaning is clearly “rescue” or “deliver” in the broader sense.

Sometimes both meanings can overlap. Take Shemot 6:6, where God says:

וְגָאַלְתִּי אֶתְכֶם בִּזְרוֹעַ נְטוּיָה

“I will redeem you with an outstretched arm.”

On the one hand, God is redeeming Israel from Egyptian slavery, in the same way a family member would redeem an enslaved relative. But on the other hand, God is redeeming His people, so this is a case of divine salvation. 

In modern times, we find the same dual meaning. The Zionist project talked about גְּאֻלַּת הָאָרֶץ geulat ha'aretz - literally, "redemption of the land." It describes both a practical project of acquiring and settling parcels of land while at the same time evoking a much larger historical and religious vision.

There is also a second Biblical root spelled גאל, traditionally understood as meaning “defile” or “pollute.” It only appears in 11 verses, as opposed to the 105 verses with the meaning "redeem."

Some scholars try to connect the two meanings (see here), but the widespread approach (for example cited by Klein) is that this second meaning is related to the root געל, also meaning to "defile." (See my post here about how the root געל came to mean "defile" and  "rinse, clean, purify,")

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tzachor and sahara

We've discussed a number of Hebrew colors in the past - let's take a look at one less commonly used: tzachor צחור.

In the Even-Shoshan concordance, there are two appearances of the root צחר. Once he lists it as an adjective meaning "white"-  in the phrase רֹכְבֵי אֲתֹנוֹת צְחֹרוֹת (Shoftim 5:10) - so he would translate it as "riders of white donkeys". The second phrase, from Yechezkel 27:18 has the word צחר tzachar as a noun in the phrase וְצֶמֶר צָחַר, which he defines as "and wool of white".

A similar word is the name Tzochar צחר, who is both the father of Efron (Bereshit 23:8, 25:9) and one of the sons of Shimon (Bereshit 46:10, Shemot 6:15). Kil, in the Daat Mikra commentary (on 46:10), quoting the verse from Shoftim, says the name is related to the concepts of whiteness and light. He says that the root is related to the root צהר - "to shine" (see our discussion here) and to the root זרח (which we discussed here), with the last two letters switched. A proof of a connection between צחר and זרח is that in Bamidbar 26:13, Shimon's son is listed as Zerach instead of Tzochar¹.  (We also mentioned in this post that Steinberg connects the roots שחר, צהר, זהר and צחר as all meaning "to shine", but he can be a bit liberal with his association of roots, so we should be cautious about accepting them).

The word tzachor appears once in the Talmud, in Berachot 31b. The gemara is discussing Hannah's prayer for a child, and Rav Dimi states that Hannah prayed that her son not be too conspicuous and that he be:

 לא ארוך ולא גוץ ולא קטן ולא אלם ולא צחור ולא גיחור ולא חכם ולא טפש
Neither too tall nor too short; neither too small nor too fat, neither too white [tzachor] nor too red [gichor], neither too smart nor too stupid. 

Strangely, Rashi says here that tzachor means red (צחור = רו"ש, using the Old French word for red, ros) and that gichor means exceedingly white. This is despite the fact that Rashi in his commentary on Shoftim and Yechezkel identifies tzachor as "white", and in his commentary on a later passage in Berachot (58b) writes that gichor means "red". The Masoret Hashas, along with other commentaries, says that the two terms were mixed up in Rashi's commentary to 31b due to a printing error.

However, perhaps even more peculiar is the fact that Jastrow also translates tzachor as reddish. When I read that, I thought this is an interesting way to end the post - I've found an error in Jastrow. But it's not that simple. There's actually a lot more to this story. Let's continue.

Until now, we've said that tzachor means "white". This is the opinion of Rashi, and following him Even Shoshan and Daat Mikra. Perhaps the earliest source is the Targum on Yechezkel 27:18, who translates the phrase as ועמר מלת כבינא, Ibn Janach here says that the word כבינא means "white", as found in Shabbat 54a, and mentioned explicitly by R' Sherira Gaon.

But at some point, linguists noticed that tzachor had Semitic cognates that did not mean "white". In his entry for צחר, Klein writes:

Arab. s-h-r (=dried up, became yellow), ashar, f. sahra (=yellowish-red), whence used as a noun, as-sahra (=the yellowish-red land, desert, the Sahara), 

And again, in his entry for the word Sahara:

Fr. Arab, sahra', 'desert', prop. fem. of the adj. asharu, 'yellowish red', used as a noun

Kaddari says tzachor means "yellowish-brown", and quotes a Syriac cognate meaning "to become red". And Gesenius, while defining tzachor as "white", says that the donkeys in Shoftim are actually "reddish with white spots". Following this, many newer translations of Shoftim (such as JPS) have the word tzachor in Shoftim as "tawny", meaning "orange-brown or yellowish-brown color".

So how should we understand Jastrow? Well, he quotes a different version of the gemara, which has "לא אוכם ולא צחור", so he translates it as "neither dark [ocham] (ugly) nor reddish [tzachor] (exceedingly handsome)". Here the contrast is not between white and red, but rather dark and red, which allows him to remain more faithful to the modern understanding of the word (since otherwise gichor and tzachor would be very close in meaning).. In the entry for tzachor in Ben Yehuda's dictionary, Tur-Sinai is quoted as going even further, by bringing yet another version of the gemara, that has "לא אוכם ולא חיור" (neither dark nor pale - chivver),  saying the inclusion of tzachor at all was a printing error.

So how do we resolve this issue? Are the donkeys red or white? In fact, this isn't even the only time where it's unclear whether a biblical Hebrew word can mean red or white - see this page for further examples. I think the answer can be found on footnote 38 in this book, which quotes Hartley's book The Semantics of Ancient Hebrew Colour Lexemes. Hartley says the donkeys were "shiny light grey, possibly with a tint of red",  but more importantly writes that "the term here many denote luminosity rather than hue".  So the question of white or red isn't that relevant - the word tzachor perhaps originally meant "shiny, glittering, gleaming".  This fits the verses we quoted above, and best fits the related roots of צהר and זרח. Sometimes it could mean white, sometimes red - both those colors shine much brighter than the darker hues.

The problem, of course, is that this explanation doesn't lend itself easily to translations of the Tanach. It's possible that the verses did refer to one color or another, but no translation can be consistent and still succinct. However, luckily for you dear readers, I have no such limitations!

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1, Yaakov Etsion, in his extensive article here about tzachor (in Hebrew) quotes one of my favorite responsa of the Rashba (1:12), where he uses the substitution of Tzochar and Zerach, as well as others (including those in the Ten Commandments!) as proof that the Torah is more concerned with concepts than with words.

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Khartoum and hartumim

Reader Zvi writes:

With the impending partition of Sudan in the news lately, it would be interesting if you could address the multiple uses of the Hebrew word

חרטום

In Exodus 7:11 and 7:22, it's the word used for the Egyptian magicians.

In modern Hebrew, it's used for the prow of a ship, an elephant's trunk, and a rocket nose cone

And it's also the name of the capital city of Sudan.

What, if anything, is the relationship between these?

Good question - I've been meaning to write about this for a while.

First of all, chartom חרטום meaning "beak, nose, trunk", as well as the borrowed meanings you mentioned, is, as Klein writes, "enlarged" from the Hebrew chotam חוטם, meaning "nose, snout".  (I discussed earlier the background to the more popular word for nose, af אף.)

The name of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, is certainly related, as described in Placenames of the World:

Founded in 1821 as an Egyptian army camp, the city has an Arabic name, from al-khurtum, a short form of ras al-khurtum, "end of an elephant's trunk," from ra's, "head," "end," al, "the," and khurtum, "trunk." The reference is to the narrow stretch of land here between the White Nile and Blue Nile.

But what about the hartumim חרטמים of Egypt? There are a number of theories. Ben Yehuda, in the footnote to his dictionary entry, writes that the etymology is unclear. He says that some derive from the root חרט, to engrave. Those that follow this theory claim it refers to their ability to write the hieroglyphics. He then quotes a theory that the word is related to chotam, "nose", because it was the practice of these sorcerers to speak through their nose. In the end, however, he says it is likely a word borrowed from Egyptian, even though no such word has been found yet. (Interestingly, Ibn Ezra in his commentary on Bereshit 41:8, says perhaps the word is from Aramaic or Egyptian. However, I'm not sure what form of Egyptian Ibn Ezra is referring to.)

I'm not sure when this footnote was written (although I believe most of the footnotes were written by Tur-Sinai, not Ben-Yehuda, so it could have been well after the latter's death in 1922). Driver makes the same comment in his 1900 commentary on the Book of Daniel - perhaps that influenced the dictionary footnote.

In any case, at some point since that was written, there have been such Egyptian inscriptions discovered, for we now find quotes such as in On the Reliability of the Old Testament:

The term for Pharoah's scholars or sages is hartummim, which goes back to the Egyptian term hery-tep, best translated "expert" and often found in the combination  kheri-hab hery-tep, which means "lector-priest and expert" and not simply "chief lector-priest" as was formerly thought

(A challenge to this theory is discussed in footnote 25 in this book.)

So while the hartumim and Khartoum both have Egyptian origins, it appears they are not connected. Now we need to see whether Sudan itself will stay connected...

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kusemet

In the previous post, we mentioned se'ora שעורה - "barley", so this is a good opportunity to finish the discussion of the five grains of the Land of Israel. There's not much to say about the etymology of se'ora other than to quote Klein who says that it's related to se'ar שער - "hair", and literally means "the hairy or bearded (grain)".
Chita חיטה - "wheat" also has a fairly simple explanation. Klein points out that it probably derives from the root חנט, meaning "to ripen" (with a dropped nun). And we've already discussed shibolet shual שבולת שועל - "oats" and shifon שיפון - "rye" (at least according to their use in modern Hebrew.) What's left? Kusemet כוסמת.

As with shibolet shual and shifon, the identity of kusemet isn't clear. The word appears in the Bible (Shemot 9:32, Yeshayahu 28:25, Yechezkel 4:9) and in the Talmudic literature. The medieval rabbis generally identified it as spelt, but the current scholarly opinion is that it was more likely emmer wheat (unlike emmer, spelt has not been found in Egypt and the Land of Israel in archeological excavations of biblical sites). The name probably comes from the root כסם - "to shear, clip", and "the names derives from the short hairs of the ears which look as though they have been cut" (Encyclopedia Judaica, "Wheat"). However, with kusemet there's an added twist: in Modern Hebrew the word means "buckwheat". Unlike shibolet shual and shifon, there's no halachic opinion that buckwheat is one of the five grains (with all of the laws relating to them). So how did this come to be?

I couldn't find any clear answers, but after a lot of research, I believe I have a possible theory.

First of all, it's important to note that this wasn't an invention of Ben Yehuda. In fact, his dictionary doesn't mention the identification of kusemet with buckwheat at all (even to reject it). I did find it in three different sources from 19th century Haskala writers. Mendele Mocher Sfarim in 1862 (Toldot HaTeva) and Moshe Studentzky in 1853 (Orchot Chaim) both use the word kusemet as buckwheat in “scientific” definitions, as well as an earlier use by a Jewish convert to Christianity, Aaron Pick, in 1845.  I have no reason to believe they were all influenced by one common contemporary source - and if it exists, I couldn't find it.

So I think it was probably more likely that these various sources were all inspired by common usage (Jewish or non-Jewish). Here the trail goes cold, but I think there are certain hints about what might have led them to this translation.

If we go all the way back to the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible, we see that kusemet was translated as "far". Interestingly, far, at the time, could mean either spelt or emmer (the confusion continues to this day). But later, far came to mean grain in general. The Vulgate was the main influence for pre-Lutheran bibles, written in Low German, which weren't known for their scholarship. Some of them translated kusemet as boekwete, the German word for buckwheat. (Luther translated kusemet as spelt, and his translation became the standard in Germany after his Reformation, and supplanted those earlier bibles.)

Low German is closely related to Dutch, and here we get a few more clues. There are two legends in Holland about buckwheat. One is that buckwheat was first brought to Europe from the Holy Land by Joos van Ghistele in 1485, and the other is a folk etymology mentioned in a number of sources, such as Bert Greene in The Grains Cookbook (page 56):

It was the Dutch who gave buckwheat its rightful name. In 1549 the officially dubbed it boek weit (book wheat) to honor the Scriptures whose auspices, they claimed, brought it to flower on their shores.

Neither of the above is likely true (buckwheat was never found widely in the Land of Israel, and the correct etymology is "beech wheat", since buckwheat seeds and beech seeds look similar). But that's not terribly relevant to our search - if people in that area thought that buckwheat was a biblical grain from the Holy Land, then it makes sense that when they found a strange word in the Bible, which they understood as just meaning "grain", they would connect the two. And so therefore kusemet could go from far to boekweit, and if this association continued for a few more centuries, then Jews could make buckwheat into kusemet.

And this is apparently what happened, for in addition to the Haskala sources I found, the Aruch HaShulchan (Orach Chaim 208:18¹) writes in the 19th century that most people knew that buckwheat was not one of the five grains. The fact that he needed to point that out is a sign that there was already wide use in Europe of kusemet as buckwheat.

As we mentioned, Ben Yehuda made no reference to this usage. And in halachic literature, kusemet continued to refer to spelt. But even heavyweights such as these didn't have control over the living language of Modern Hebrew. And the language seemed to come up with a solution of its own, and a strange on at that. Kusemet continued to be used for buckwheat, but the plural, kusmin כוסמין, was reserved for spelt - and you can actually find the two next to each other in the supermarket, even produced by the same company.

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1. See also Igrot Moshe, Yoreh Deah, 2:25 and Kehati's commentary on Hallah 1:1 for more recent halachic responses to the confusion regarding the meanings of kussemet.

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ababuot

In this weeks parasha, in the plague of boils (sh'chin שחין) we come across a familiar word: אֲבַעְבֻּעֹת avabuot. This word only appears here (Shmot 9:9) but is familiar in modern Hebrew as the "pox" in "chicken pox" - אבעבעות רוח ababuot ruach (most likely based on the German Windpocken, which this site says the "wind" means "filled with air", "not really substantial".) Earlier generations would have associated ababuot with smallpox.

Klein writes that אבעבועה - "blister, boil" is formed from בעבע with the prosthetic alef (as in אצבע) and the suffix heh. The root בעבע , he claims, is of imitative origin, like its English equivalent, bubble. It is related to the root בעה , which also means "to bubble" and בועה buah - bubble.

In an interesting comment, he says there may be a connection between בעה - "to bubble" and בעה - "to seek, ask questions, desire, pray". He writes:

Several scholars identify בעה (bubble) and בעה (seek) by assuming that the original meaning of this base was 'to swell', whence developed the meanings 'to bubble' on the one hand, and 'to swell with desire' on the other.

We are familiar with such derivatives of בעה as b'aya בעיה - problem, which developed from the Aramaic בעיא - question, and many Talmudic phrases like כדבעי - "as required, properly" and אי בעית אימא - "if you like I can say".

In Arabic, a baghi is a prostitute, and the Arabic Etymological Dictionary writes that the word comes from bagha, "desire", which goes back to our root בעה :

bagha : desire [Sem b-gh-y, Akk bu‘‘u (look for), Syr b’a (ask for), BAram b‘h, b‘w, Hrs beayt (wish)]

The American Heritage Dictionary makes the same claim, and writes that the sense of the word baggage, meaning "prostitute, impudent girl or woman" comes from the Arabic:

perhaps from French bagasse, from Provençal bagassa, ultimately from Arabic bagiy, prostitute

To be fair, there are those, such as "The Mavens' Word of the Day", who claim that this sense of baggage is developed from the more popular sense of the word as "luggage".

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ohad and ehud

Two very popular Biblical names used in Israel today are Ehud אהוד (Shoftim 3:15) and Ohad אוהד (Bereshit 46:10, Shmot 6:15). If you asked most Hebrew speakers as to the origins of the names, they'd probably say that they mean "beloved" and related to the words ahada אהדה - "sympathy" and ohed אוהד - "friend, fan, follower".

But as Amos Chacham points out in Daat Mikra to Shmot 6:15, this was not the original meaning of either of the names. There are those (such as the Vilna Gaon) that claim on the basis of Divrei HaYamim I 8:3 and 8:6 that the original name was אחוד Echud - and the chet became a heh. This approach says the name relates to "unity".

The second approach brought by Chacham is that the name is related to hod הוד - "glory".

So where did the connection between אהד and sympathy develop? This was actually one of Ben-Yehuda's innovations. Moshe Nahir writes about Ben-Yehuda's way of creating new words:

His major source was the Bible, from which he drew dormant words, often assigning them new meanings (e.g., /kidma/, 'progress', from biblical Hebrew "east"), and roots (e.g., /ma'abada/, 'laboratory' from the root of biblical Hebrew /avad/, 'to work'), including ones he derived from biblical personal names (/ahad/, 'a.h.d', from Ohad, Ehud, cognate of Arabic "hawada", 'treat with kindness').

Klein writes that hawada means "he was indulgent". I can't find a Hebrew cognate for hawada, but if any reader knows of one, please let me know...

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zevel and zevulun

While looking at this weeks parasha, I began to wonder: could there be a connection between the name Zevulun זבולון and zevel זבל - garbage?

Zevulun gets his name in Bereshit 30:20 -

וַתֹּאמֶר לֵאָה, זְבָדַנִי אֱלֹהִים אֹתִי זֵבֶד טוֹב--הַפַּעַם יִזְבְּלֵנִי אִישִׁי, כִּי-יָלַדְתִּי לוֹ שִׁשָּׁה בָנִים; וַתִּקְרָא אֶת-שְׁמוֹ, זְבֻלוּן.

Leah said, "God has given me a choice gift; this time my husband yizbleni, for I have born him six son" So she named him Zevulun.

What is the meaning of יזבלני yizbleni? All of the traditional commentaries I could find - Onkelos, Rav Saadia Gaon, Rashi, Ibn Ezra and more - all say the root זבל means "to dwell", and therefore the verse means "my husband will dwell with me". Klein also offers this etymology.

But this article by Prof. Moshe Held gave me new insight into the subject. He writes that the Akkadian word zabalu means "to carry up, lift". But scholars such as Driver rejected a connection between זבל and zabalu. Held points out, however, that this was before the discovery of Ugaritic, a language closely related to Hebrew. In Ugaritic, zbl has the meaning of "lift up", and the word for "prince" is zbl - which is parallel to the Hebrew nasi נשיא, whose root - נשא - also means "to lift up". Therefore, Held translates the verse as "my husband will exalt/elevate me" - and the JPS and Daat Mikra follow him.

Where did the explanation of זבל as "to dwell" come from? Kaddari writes that this was from an association between zvul and the word bayit (house) in the phrase בית זבול - beit zvul, as found in Malachim I 8:13. But now, this can be better translated as "stately house".

The identification of זבל with "lift up" makes even more sense when we realize, as Held points out, that the root סבל has the same meaning. In fact, even Klein translates סבל as "to bear a load, carry a burden", and connects it to the Akkadian zabalu.

Just as the English word "suffer" can mean both "to tolerate" and "to feel pain", so to does the Hebrew root סבל have both meanings. From it we get savlanut סבלנות - patience and sovlanut סובלנות - tolerance, as well as sevel סבל - suffering, pain.

There is a nice Chassidic drasha on Shmot 6:6 - וְהוֹצֵאתִי אֶתְכֶם מִתַּחַת סִבְלֹת מִצְרַיִם
Instead of translating it as "I will free you from the labors (sivlot) of Egypt" it says God will free them from their "tolerance of Egypt". The Jews had begun to accept and tolerate their slavery in Egypt - they needed to no longer "suffer" this state in order to truly end their suffering.

And what of zevel - dung, manure? It does not appear in the Tanach (although Tur-Sinai tries to connect it to Tehilim 49:15) and begins to appear in Rabbinic Hebrew. Jastrow ties it to the Assyrian (Akkadian) zabalu, meaning "to heap up", and says it therefore means "foliage piled up for forming manure".

So while Zevulun's name has a positive meaning, and zevel is less pleasant (as is sevel), they both seem to have a common origin - "to lift up".

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tuna

Yesterday we discussed how the word nun נון can mean "fish" in Semitic languages. Stahl writes that there are those that say that the word tanin תנין is related to the word nun. In the Tanach the tanin clearly refers to more than one type of animal, and not all experts agree in every case which one. Kaddari writes that the tanin is a snake (Shmot 7:9, together with Shmot 4:3), crocodile (Yechezkel 29:3 - here tanim תנים, this is the meaning in modern Hebrew), viper (Tehillim 91:13), leviathan (Yeshayahu 27:1). Of course the identity of the leviathan is also not clear, and from here we get the tanin translated as "giant fish" (Rashi on Bereshit 1:21), whale, and the general "sea monster". (For an interesting article on the significance of the mention of the creation of the tanin, go here.)

Klein does not connect tanin with the word nun, but rather with a root תנן , which has cognates in a number of Semitic languages - such as the Ugaritic tnn , meaning "dragon".

However, both Stahl and Klein mention a theory that the Greek word thynnos was borrowed from the Hebrew tanin. From the Greek came the Latin thunnus - and from here the English words tuna and tunny. (Tuna is actually much more recent than tunny, and entered American English via Spanish, and the Spanish was borrowed from Arabic, which took the word from Latin.)

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erev

After writing about בוקר boker, it makes sense to write about ערב erev. However, while we presented a number of different derivatives of בקר, the root ערב has far more.

For those that don't know, the Academy of the Hebrew Language is working on a historical dictionary:

It aims to encompass the entire Hebrew lexicon throughout its history; that is, to present every Hebrew word in its morphological, semantical, and contextual development from its first appearance in written texts to the present.

This will be a great tool for anyone interested in researching the history of Hebrew words, like, for example, me.

As an example of the scope of the dictionary, they write:

Let us consider for example, the Hebrew root ערב.
A seventy-five-page-long sample of the projected dictionary entry for this root
appeared in Lesonenu Vol. 46, 1982 (excluding indexes and statistical data).

That's quite a few pages. So I don't expect to cover ever meaning and derivative of the root. (Actually, I haven't even seen the article.) I very well may come back to this root in the future to discuss further developments.

Luckily, Kutscher has a chapter in his book that discusses the root. His important premise is that one of the meanings of ערב is "to enter". This is based on the similar meaning in Akkadian - erebu. The other major meaning he provides is "to mix" - ערבב. According to Kutscher, it is not clear if there is a connection between the two roots. His article was written in 1958 - perhaps more research has been done since.

Let's look at some words with the root ערב and see if they're related to "enter", "mix" or something else.

ערב erev - evening: Kutscher quotes Dr. Benjamin Klar as writing that: "Early man viewed sunrise as 'leaving' and sunset as 'coming'. Even though normally we'd think it should be the opposite, they had the view that the sun slept in a 'tent' every night. It would leave the tent in the coming, and enter it in the evening." This is described in Tehilim 19:5-6:

בְּכָל-הָאָרֶץ, יָצָא קַוָּם, וּבִקְצֵה תֵבֵל, מִלֵּיהֶם;לַשֶּׁמֶשׁ, שָׂם-אֹהֶל בָּהֶם. וְהוּא--כְּחָתָן, יֹצֵא מֵחֻפָּתוֹ; יָשִׂישׂ כְּגִבּוֹר, לָרוּץ אֹרַח.

"Their voice carries throughout the earth, their words to the end of the world. He placed in them a tent for the sun, who is like a groom coming forth from the chamber, like a hero, eager to run his course."

מערב maarav - west: Therefore maarav is the "entering place of the sun".

ערב שבת erev shabbat: Kutscher quotes the linguist Meir Medan (father of Rav Yaakov Medan, Rosh Yeshiva of Har Etzion) as saying that erev shabbat means "the entering of Shabbat", in the same way that מוצאי שבת motzaei shabbat means "the leaving of shabbat". This also helps explain the apparent redundancy between the terms erev shabbat and ליל שבת leil shabbat.

ערבון eravon - a pledge: According to Kutscher, the pledge "enters the house of the loaner". From here we get the verb ערב "to guarantee". This is the source of the famous phrase:
כל ישראל ערבים זה לזה / זה בזה - "All Jews are responsible for one another". Another derivative of this form of the root is התערב hitarev - "to bet" (i.e. "to exchange pledges".) The English word arbiter derives from eravon, as does one of the meanings of the word earnest - "money paid in advance as part payment to bind a contract or bargain".

ערב erev - woof (the threads that run crosswise in a woven fabric) - While Klein (and others) say that the word derives from "to mix", Kutscher says it is clear that it comes from "to enter" - the threads that enter under the threads of the warp.

ערב רב erev rav: This is generally translated as the "mixed multitudes" that went up from Egypt (Shmot 12:38). The association with "mix" is clear, but Kutscher agrees with Onkelos who translates it as "foreigners". Erev means foreigners in Nechemia 13:3, and there is a cognate word in Arabic meaning the same.

ערוב arov: The wild animals of the fourth plague in Egypt (Shmot 8:20). Kutscher says the origin is unclear, but Klein associates it with "to mix".

ערב arev "pleasant, sweet": Again, Kutscher says it is hard to determine the connection, but Klein writes that it perhaps means "to be well mixed, duly arranged".

Neither Kutscher nor Klein connect any of the following words with either the meanings "to enter" or "to mix":

• aravi ערבי - Arab: Klein associates it the term with arava ערבה - desert plain, but see here for many more theories.
• orev עורב - raven
• arava ערבה - willow

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aviv

Today is the first day of the month of Nisan, which in the Torah was known as the month of Aviv (sometimes transliterated as Abib.) For example, Shmot 13:4 states "This day you are going out in the the month of the Aviv": הַיּוֹם אַתֶּם יֹצְאִים בְּחֹדֶשׁ הָאָבִיב

While in modern Hebrew aviv means spring, in the Bible it meant young barley. We see this in the plague of hail (Shmot 9:31) "the barley was aviv": כִּי הַשְּׂעֹרָה אָבִיב

Additionally, in VaYikra 2:14 we read about the Omer offering, which was barley poached in fire: אָבִיב קָלוּי בָּאֵשׁ. Since the Omer offering began in the month of Nisan, the barley connection to the original name is very logical.

Yet if we dig a little deeper, we see that aviv comes from the root אבב meaning to bring forth shoots, or to be fresh. For example, in Job 8:12 we have a related word: עֹדֶנּוּ בְאִבּוֹ - "while yet in its freshness". So the connection to spring is not only due to the barley harvest, but because of the general renewal of the season.

Two well known cities derive their name from the root aviv. Of course you will recognize the connection to the Israeli city of Tel Aviv. In 1910, Nachum Sokolow took the name - meaning "hill of spring" from the book of Yechezkel (3:15), where it actually refers to a Babylonian location.

The other city? The Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, meaning "new flower" or "new blossom". Addis comes from the same Semitic root as חדש chadash (new) and Ababa derives from the same root as aviv.

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