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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simcha

We're all familiar with the word simcha שמחה - "joy" (and hopefully with the concept as well!). This noun is based on the verb שמח - in the kal form samach - "was happy" and in the piel form simeach - "made happy" (the hifil השמיח appears once, in Tehilim 89:43, but isn't used in Modern Hebrew). The noun is formed by adding a heh - similar to other feelings such as ahava אהבה - "love", yirah יראה - "fear" and chemda חמדה - "desire". In addition to joy in general, in Talmudic Hebrew it began to refer to a joyous occasion as well. There is also the adjective sameach שמח - "glad", although Avineri (Yad Halashon 601) points out that it is appropriate to say that person is sameach, but to say that an event was sameach is a Yiddishism (better to say there was simcha there).

Klein writes that the root שמח is related to the Ugaritic shmh - "to be glad, rejoice", the Arabic shamaha - "was high, was proud" and the Akkadian shamahu (samahu) - "to sprout, flourish". It is therefore related to the root tzamach צמח - "to sprout, spring up, grow", and so is similar to the English word "elated" (meaning both "happy" and "lifted up").

This meaning is particularly felt in Mishlei 13:9:

אוֹר-צַדִּיקִים יִשְׂמָח;    וְנֵר רְשָׁעִים יִדְעָךְ.

The Koren Tanach translates this as:

"The light of the righteous rejoices; but the lamp of the wicked shall be put out."

Translating yismach as "rejoices" is common - but it doesn't make much sense. How does can light be happy? And if it meant to say the light will make (others) happy, then it should have been yisameach, not yismach. Kil, in the Daat Mikra commentary, says that yismach here means "will grow" and is therefore close in meaning to יצמח - "will spring up". He quotes Ibn Janach as saying the root שמח means "increase", and the Meiri on this verse as saying "it will increase every day".

Jonas Greenfield in his book Al Kanfei Yonah: Collected Studies of Jonas C. Greenfield on Semitic Philology develops this idea further. He writes that another meaning of שמח can be "to shine" (like the English "to brighten" means "to make happy"), as in the Syriac צמח (Klein also mentions the Mandiac ציהמא). This can explain a number of very familiar verses, such as  יִרְאוּ יְשָׁרִים וְיִשְׂמָחוּ - "the upright will see and be radiant" (Tehilim 107:42) and  אוֹר, זָרֻעַ לַצַּדִּיק;    וּלְיִשְׁרֵי-לֵב שִׂמְחָה. - "Light is sown for the righteous, radiance for the upright" (Tehilim 97:11, New JPS translation, apparently influenced by this approach. They follow this approach in our verse above in Mishlei as well, and translate it as "the light of the righteous is radiant". ).

After discussing the various Semitic languages where the root can mean "to grow" and/or "to glow", he writes:

From the point of view of Hebrew alone one must say that a phonic distinction based on meaning has taken place within the root complex צמח - שמח. Etymologically - considering Arabic shamaha and Akkadian samahu - the ש (sin) is primary. While שמח now bears the meaning "to be high, to glow, to rejoice," צמח has been differentiated and means primarily "to grow.". In Aramaic where שמח has disappeared entirely, צמח has variously assumed both "to grow" and "to glow".

He also points out that the root נצץ can mean both "to blossom" and "to sparkle", and the Hebrew and Aramic זהר means "to shine", but in Aramaic it also means "to grow" and in Arabic "to blossom".

While Greenfield doesn't mention it, I am inclined to assume there's a connection understood between simcha as "joy, happiness" and as "light, radiance" (perhaps even a play on words)  in the verses in Esther (8:15-16) -  וְהָעִיר שׁוּשָׁן, צָהֲלָה וְשָׂמֵחָה.   לַיְּהוּדִים, הָיְתָה אוֹרָה וְשִׂמְחָה, וְשָׂשֹׂן, וִיקָר - "The city of Shushan rejoiced (tzahala) and was glad (samecha). The Jews enjoyed light (ora) and gladness (simcha), happiness and honor". The root צהל also can mean "to shine" as well as "to rejoice".

Purim Sameach!

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arnona

We previously discussed blo בלו, a tax first mentioned in the book of Ezra. Blo is mentioned together with two other taxes that are not used in modern Hebrew: minda מנדה and halach הלך. The three terms are discussed in Bava Batra 8a, and halach is identified as arnona ארנונא. Arnona (as ארנונה) is certainly familiar to Israelis today - it's municipal tax determined by the size of the property. However, in Talmudic times it was an agricultural tax (originally on grain, then extended to land, cattle, and clothing). Then, as now, it was not particularly loved, and this can be sensed in the etymology as well.

We've mentioned before that although the Jews of the Talmudic period (in the Land of Israel) were under Roman rule, almost all the foreign words in Talmudic Hebrew were from Greek. The exceptions are almost always related to the military. Arnona is an adaptation of the Latin annona (the Hebrew equivalent אנונא or אנונה is found in Midrash Rabbah), meaning "yearly produce", from annus, "year" (as in the word "annual"). Steinsaltz comments that troops passing through an area would collect food as part of the arnona tax, and this is perhaps a connection to the Biblical halach ("walking").

A question I've been asked in the past is, "Why is the Jerusalem neighborhood Arnona called that? Why would they name a neighborhood after a tax?" Well, there are two theories about the origin of the name - neither of which is connected to the tax. One is that it is named for the Arnon river in Jordan, which empties into the Dead Sea, which is visible from the neighborhood. The other theory is that it was named for the the daughter of the scholar Ben-Zion Luria, Arnona, who was herself named for the river. The river, Nachal Arnon  נחל ארנון - is mentioned a number of times in the Tanach, and some say gets its name from its noisy nature (the root רנן means to be loud, either in joy or in complaint).

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blo

Lately there has been a lot of news about the proposed increase (and subsequent decrease) in Israel's excise tax on gasoline. Until I looked into it, I did not know what an excise tax was. According to Wikipedia, it differs from custom duties:

An excise tax is one levied on specific goods or commodities produced or sold within a country, or on licenses granted for specific activities. Excises are distinguished from customs duties, which are taxes on importation. Excises are inland taxes, whereas customs duties are border taxes.

and is also different than sales tax:

an excise is distinguished from a sales tax or VAT in three ways: (i) an excise typically applies to a narrower range of products; (ii) an excise is typically heavier, accounting for higher fractions (sometimes half or more) of the retail prices of the targeted products; and (iii) an excise is typically specific (so much per unit of measure; e.g. so many cents per gallon), whereas a sales tax or VAT is ad valorem, i.e. proportional to value (a percentage of the price in the case of a sales tax, or of value added in the case of a VAT).

But what really confused me was the name for excise in Hebrew- blo בלו. I thought it was likely a foreign word - perhaps a mispronunciation of one. So I was certainly surprised to find out that the word is actually biblical! It appears, together with other types of taxes, in the Aramaic section of the Book of Ezra (4:13,20; 7:24).

The Daat Mikra explains b'lo there as a type of food tax. In Bava Batra 8a, the gemara identifies blo as a capitation tax (tax per person). Klein, perhaps influenced by the gemara, says the biblical meaning is "poll tax." How it came to mean "excise" in Modern Hebrew is unclear to me (Ben Yehuda does not have an entry for the word at all.)

As far as the etymology is concerned, Klein writes that it is of unknown origin, and the Daat Mikra says it is perhaps from Persian. However, others say that it derives from the Akkadian biltu - "tribute, gift" (from the verb wabalu, "to bring"), which may be related to the Hebrew root יבל meaning "to bear, carry, conduct". This is would be equivalent to the word masa משא, which can mean both "carrying, burden" as well as "tribute, present", and derives from the root נשא, meaning "to bear, carry" as well.

From יבל, we get the word yevul יבול - "produce, yield" (according to Klein, literally "that which is brought in or gathered in") and hovala הובלה - "transport". Klein also mentions a few more words which perhaps also derive from the root יבל:

• mabul מבול - "flood". He quotes Gesenius as saying that it derives from יבל meaning "to flow". Others say it comes from נבל, to destroy. 
• yabelet יבלת - "wart". He writes that perhaps it literally means "a running sore".
• yovel יובל - "jubilee". As we've previously discussed, before it meant jubilee, it meant "ram". Klein writes that it probably derives from יבל, and originally meant "leader of the flock, bellwether". (This source seems to directly connect the jubilee with the concept of "gift".)
• tevel תבל - "world". He notes that it is "usually derived from יבל ( = to bear, carry)". But "it is more probably that it derives from Akkadian tabalu (= continent)."

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eshkolit

We previously discussed the Hebrew word for fruit - p'ri פרי. Now lets look at a particular fruit - eshkolit אשכולית - "grapefruit".

At first glance this seemed strange to me. Both grapefruit and eshkolit were connected to "grapes"; eshkol אשכול means "cluster", as in a cluster of grapes (and is related to sagol סגול - "violet"). But I had a hard time with the suffix ית "-it". I assumed it was a diminutive - a kapit כפית is a smaller spoon than a kaf כף, and a sakit שקית is a smaller bag than a sak שק.

To answer this question, we first need to understand the etymology of the English word "grapefruit". It actually isn't directly related to grapes, but to the clusters they grow in. As The Word Detective writes:

Grapefruit is called grapefruit not because it is in any way related to grapes, which it is not, but because it grows in bunches, as grapes grow. "Grapefruit" first appeared in English around 1814. The Oxford English Dictionary sums up grapefruit thusly: "The globular fruit of Citrus paradisi, having a yellow skin and pale yello (occas. pink), juicy, acid pulp."

When the pre-State Israeli farmers (in the 1920s) wanted to give a name to the new fruit they had brought from America, they wanted a Hebrew version of "grapefruit". They considered *eshkolia אשכוליה (like agvania עגבנייה for tomato) but rejected it because it sounded like a diminutive! So they chose eshkolit, which basically means a fruit "related to eshkol, cluster"¹.

My initial impression that the suffix "-it" meant primarily a diminutive was incorrect. It is used to form abstract nouns, or just other nouns connected to the root, going all the way back to Biblical Hebrew, and continuing strongly into Modern Hebrew and Hebrew slang. 

In fact, there are so many different usages of the suffix, that I doubt I can list them all here (both due to space and my memory...) Here are some examples of a few other usages:

• In Biblical Hebrew we have rosh ראש - "head" and reshit ראשית - "beginning" (in the first word in the Torah!) and shear שאר and shearit שארית - both meaning "remnant". Already here we can see that it is not easy to define how the suffix "-it" changes the original word.
• In Rabbinic Hebrew shahar שחר - "dawn" and erev ערב - "evening" become shaharit שחרית and arvit ערבית.
• Feminine forms of nouns also are created using "-it", particularly with professions, like sachkan שחקן (actor) and sachkanit (actress), and meltzar מלצר (waiter) and meltzarit מלצרית (waitress).
• Languages take the names of nations and add "-it": Sefard (Spain) ספרד becomes Sefaradit ספרדית, Tzarfat (France) צרפת becomes Tzarfatit צרפתית. (Using -it and not -ah allows us to distinguish between a French woman, a Tzarfatiya צרפתיה, and the French language, Tzarfatit).
• The suffix is used to create adverbs, such as shenit שנית (a second time) from sheni שני (second) and yachasit יחסית - "relatively" from yachas יחס - "relation". (Avineri in Yad Halashon p. 332 criticized the use of miyadit מיידית - "immediately" when miyad מיד was already a perfectly good adverb.)
• It can be used to create a tool or device - such as with masa משא - "burden" becoming masa'it משאית - "truck", and cheshbon חשבון - "account" becoming cheshbonit חשבונית - "receipt".

Many more examples, particularly in recent Hebrew usage (such as in brand names, children's names, place names) and general slang can be found in Dr. Malka Muchnik's interesting article "סופית קטנה שהגדילה לעשות" in Helkat Lashon 23, 1997.

Incidentally, many years ago I learned one of my first lessons about how words are borrowed from one language to another, particularly words for foods (one of my favorite topics), from eshkolit.

I grew up in San Francisco, and in my school there were a lot of immigrants from Russia. One of them was in my Hebrew class, and when we learned the word "eshkolit", he said, "That's the same word in Russian!" This isn't true, but he ended up believing this because his family lived in Israel for a couple of years in the 1970s after they left Russia. They hadn't seen grapefruits in Russia, so when they came to Israel they adopted the Hebrew word, and continued using it in the US (where they spoke Russian to their kids.)

I can't count how many times we've seen similar transformations while tracing the history of words. But it was fascinating to see it happening in real time!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1. In an article in the newspaper Yediot Achronot, October 16, 1981, there is some disagreement about who can claim the coinage of eshkolit  -Yisrael Weinberg or Pinchas Riklis. Both lived at the same period, which makes it hard now to determine who is right.

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pri

In honor of Tu B'Shvat, the Academy of the Hebrew Language posted a page about the Hebrew word for fruit: פרי - p'ri ( I prefer this spelling over pri, since it emphasizes the vocalized shva.  We also find a few instances of peri - with a segol - in Biblical Hebrew.)

They point out that in the Tanach, p'ri only appears as a collective noun (שם קיבוצי). This means that while it is in the singular form, it can refer to a group of more than one of the object. (See this page from Safa Ivrit, which gives many other examples of Biblical collective nouns. The question of whether a particular noun is a singular or a collective noun causes much debate among the commentators.) So the Biblical p'ri can either refer to an individual fruit or "fruit, produce" as a whole.

In Rabbinic Hebrew we first find the plural perot פירות. They quote the Mishna (Berachot 6:1) as showing the mix of the two forms:

על פֵּרות האילן הוא אומר: בורא פרי העץ.
On fruits (perot) of the tree (ilan), he blesses "borei p'ri ha'etz"

Although the rabbis spoke post-Biblical Hebrew, they generally used the Biblical forms of the word for the blessings. So here we have p'ri as the plural, as well as etz instead of ilan for "tree".

The Academy also writes that p'ri is related to the verb פרה, meaning "to be fruitful". This is better than Klein who writes that p'ri comes from פרה. For as Tur Sinai writes in his footnote to פרה, the verb actually derives from the noun, since the noun has many cognates in Semitic languages, where the verb does not.

Reader Shaul wrote to me:

What is the etymology of peri? Is it at all related to English "fruit," which ultimately derives from Latin "fructus" and Proto-Indo-European before that? 

The two words do not seem to be related. As the Online Etymology Dictionary (and others) point out, the Proto-Indo-European root is *bhrug, meaning "to enjoy", which is distant from p'ri meaning "fruit".

However, there are other possible candidates for related English words. For example, in the comments on our post about tapuach תפוח, we discuss the possibility of the Latin pirum (the origin of the English word "pear"), being related to p'ri (it is also discussed in this old book). Other English words possibly connected (although with plenty of theories to the contrary) include "berry", "bear" (as in bear fruit), and "fertile" (both from the PIE root *bher, which we've shown may be related to the Hebrew words apiryon אפריון and parnasa פרנסה.) See also this article, which tries to explain how many of these roots are connected, and also adds in the Hebrew יבול yevul, meaning "produce". But this is all just speculation. And as it's Tu B'Shvat - let's focus on the fruits of the Land of Israel!

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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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segen and samal

In our post discussing sochen סוכן - "agent" - I wrote that it "is connected to segan סגן - in Biblical Hebrew a government prefect, and later in Rabbinic Hebrew a deputy." While segan as "deputy" (or "vice", as in "Vice President" - סגן נשיא) is still used in Modern Hebrew, it was adapted for army use as segen meaning "lieutenant." This is an appropriate translation, as lieutenant originally meant "one who takes the place of another."

Klausner (Ivrit Hachadasha U'Bayoteha, p. 191) thought that segen was the original pronunciation, not segan. Avineri (Yad Halashon, pgs. 403, 480) disagrees, writing that segen only appeared in piyutim, but segan was the prominent usage. He says that segen was adopted in the army either a) due to similarity to seren (see below), or b) to show that this was not specifically the position of a deputy, which segan indicated.

Another word created for the Israeli army was samal סמל - "sergeant".  However, the word was originally an acronym (including segen), as Klein writes:

Originally spelled סמ"ל and formed from the initials of the words סגן מחוץ למניין, corresponding to N.C.O. (= Non-Commissioned Officer); later the word סמל samal was regarded as a derivative of סמל semel.

The word semel here refers to the Biblical word (Devarim 4:16, Yechezkel 8:3,5, Divrei HaYamim II 33:7,15) meaning "image, likeness", and in modern Hebrew "symbol". Kutscher writes that this mistaken derivation was due to an assumption that samal was inspired by the rank "ensign", which derives from a French word meaning "symbol". However, Kutscher finds that the earliest usage was indeed the acronym, and points out that if we have such a hard time figuring out the etymology of words that were coined in our generation, we should be cautious about guessing the etymology of words that were first used thousands of years ago.

From semel we get the adjective simli סמלי - "symbolic" and the verb סמל - "to symbolize". However, neither the English words symbol nor similar are related to semel (they both have Indo-European origins, whereas semel is purely Semitic). However, it does appear to me that "symbol" has influenced the usage of semel in modern Hebrew.

Likewise, the word signon סגנון isn't related to segan. It was borrowed from the Greek signum meaning "sign", and originally meant "sign, ensign, banner", and later came to mean "style, form, way".

But just in case you think that no Hebrew army terms actually are related to Greek words - take a look at our old post on the word seren סרן - "captain". We see at least one theory that it is related to the Greek tyrannos...

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sakin

We previously discussed a number of words with the root סכן. One word that might seem missing in that discussion is sakin סכין - "knife". However, while this is how it is spelled in Rabbinic Hebrew, and the Aramaic cognate is סכינא, in Biblical Hebrew the word is spelled with a sin, not a samech - שכין. It appears only once, in Mishlei 23:2.

Klein points out that שכין derives from the base שכך, which he defines as "to be pointed, to transfix" (and is not related to the homographic root שכך meaning "to cover, lay over"). Two other unique Biblical words come from this root: sech שך - "thorn" (appears only in the plural, sikim שכים in Bamidbar 33:55), and suka שכה - "barb" (in Iyov 40:31). Also related is the post-Biblical sika סיכה - "pin, peg, brooch".

Chaim Rabin, in his article מילים זרות ("Foreign Words") in the Encyclopedia Mikrait, writes that sakin belongs to a group of words that entered Hebrew from Asian languages that were neither Semitic or Indo-European. He doesn't say where sakin came from, but points out that in the Lexicon of Hesychius, we find the Greek word συκινη meaning "sword". However, without any further information, and in light of the convincing etymology that Klein (and others) provide, I'm not so inclined to accept this theory.

Although the older dictionaries point out that sakin is a feminine noun, both Avineri (Yad Halashon, 420) and Sivan (Better Hebrew Usage, 232) point out that in Talmudic Hebrew we find that it appears both as masculine and feminine (and Avineri writes that Rashi and the Rambam use it in the masculine). Since the word "sounds" masculine, there is no reason to insist on it being feminine. However, Google still supports the dictionaries: 14,800 hits for "sakin gedola" סכין גדולה vs only 2,040 results for "sakin gadol" סכין גדול.

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misken, sakana, and sochen

In the beginning of Shemot, the Israelites were forced to build arei miskenot ערי מסכנות - "storage cities" (Shemot 1:11).

The root סכן is found in a number of Hebrew words going back to Biblical times - some still in use today, some less so. Let's first look at the different meanings, and then try to see if they are connected.

1) The verb סכן (in the kal form) can mean "was useful, benefited". This sense is found in Iyov 15:3, 22:2, 34:9, 35:3.

2) In the hifil form (הסכין), it means "was accustomed, was used to". This form appears in Bamidbar 22:30, Tehilim 139:3, and Iyov 22:21.

3) The familiar word sakana סכנה - "danger" does not appear in the Tanach (it appears frequently in Rabbinic Hebrew). But it does appear as a nifal verb once in Kohelet 10:9  יסכן - "will be harmed". In Rabbinic Hebrew we find the piel form, meaning "to expose to danger". Derivatives include sikun סיכון - "risk" and misukan מסוכן - which in the Talmud meant "in danger" but by Medieval Hebrew meant "dangerous".

4)  The noun sochen סוכן is found in Yeshayahu 22:15, and as sochenet סוכנת in Melachim I 1:2,4. It is usually translated there as "steward" or "attendant". In Modern Hebrew, sochen means "agent" and sochnut סוכנות is "agency".

5) The word misken מסכן means "poor, miserable", and appears in Kohelet 4:13;9:15-16.  The noun, miskenut מסכנות - "poverty" is found in Devarim 8:9. Klein (in his CEDEL) points out that the word "mesquin", defined as "mean, sordid" has its origins in this word:

French, from Italian meschino, from Arabic miskin, (in VArab. pronunciation meskin), 'poor, wretched, miserable', which is borrowed from Hebrew or Aramaic misken or Syriac mesken, 'poor', which are perhaps loan words from Akkadian mushkenu, 'beggar, needy'.

6) As I mentioned above, miskenot means storehouses. In addition to Shemot, the word also appears in Melachim I 9:19, and Divrei HaYamim II 8:4,6; 16:4;17:12 and 32:28.

So what are the connections between the words? Let's start with Klein. Without explaining why, he puts verbs 1 and 2 in the same entry. I assume that if one is good at something, he is both "useful" and "becomes accustomed". He says it is related to the Akkadian phrase sakanu ana as found in the Tel Amarna letters, which means "to care for". Based on this, he connects this root to sochen, who cares for people.

However, he also mentions that some scholars (possibly Kutscher, who has a chapter about it) say that sochen "is related to Akkadian shaknu (governor of a province)", which is connected to segan סגן - in Biblical Hebrew a government prefect, and later in Rabbinic Hebrew a deputy. He says that shaknu comes from shakanu, meaning "to lay, set, appoint", and is cognate with the Hebrew שכן - "to settle down, dwell". Both verbs he writes are

Shaph'el forms of כון (=to be, be set up, be established), hence literally mean 'to cause to be, cause to be set up, cause to be established'.

(Others disagree and say that shaknu ultimately has a Sumerian origin.)

Klein claims that miskenot is also related to שכן, and gives the following etymology:

Probably a loan word from Akkadian mashkanu (=storehouse, magazine), from shakanu (= to lay, place deposit, store up), which is related to the Hebrew שכן (= he dwelled, abode).

However, he doesn't connected misken or sakana to any of the others.

The Daat Mikra on Devarim 8:9 connects (5) and (6) by pointing out that storehouses are needed when food is not plentiful, and needs to be rationed, like with a poor person.

Steinberg connects all the meanings under the general header of "concerned about the needs of his master". This concern causes one to try to do his best job to help (1), and to be very careful about doing things (2), and to be aware of danger (3). Naturally, this is the role of the sochen, a poor person is concerned about food, and the storehouses stored food for a country concerned about famine in the future. He rejects the unnecessary complications of Gesenius and Furst, when it is clear to him that the words are related. His explanation is certainly clean and inviting. But I think in a way, it's a bit too clean, and language doesn't usually develop just like that. So I'm inclined to accept the opinions of the later scholars who show various sources for the different meanings of the root.

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yavan

I hadn't really noticed before, but the Hebrew word for Greece, יוון yavan, is related to the name of one of the ancient Greek tribes, the Ionians. As Klein writes:

A blend of יון, name of a son of Shem son of Noah (see Genesis 10:2) and orig. Greek Iaon, gen. Iaonos contracted into Ion, gen. Ionos (=Ion), ancestor of the Ionian race. 

The gemara (Yoma 10a) identifies a number of Noach's descendants with peoples of the region (such as Tiras with Thrace, and Madai with Macedonia), but says that Yavan is the (understood) meaning - e.g. Greece.

In addition to the mention in Bereshit, the word also appears in Yeshayahu (66:19), Yoel 4:6), Yechezkel (27:13, 19), Zecharya (9:13), Divrei Hayamim I (1:5,7) and Daniel (8:21, 10:20, 11:2).

The Ionians crossed the Aegean sea and settled the west coast of Asia Minor, in today's Turkey. Besides Hebrew, many other languages to the east of the Greeks (Akkadian, Sanskrit) used a form of Ionia to refer to Greece, since this was the first tribe they encountered.

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passim

This week, in Bereshit 37:3, we read about Yosef and his ketonet passim כתונת פסים. We've already discussed how ketonet means "coat" (and is related to tunic). But what does the additional word passim mean? It appears only here, and in Shmuel II 13:18 in the phrase ketonet passim, so we can't guess based on other contexts.

Perhaps influenced by the play Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, most English speakers probably assume that it was "coat of many colors". Israelis, on the other hand, would probably say "striped coat", since passim means "stripes" (among other similar words, like track and strip). Who's right?

Well, perhaps neither. Sarna in the JPS Genesis writes that

Radak took passim to mean "striped". The Septuagint and Vulgate rendered the Hebrew "a robe of many colors".

However, he also adds that

In 2 Samuel 13:18-19 the garment is mentioned as the distinctive dress of virgin daughters of royalty. Josephus describes it as "a long-sleeved tunic reaching to the ankle." In Aramaic and rabbinic Hebrew pas means the palm of the hand and the sole of the foot.

The Living Torah shows how the debate continued within the commentaries:

The word passim can be translated as 'colorful' (Radak; Septuagint), embroidered (Ibn Ezra; Bachya; Ramban on Exodus 28:2), striped (Ibn Janach; Radak, Sherashim), or with pictures (Targum Yonathan). It can also denote a long garment, coming down to the palms of the hands (Rashbam; Ibn Ezra; Baaley Tosafoth; Bereshith Rabbah 84), and the feet (Lekach Tov). Alternatively, the word denotes the material out of which the coat was made, which was fine wool (Rashi) or silk (Ibn Janach).

Drazin and Wagner, in Onkelos on the Torah, explain Radak's position as being based on "the plural form of the word" which would indicate the robe was made of patchwork. They quote Ehrlich as saying that

Jacob gave Joseph such a royal garment, one that was unsuitable for shepherds, because Joseph was exempted from work. 

This would seem to support the theory of a long sleeved garment, as Shadal also wrote:

The length of one’s clothing is a sign of liberation and prominence, [indicating] that one does not have to do manual work.

Klein, although saying the phrase probably means "tunic composed of variegated stripes", notes that according to most commentators it means "tunic reaching to the palms and the soles".  He connects both pas meaning "stripe, strip" and the Aramaic pas meaning "palm of the hand" (Daniel 5:5) to the root פסס - "to be broad, spread". This root also gives us פיסה pisa, which in Talmudic Hebrew also meant "stripe, strip" but by Medieval Hebrew took on the current meaning of "piece", and perhaps payis פיס - "lot", as well.

While Klein (and earlier Jastrow) indicate that the meaning "strip, stripe" goes back to Talmudic times, Tur-Sinai (in a note in Ben Yehuda's dictionary) says that this sense is not found in those sources at all. He feels that this meaning came from foreign influence, via the Slavic "pas" (like in Polish), which made its way into Yiddish, and from there to Hebrew.

Whether pas פס as strip/stripe came from the Radak or from Polish, everyone agrees that the use of pas as a document that lets a soldier get a vacation from the army comes from the English "pass"...

(The Daat Mikra on Shmuel II gives this picture from the paintings in Beni Hasan in Egypt as an example of ketonet passim.)

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kipod and dorban

Last week, when leaving work in Jerusalem, a friend and I spotted an animal that looked like this (I wish we had a chance to take a picture of it):

He asked me what it was, and I said it was a kipod קיפוד, thinking that was the Hebrew word for "porcupine", but when I got home and looked it up, I discovered the correct word was dorban דרבן. Kipod means "hedgehog", which look like this (I've seen them in the Jerusalem area as well):

Klein writes that kipod derives from the root קפד and "literally means that which rolls itself together". The root קפד developed from "be drawn together" to "be angry" and "be strict", and from here we have the common verb הקפיד hikpid - "was strict, was pedantic".

The porcupine and hedgehog are clearly different animals - both in size, shape and biological classification. How much of a mistake did I make by mixing up the names?

According to a fascinating article by Prof. David Talshir (Leshonenu 70), I wasn't the first to think a porcupine was a kipod.

Talshir explains how the word kipod appears in the Tanach in a few instances: Yeshayahu 14:23, 34:11 and Tzefanya 2:14. The kipoz קפוז of Yeshayahu 34:15 is likely the same animal, with the zayin replacing the dalet (Talshir rejects the JPS translation which distinguishes the kipoz as "arrow-snake", who he points out doesn't live in the Middle East). However, based on the context of these verses, the kipod/kipoz is most likely referring to a bird of prey. Despite this, the various ancient translations and Targumim translate kipod as "hedgehog". Rashi does the same in his biblical commentary (in most cases), as well in his Talmudic commentary, where he identifies the kupad קופד as a hedgehog as well (e.g. Shabbat 54b). Rashi also writes, in his commentary to Vayikra 11:30 (based on Onkelos there, and see also his commentary to Bava Batra 4a) that the animal listed as anaka אנקה also referred to a hedgehog. (Most scholars today say it was likely a gecko lizard.)

However, since no separate identification is given to the porcupine, it is likely that in some of the cases in the Talmud, the kipod / kupad referred to porcupines instead of hedgehogs (for example Kilayim 8:5, and the commentary Malechet Shlomo). Many languages in the area used the same word for both. Rashi's almost absolute identification of the kipod with the hedgehog (excluding the two mentions in Yeshayahu 34, where he understandably identifies it with a bird) must be viewed in light of the fact that there were no porcupines in Europe in his time - only hedgehogs (this is my observation, not Talshir's).

From Rashi's time until the beginning of Modern Hebrew, there were a number of attempts to give different names in Hebrew to both the hedgehog and porcupine. When in 1862, Mendele Mocher Sforim concurred with Rashi, and called the hedgehog a kipod (over the alternative anaka), the name stuck permanently.

However, the final name for porcupine, dorban, was only coined in 1915 by the zoologist Yisrael Aharoni. While a common translation for porcupine in Arabic is kunfud (likely related to kipod), Aharoni chose a different Arabic word for porcupine to come up with his Hebrew version: derban. I was surprised to learn that the Arabic word is not actually cognate to the Hebrew דרבן dorban - meaning "spur" or "goad". However, Aharoni certainly was influenced by the spur-like quills on the porcupine when choosing that name.

The Hebrew dorban (goad) has an Arabic cognate in the root drb meaning "to train", and as Klein points out we have a similar development within Hebrew where malmad מלמד - "goad" derives from למד - "to teach, learn". The Arabic word for porcupine, however, is related to ḍarb, meaning "a beating" (which is the origin of the English word "drub" - "to beat with a stick".) According to Stahl, it can express painful actions like shooting and stinging, so I suppose that is how it became associated with porcupines. Personally, I would imagine that "beating" and "goading" are very similar, and so the two Arabic roots might be connected. But Talshir and the Academy point out that the letter Arabic letter ḍ is cognate with the Hebrew tzade, not dalet, so I'll accept their authority.

Talshir argues for a distinction between darban (porcupine) and dorban (goad). However, in a decision shortly after Talshir's article, the Academy of the Hebrew Language decided, based on popular usage, that דרבן dorban (with a kamatz katan) is the official word for porcupine.

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teva and tabaat

A word that in some ways is equivalent to olam עולם - "world" is teva טבע - "nature". The word is very common in Hebrew today, and is known to people worldwide via the companies Teva Pharmaceuticals and Teva Naot (the sandal manufacturer). Therefore, many assume that the word is ancient - but when viewed in the long history of the Hebrew language, it's rather new.

Teva as "nature" - i.e. the natural world - begins to appear in Ibn Tibbon's translation of the Rambam's Moreh Nevuchim. In the section on the foreign words used in the book, Ibn Tibbon writes (from this translation):

Nature [teva'] is a term that has many meanings, especially in our language, especially since I use it in place of two different Arabic terms, which themselves have different meanings. The one is tabi'a, and the other tab'. ... The philosophers already explained these two terms and the meanings each possesses. What we need to mention here are only the following: One says 'teva' with reference to the principle of any change, persistence or abiding ... any power that exists in a thing always, without changing, is called 'teva'.

The broader sense of "form, shape, character, essence" appears occasionally in Talmudic Hebrew, where it also is the name of a coin, with the value of half a sela. Jastrow provides one example of the meaning "element" from Bamidbar Rabba 14, and then untypically adds "in later Hebrew: nature, character; Nature." The general word for coin - matbe'a מטבע - is related (coins were made by impressing a design on a piece of metal), and it too can also mean "type, formula".

Ilana Goldhaber-Gordon points out in this article in the Forward, an interesting change in the connotation of teva:

Today, the connotation of “teva” has flipped, as the omnipotence of God has receded in the face of science and technology. “Natural” no longer stands opposed to “divine,” but to “artificial.” Teva is wild and free, like gurgling brooks and rushing rivers; its opposite is human-built, like the network of pipes that brings fresh water to our homes.

This certainly seems true. I imagine that if you were to perform a survey of Israelis today, and ask them whether the adjective tiv'i טבעי means "with form" or "without form", they'd overwhelming choose the latter.

Both teva and matbe'a derive from the Biblical root טבע - "to sink, drown", which can also mean "to impress, stamp, coin."  Klein writes that the name of the Hebrew month Tevet טבת may derive from this root as well: originally from the Akkadian tebetu, "it means perhaps literally 'month of sinking in' (i.e. muddy month)".

But what about the Biblical word taba'at טבעת - "ring"? Is it also related?

Most authorities think so. Their assumption is that taba'at originally meant "signet ring", which was used to impress a seal on wax or clay. (Others say that taba'at derived from the Egyptian d.'bt or gb'.t meaning "seal", and therefore may not be related to טבע). This type of ring was used as a signature, and so if the taba'at of the king was given to someone (e.g. Pharoah to Yosef in Bereshit 41:42, Achashverosh to Haman and Mordechai in Ester 3:10, 8:2), it was a sign of transfer of authority.

However, we also find taba'at with the more general meaning of "ring", in the description of the utensils of the Mishkan, for example in Shemot 25:12. (Certainly these rings were not signet rings, although such rings were donated to the Mishkan, as in Shemot 35:22 - see Cassuto's commentary there.) This seemed difficult to me, for I would assume that first plain rings (not signet) were invented (for jewelry or other purposes) and only later signet rings. The same - in my mind - would apply to the development of the word as well. Some try to explain this difficulty by saying that the root טבע in taba'at didn't refer to impressing the seal, but rather the ring was made by "pressing in". But that explanation is hard to accept, since even the verse discussing producing rings for the Mishkan uses the verb יצק - "to pour", not "to press".

I think a better explanation may be that everything used in the Mishkan was "special" (or perhaps "royal"). We see use of materials like techelet תכלת, which have special religious significance, and even the "holy" shaatnez שעטנז, is frequently found in the garments and other utensils in the Mishkan. So perhaps from "signet ring", taba'at came to mean "special, royal ring" - and that is why it was chosen over some other, more common synonym.

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olam

In the prayers of Rosh HaShana, we say hayom harat olam היום הרת עולם. Artscroll translates this phrase as "today is the birth(day) of the world", and offers the following comment:

The phrase is in the present tense, for on Rosh Hashanah of each year the Creation is renewed in its entirety...Although the root הרה usually refers to conception, it it sometimes is used to mean birth. This is its meaning here. Alternatively, according to Rabbeinu Tam, Creation took place on two levels: in Tishrei God decided that He would create the world, and in Nissan He did so. Thus Rosh Hashanah is literally the day on which the world was conceived in God's plan.

I'm more inclined to accept Rabbeinu Tam's explanation (and therefore would prefer a translation like, "today the world was conceived"). I discussed the root הרה here, and I found no examples where it meant birth. (For a more in-depth discussion of the background of and imagery in this piyyut, see these Hebrew articles by Sara Friedland Ben Arza and Yael Levine.)

However, the phrase harat olam has an origin with a very different meaning. It is found in Yirmiyahu 20:17, where the prophet, living at the time of the destruction of the Temple, is cursing the day he was born:

אֲשֶׁר לֹא-מוֹתְתַנִי, מֵרָחֶם; וַתְּהִי-לִי אִמִּי קִבְרִי, וְרַחְמָה הֲרַת עוֹלָם
Because He did not kill me in the womb, so that my mother might be my grave, and her womb pregnant forever. 

Aside from the negative connotation (which is clearly in contrast to the Rosh Hashana prayer), what stands out here is an entirely different meaning of olam. In Yirmiyahu it means "forever", and in the prayer it means "world". (Note that clearly in the verse here, the root הרה cannot mean "birth", although "pregnancy" is more appropriate than "conception".)

This transformation took place in the passage from Biblical Hebrew to Rabbinic Hebrew. Many authorities say that all usages of olam in the Bible mean "eternity" or "always". Others find a few examples (Tehillim 89:3, Mishlei 10:25, Kohelet 3:11) where "world" would be a better translation, or at least that the more popular understanding of the verse. Klein mentions that olam might derive from the root עלם, "to hide", meaning "the hidden, unknown time".

It seems that in between the two meanings was a third one - "age, era", parallel to the Greek aeon (the root of the English word "eon"), which had similar meanings, as described here:

Following Biblical Aramaic, 'lm (or similar forms) occur in numerous more recent Semitic languages (Nabatean, Jewish Aramaic, Christian Palestinian Aramaic, Samaritan, Syriac, Mandaic, Ethiopic, Palmyrene, Egyptian Arabic, Arabic). Beginning approximately in the 1st Century A.D., several of these languages start using 'lm in a meaning different from that of the OT, namely, as "world" or "aeon".

(The same book describes how the post-Biblical book Ben Sira  "stands clearly in a transitional situation with regard to the development of the term olam, with traditional meanings continuing, new ones announcing themselves, and many texts clearly hovering between the old and the new and thus eluding unequivocal determination.")

As suggested here (in Doing Jewish Theology: God, Torah & Israel in Modern Judaism by Neil Gillman), I think this sense is reflected in the Hebrew phrases olam hazeh עולם הזה and olam haba עולם הבא. "This age" or "the age to come" might explain the concepts than the more popular "this world" and "the world to come".

So I think the progress went something like this: "always, eternity" to "long period of time, age"¹ to "realm, domain" to "the (entire) universe". (The English word "world" had a similar development.)

We can see the tension between the meanings of olam in this Mishna in Berachot (9:5):

כל חותמי ברכות שבמקדש היו אומרים: עד העולם. משקלקלו הצדוקין ואמרו אין עולם אלא אחד התקינו שיהו אומרים מן העולם ועד העולם

At the conclusion of the benedictions said in the Temple they used at first to say simply, “forever.” When the Sadducees perverted their ways and asserted that there was only one world, it was ordained that the response should be "from world to world” [i.e., two worlds].

This phrase, מן העולם ועד העולם, is originally found in Divrei Hayamim I 16:36, and is quoted in the Pesukei Dizimra prayers. The different meanings of olam are shown in the various translations. The JPS Tanach has "from eternity to eternity" reflecting the Biblical meaning, the Artscroll adopts the mishna's conclusion with "from This World to the World to Come", and the Koren-Sacks tries to split the difference with "from This World to eternity".

Similarly, the familiar phrase melech olam מלך עולם, when found in the Tanach (Yirmiyahu 10:10, Tehillim 10:16) means "everlasting King", but when adopted into the blessings, becomes "King of the World".

I opened with a criticism of Artscroll's translation, but in the spirit of the season, I think this post is very important. Dr. Marc Shapiro starts with a similar approach, criticizing Artscroll for their translation of Adon Olam as "Master of the Universe"², when he thought "eternal Lord" was more fitting. But in the end, he realized that Artscroll was actually correct. The prayer was written - like the Rosh Hashana prayer - in post-biblical times, and so the poets were thinking of "world", not eternity, when they chose the word "olam".

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1. The idea that olam did not always mean "eternity", but rather a limited period of time, is found in a number of Medieval Jewish writings. See Rambam, Moreh Nevuchim 2:28, and Albo, Sefer HaIkkarim, 3:16.

2. See this fascinating article by Philologos, where he discusses how the cartoon "Masters of the Universe" maybe was influenced by the Hebrew Ribbono Shel Olam רבונו של עולם, via Fiddler on the Roof.

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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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shiur and shaar

In the previous post, I mentioned how achuz אחוז means "percent", while shiur שיעור means "percentage". However, you might be more familiar with another meaning of shiyur (also pronounced in Yiddish, via reduction, as shi'er or shir) - "lesson, class". This leads to a cute joke my son told me:

למה פאה וביכורים משחקים בחצר? כי אין להם שיעור
Why were Peah and Bikkurim playing outside during school?
Because they don't have a shiur...
(based on Peah 1:1, where shiur means "fixed measure")

The meaning "measure" came first, and only in medieval Hebrew did shiur come to mean lesson - "a set measure of learning" (that sense is preserved in shiurei bayit שיעורי בית - "homework"), followed by the modern Hebrew sense of "class". The word shiur derives from the root שער meaning, "to calculate, to estimate, to measure". The verb form only appears once in Tanach, in Mishlei 23:7. The noun form also only appears once, but for me in a surprising location, Bereshit 26:12

וַיִּזְרַע יִצְחָק בָּאָרֶץ הַהִוא, וַיִּמְצָא בַּשָּׁנָה הַהִוא מֵאָה שְׁעָרִים
Yitzchak sowed in that land and in that same year found meah she'arim

Meah shearim is a sign of blessing, and gave its name to one of the oldest neighborhoods in Jerusalem outside of the Old City. I had always thought that she'arim here meant gates (from sha'ar שער - "gate") and the meaning was poetic - "100 gates." But nearly every translation and commentary I've found said the phrase means "hundredfold" - literally "one hundred measures" - or "one hundred estimates". (Tur Sinai in his commentary Peshuto Shel Mikra, follows the Septuagint, and understands Onkelos in the same vein, and says that the word actually was se'orim שעורים - "barley". However, the footnote in Ben Yehuda's dictionary - which I believe were generally written by Tur Sinai - rejects this approach).

Is there a connection between שער - "measure" and shaar - "gate"? Horowitz (page 107) says no - that this one of those cases where "shin is a twin letter". He points out that while in Aramaic shaar meaning "price" (deriving from the root meaning "measure") is spelled with a shin, the Aramaic cognate for shaar meaning "gate" is תרעא - spelled with a tav.

Klein mentions this theory, but then mentions an alternate one:

However, Zimmern sees in the Aramaic words like Jewish Palestinian Aramaic שערא (=market price), etc., Hebraisms, and derives שער from שער, so that the original meaning of שער would be 'the price established at the towngate', the place where the markets were usually held, whence the meanings 'market place', 'price', 'value', 'measure' would have developed gradually.

I don't know where Zimmern wrote this (I don't actually know who Zimmern was, but I'm guessing it was probably the Orientalist Heinrich Zimmern, 1862-1931). I imagine that one possible source for this theory was the usage in Melachim II, 7:1

כָּעֵת מָחָר סְאָה-סֹלֶת בְּשֶׁקֶל וְסָאתַיִם שְׂעֹרִים בְּשֶׁקֶל--בְּשַׁעַר שֹׁמְרוֹן
This time tomorrow, a seah of choice flour shall sell for a shekel, and two seahs of barley for a shekel, at the gate (shaar) of Shomron

Here we see price and gate being used together. 

While in most cases it's clear whether shaar means "gate" or "price", I did find one set of phrases which are confusing:

• הבקיע שער - to score a goal (shaar, "gate" can mean "goal", in soccer)
• הפקיע את השער  - to profiteer, raise the price

I imagine that in the recent World Cup games, both of those phrases were appropriate...

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achuz

While discussing machoz, we mentioned Klein's theory that it is a derivative of the root אחז. This is a common root in Biblical Hebrew, generally with the meaning of "to seize", "to hold" or "to grasp". (Steinberg goes further and connects a number of other roots beginning with אח meaning "connecting two things", such as אחד  - "to unite, one", and אח - "brother".)  From אחז we get a number of familiar words and phrases:

• achuza אחוזה - "possession, property, estate, mansion"
• ma'achaz מאחז-  "stronghold, outpost" (I won't get into the political ramifications of the difference between the above two)
• beit achiza בית אחיזה - "handle, hold" (noun)
• achizat eynayim אחיזת עיניים - "deceit, delusion" (literally, "closing of the eyes", not letting the viewer see what is really happening. See the Mishna, Sanhedrin 7:11).
  

However, there is one derivative that is harder to understand - achuz אחוז - "percentage". What does that have to do with the root as we've seen it so far?

The word actually comes from this week's parasha, Matot. We find a description of how the spoils of war should be distributed, with the soldiers and civilians each taking one half, and then 1/500th of the soldiers' take goes to the high priest, and 1/50th of the civilian share goes to the Levites. That levy is described in Bamidbar 31:30

וּמִמַּחֲצִת בְּנֵי-יִשְׂרָאֵל תִּקַּח אֶחָד אָחֻז מִן-הַחֲמִשִּׁים, מִן-הָאָדָם מִן-הַבָּקָר מִן-הַחֲמֹרִים וּמִן-הַצֹּאן--מִכָּל-הַבְּהֵמָה

And from the half-share of the other Israelites you shall take one seized (achuz) from every fifty human beings as well as cattle, donkeys and sheep - all the animals;

The same usage of achuz appears in Divrei Hayamim I 24:6. From here, the word was reinvented in modern Hebrew, apparently by the rabbi and linguist Zeev Yavetz, as "rate, proportion" (although this article finds an earlier usage), and percentage was created as achuz l'mea אחוז למאה - "a portion of 100". This is the usage described by Ben Yehuda - I'm not sure why they didn't use the biblical "achuz m..." אחוז מן, but rather "achuz l...". As time went on, I suppose with global mathematics becoming more integrated in Israeli culture, achuz began to be used on its own, meaning only "percentage" - 1 of 100. (Interestingly, Klein, whose dictionary was compiled in the 1960s or 1970s, doesn't mention the modern usage, only the sense that Ben Yehuda described.)

The Hebrew Wikipedia article for achuz points out that achuz should only be used for a specific number (e.g. achuz echad אחוז אחד 1%, shelosha achuzim שלושה אחוזים 3%). But if one wants to say percentage in general, as in "the percentage of students who passed the test has increased", the word shiur שיעור, should be used instead of achuz.

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machoz and chozeh

In our last post, we showed how the Hebrew word for port, namel נמל, comes from Greek (and perhaps earlier from Egyptian.) But how could it be that Biblical Hebrew didn't have its own word for port?

Well, it turns out that it probably did. Kutscher (pgs 41-44), based on ancient translations, cognates in Arabic, and Bar Kochba letters, writes that the Biblical word for port was machoz מחוז. It appears once in Tehillim 107:30, a psalm describing travel at sea:

 וַיִּשְׂמְחוּ כִי-יִשְׁתֹּקוּ;    וַיַּנְחֵם, אֶל-מְחוֹז חֶפְצָם.

They rejoiced when all was quiet, and He brought them to the port they desired.

He writes that the word derives from the Akkadian maxazu, meaning "city". He claims the Hebrew word maoz מעוז, which also may have meant "port" (Yeshayahu 23:4), influenced the adoption of machoz from Akkadian; so the word went from "city" to "port city" to "port". (For further discussion, see this interesting article.)

Klein agrees that the Biblical machoz meant "harbor", but offers a different etymology. After mentioning Kutscher's theory, he writes:

However, it is more probably related to Ethiopian me'hez (=frontier place), which derives from 'ahaza (= he seized), so that מחוז would be a derivative of אחז

But in modern Hebrew machoz means "district". How did this come about? It appears to be from influence from Rashi (and others) who translate machoz in Tehillim as "border", based on the dictionary of Menachem ben Saruq¹.

Yet there is something unusual about how Rashi (and Menachem) come to this conclusion. Rashi quotes Yeshayahu 28:15 which uses the word chozeh חוזה:

כִּי אֲמַרְתֶּם, כָּרַתְנוּ בְרִית אֶת-מָוֶת, וְעִם-שְׁאוֹל, עָשִׂינוּ חֹזֶה
For you have said, "We have made a covenant with death, concluded a chozeh with Sheol"

In every other verse in the Tanach, chozeh means "seer" or "prophet". But that clearly is not the meaning here. In modern Hebrew chozeh in this context means "contract", Ben Yehuda translates it as "stipulation", and the JPS uses "pact". But here too Rashi, based on Menachem, explains the word as "border" (from a root unrelated to "seer". Many others have tried to connect the two meanings of the word - see here for example.) To me, it certainly seems strange that Rashi explains one unique word in Tanach by using another unique word as a proof (and vice versa.) In any case, Modern Hebrew accepted Rashi's understanding of machoz, while rejecting that of chozeh.

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1.  See Menachem's dictionary here, page 3. The dictionary also quotes the unusual root חזה in Iyov 8:17, and in the footnote mentions that Rashi quotes Malachim I 7:4 where we find the word מחזה (this word does not appear in any manuscripts of Menahem, despite the fact that Rashi quotes him on it.) All of these words are very unusual and unique, and as the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament points out here, "the text is so uncertain that it is impossible to use them for the meaning of the root and its history".

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