The Hebrew word for the number five is חמש - chamesh. Another set of words that would seem to have the same root are chamush חמוש - armed and tachmoshet תחמושת - ammunition. Is there a connection between them?

The earliest source that might provide an answer is Shmot 13:18 - וַחֲמֻשִׁים עָלוּ בְנֵי-יִשְׂרָאֵל, מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם. "Bnei Yisrael went up, chamushim, from the land of Egypt". Most translators and commentaries explain chamushim here as meaning "armed". (There are some exceptions. The Septuagint translates chamushim as "the fifth generation", despite translating chamushim in Yehoshua 1:14 as "armed". Apparently the unusual translation is due to the difficulty explaining the source of the armaments. And as far as the midrash that Rashi quotes, that only one fifth of Bnei Yisrael left Egypt, it is appropriate to quote Ibn Ezra's response: "We have enough trouble explaining to the Arab scholars how 55 males could have 600,000 males over the age of 20 within 210 years - and there's even more when you include women and children!")

So is there a connection between the two meanings of חמש? Klein believes that there may be. In his entry for חמוש, he writes:

Of uncertain origin. It is possibly related to חמשה (= five), and refers to the division of the army into five parts: van, body, rear and two wings. Hence related to Arab. hamis (= army; properly 'army divided into five parts') from hams (= five.)

We're between Pesach and Shavuot now, the time that we "count the omer". But do we really?

Let's look at the word "omer" עומר. It has clearly different meanings in its various appearances in the Tanach. In Devarim 24:19, Rut 2:7 it is usually translated as "sheaf" - a bundle of stalks of grain. However, in the story of the mahn (manna) מן - Shemot 16:16-36, it refers to a measure of volume, one tenth of an ephah.

However, the real question is what does it mean in Vayikra 23:10-16 - the section discussing the omer offering and the subsequent counting. The Septuagint translates the word here as "sheaf" and this is also the translation of the Vulgate and most non-Jewish translations and modern scholars. However, almost all Jewish sources say that the word omer in this section is referring to the measure of volume.

This brings up a number of questions. First of all - what is the source of the disagreement? And secondly, why hasn't this question received more attention? If we look at another verse in the same section - 23:11, it discusses how the omer was brought on ממחרת השבת - the day after "shabbat". Starting with the earliest mishnaic sources, we find countless discussions about the meaning of that phrase. Does it mean a "Sunday" or the 16th of Nissan (the day following the first day of Pesach)? However, in regards to the discussion about the meaning of omer, we find very few "proofs" in Talmudic literature. Even Rashi, who clearly states in his commentary on 23:11 that omer here means "measure", doesn't bring a proof, only quotes the verse in Shmot. Why?