Words from this week's reading, traced to their roots by David Curwin, the Hebrew Language Detective. Each begins with the verse where the word appears and continues in his own words.
bara and bari
בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
The Hebrew root ברא has three distinct meanings. Two are very familiar, one much less so.
One meaning is "to create" and is found in the very first verse of the Tanakh: בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא - "In the beginning God created..." (Bereshit 1:1). The noun form of this verb is beriah בְּרִיאָה - "creation."
Another is related to healthiness, and is found in such words as bari בָּרִיא - "healthy" and beriut בְּרִיאוּת - "health." It is generally accepted that the original usage of this meaning was "to be fat, to grow fat." Klein suggests that the Talmudic term bari בָּרִי meaning "surely, certainly" is related to בריא meaning "healthy, sound."
The last usage of ברא is "to cut down trees," as found in Yehoshua 17:15 and 17:18, and in the more metaphorical sense in Yechezkel 23:47, where it means "to cut down people."
Are there any connections between those three meanings?
Gesenius, admittedly an older source, claims that they are related. He writes that the common meaning to all is "to cut, to carve out, to form by cutting." That leads to the sense "to create, produce, fashion." He then writes that the meaning "to eat, feed, to grow fat," comes from "cutting food." And the connection between "to cut" and "to cut down" is fairly obvious. Gesenius also adds another meaning: "to beget", from which the word bar בַּר derives, connecting it to "creation.". I haven't seen anyone else say that bar comes from ברא, so I won't discuss it further here, but I did discuss that meaning of bar in this post.
Klein, however, does not make any of those connections. These are his three entries, unrelated to one another:
mashal and moshel
וַיַּ֣עַשׂ אֱלֹהִ֔ים אֶת־שְׁנֵ֥י הַמְּאֹרֹ֖ת הַגְּדֹלִ֑ים אֶת־הַמָּא֤וֹר הַגָּדֹל֙ לְמֶמְשֶׁ֣לֶת הַיּ֔וֹם וְאֶת־הַמָּא֤וֹר הַקָּטֹן֙ לְמֶמְשֶׁ֣לֶת הַלַּ֔יְלָה וְאֵ֖ת הַכּוֹכָבִֽים׃
And God made the two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; and the stars.
The 929 Project, which covers a chapter of the Tanakh every day over a 3.5 year cycle, will be starting the book of Mishlei (Proverbs) soon. Since I write a weekly entry for 929, I thought I would take the opportunity here to look into the word mashal משל - the source of the book Mishlei.
In the Bible, the root משל has two meanings - "to rule" and "to resemble, to make like, to speak in parables." The first sense, to rule, appears 81 times as a verb, and also has noun forms, like moshel מושל - "ruler. governor" and memshala ממשלה - meaning "rule, dominion" in Biblical Hebrew, and "government" in Modern Hebrew.
The second meaning occurs 17 times as a verb, and an additional 39 as a noun, generally translated as "proverb" (giving the name to the biblical book.)
Is there a connection between the two meanings? Many older sources do make a connection. Here are a few examples:
Rabbi Hirsch, on Bereshit 4:9, writes that the basic meaning of mashal is "to declare what something is and should be, to give its character and designation. Hence: to command, to rule. […] Hence, also the Proverbs of Shlomo: saying which tell us what men and things are and should be. So in general.
ish and isha
וַיֹּ֘אמֶר֮ הָֽאָדָם֒ זֹ֣את הַפַּ֗עַם עֶ֚צֶם מֵֽעֲצָמַ֔י וּבָשָׂ֖ר מִבְּשָׂרִ֑י לְזֹאת֙ יִקָּרֵ֣א אִשָּׁ֔ה כִּ֥י מֵאִ֖ישׁ לֻֽקְחָה־זֹּֽאת׃
And the man said: ‘This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.’
The first words the Torah quotes Adam as saying appear right after his wife was created. He gives her a name, but also mentions a connection between his name and hers:
וַיֹּאמֶר, הָאָדָם, זֹאת הַפַּעַם עֶצֶם מֵעֲצָמַי, וּבָשָׂר מִבְּשָׂרִי; לְזֹאת יִקָּרֵא אִשָּׁה, כִּי מֵאִישׁ לֻקְחָה-זֹּאת.
Then the man said, "This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This one shall be called Woman (isha) for from man (ish) she was taken". (Bereshit 2:23)
As you might imagine, I love the idea that the first recorded human sentence include an etymology! Ibn Ezra says that the words ish איש and isha אשה are related, and Rashi goes even further. Based on the midrash in Bereshit Rabba (18:4), he says that from this verse we learn that the world was created in Hebrew!
However, there are a few difficulties with what we've said so far. First of all, almost all modern linguists say that ish and isha aren't related. Ish comes from the root אוש, meaning strength (the related root אשש means "to strengthen"), and isha derives from אנש, meaning weak. (The common plural of both - anashim אנשים - "men" and nashim - נשים - "women" also derive from אנש). Aside from the fact that the Torah mentions them together, it might seem difficult to believe that they aren't from the same root. We see the letter heh added as a feminine suffix in many words. Why shouldn't we accept what appears to be the obvious etymology here as well?
Well, first of all, we should be careful of "obvious" etymologies. I've warned a number of times of the danger of assuming that words in English and Hebrew that have similar sounds and meanings are related.
More from Balashon on Breishit
At the table
- Read Genesis 1:1 aloud. Now that you know where בָּרָ֣א comes from, what do you hear in the verse that you didn't before?
- Why might the Torah say לְמֶמְשֶׁ֣לֶת in Genesis 1:16? What would be lost with a more ordinary word?
- Which of this week’s words do you use in Modern Hebrew? Has the meaning moved since the Torah used it?