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.
tam and tamim
זֹ֚את חֻקַּ֣ת הַתּוֹרָ֔ה אֲשֶׁר־צִוָּ֥ה יְהֹוָ֖ה לֵאמֹ֑ר דַּבֵּ֣ר ׀ אֶל־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֗ל וְיִקְח֣וּ אֵלֶ֩יךָ֩ פָרָ֨ה אֲדֻמָּ֜ה תְּמִימָ֗ה אֲשֶׁ֤ר אֵֽין־בָּהּ֙ מ֔וּם אֲשֶׁ֛ר לֹא־עָלָ֥ה עָלֶ֖יהָ עֹֽל׃
This is the statute of the law which the LORD hath commanded, saying: Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring thee a red heifer, faultless, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came yoke.
Two similar adjectives appear throughout the Bible: tam (תָּם) and tamim (תָּמִים). Both come from the root תמ"ם, and both can describe someone as upright, complete, or perfect. But they aren't always used in exactly the same way. Yaakov (Bereshit 25:27) is called an אִישׁ תָּם, while Noach (Bereshit 6:9) is an אִישׁ צַדִּיק תָּמִים. Iyov (Iyov 1:1) is תָּם וְיָשָׁר, while Avraham (Bereshit 17:1) is commanded to be תָמִים. So what is the difference between the two words?
Let's start with the root תמ"ם. The Ben-Yehuda Dictionary gives the basic meaning of the verb תמם as "to be complete, finished." We find that meaning in verses such as וַיִּתְּמוּ יְמֵי בְכִי אֵבֶל מֹשֶׁה, "the days of mourning for Moshe came to an end" (Devarim 34:8). That basic idea of completion or wholeness is the starting point for both adjectives.
The words tam and tamim are two different adjective forms built from the same root. The ending of tamim may look like a masculine plural ending, but tamim itself is singular. Its plural is temimim תְּמִימִים.
TDOT suggests that tam may represent the older of the two adjective forms, with tamim becoming more common later. Other Semitic languages also have more than one form from this root. Arabic has both tāmm, "complete," and tamīm, with related meanings of completeness or being well formed. Hayim Tawil, in his Akkadian Lexical Companion for Biblical Hebrew, notes the Akkadian cognate tamīmu, which he defines as "perfect." Interestingly, unlike Hebrew tamim, the Akkadian word is restricted to describing animals.
That is worth noting, since one of the most common biblical uses of tamim is also for animals. The Pesach offering must be a שֶׂה תָמִים, an unblemished animal (Shemot 12:5), and sacrificial animals are repeatedly required to be tamim.
saraf
וְשָׂרַ֥ף אֶת־הַפָּרָ֖ה לְעֵינָ֑יו אֶת־עֹרָ֤הּ וְאֶת־בְּשָׂרָהּ֙ וְאֶת־דָּמָ֔הּ עַל־פִּרְשָׁ֖הּ יִשְׂרֹֽף׃
And the heifer shall be burnt in his sight; her skin, and her flesh, and her blood, with her dung, shall be burnt.
In this weeks parasha (Chukat) we see that as a punishment God sends: הַנְּחָשִׁים הַשְּׂרָפִים - the serafim snakes (Bamidbar 21:6). What is being referred to here?
According to Ibn Ezra and others, serafim is an adjective for the nahashim (snakes). As Rashi explains, they burn שורף - soref - with their venom. However, we eventually see the saraf taking its place as a noun. First, in the same story where it is placed on a banner. Yeshayahu (14:29, 30:6) refers to a שרף מועפף - a flying saraf (even the classic commentaries say that the snake would jump as if it was flying.) And apparently from the imagery of a flying snake, we get the famous description of the Seraphim angels (Yeshayahu 6:2,6) with their six wings.
The root שרף has a number of related roots, all following the same pattern: a sibilant consonant, followed by resh, followed by a labial consonant. And so we have:
צרב - to burn, to scorch. From here we get the word צרבת - heartburn, and the verb לצרוב is used to describe "burning" CDs and DVDs.
שרב - to glow, be parched, as in sharav - burning heat (I discussed the similar hamsin here).
צרם - Steinberg adds this root, which is understood as originally "to cut", "to grate (on the ears).
צרף - to smelt, to refine, and later to attach, to join and to change money. Klein says that the word literally means "to purify by burning."
nachash, nichush and nechoshet
וַיַּ֤עַשׂ מֹשֶׁה֙ נְחַ֣שׁ נְחֹ֔שֶׁת וַיְשִׂמֵ֖הוּ עַל־הַנֵּ֑ס וְהָיָ֗ה אִם־נָשַׁ֤ךְ הַנָּחָשׁ֙ אֶת־אִ֔ישׁ וְהִבִּ֛יט אֶל־נְחַ֥שׁ הַנְּחֹ֖שֶׁת וָחָֽי׃
And Moses made a serpent of brass, and set it upon the pole; and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he looked unto the serpent of brass, he lived.
Is there any connection between the Hebrew words nachash נחש - "snake", nichush ניחוש - "guess" and nechoshet נחושת - "copper"? They all appear to have the same root. However, it doesn't appear very likely that they are connected with each other. Let's take a closer look.
Nachash is the biblical word for snake, and Klein doesn't say much about its etymology other than that it is likely related to the Arabic word for serpent - "hanash". This is clearly an example of metathesis, but he doesn't say which form is likely the original form of the word. Horowitz, in How the Hebrew Language Grew, provides the following anecdote:
The little children were playing at the edge of the clearing in front of their house. Suddenly their mother, horror struck, saw a snake near them, with lifted head, poised to strike. She hissed out to them sharply the warning sound חש (chash) imitating the very hiss of the snake. The children heard. They understood and ran to safety.
From this warning syllable chash arose the Hebrew word for snake nachash.
It's a bit fanciful, but I think it's reasonable to claim that nachash might have onomatopoeic origins. Other words ending in -chash also relate to sounds, like lachash לחש - "whisper"and rachash רחש - "rustle".
Nichush (and the verb נחש) did not originally mean "guess". In biblical Hebrew it meant "divination" and was associated with magical practices. Only in modern Hebrew was it "secularized" to mean "guess." Klein points out that it is cognate with the Arabic nahisa and nahusa - "was unlucky". The Arabic form entered Hebrew slang as nachs נחס - "unlucky" or "bad".
More from Balashon on Chukat
At the table
- Read Numbers 19:2 aloud. Now that you know where תְּמִימָ֗ה comes from, what do you hear in the verse that you didn't before?
- Why might the Torah say וְשָׂרַ֥ף in Numbers 19:5? 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?