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.
copper, Cyprus, cypress and gopher
עֲשֵׂ֤ה לְךָ֙ תֵּבַ֣ת עֲצֵי־גֹ֔פֶר קִנִּ֖ים תַּֽעֲשֶׂ֣ה אֶת־הַתֵּבָ֑ה וְכָֽפַרְתָּ֥ אֹתָ֛הּ מִבַּ֥יִת וּמִח֖וּץ בַּכֹּֽפֶר׃
Make thee an ark of gopher wood; with rooms shalt thou make the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.
Sometimes it feels like tracking the etymologies of words is like a centuries long game of telephone. Let me show you what I mean.
Here's the Online Etymology Dictionary for the word "copper":
late Old English coper, from Proto-Germanic *kupar (source also of Middle Dutch koper, Old Norse koparr, Old High German kupfar), from Late Latin cuprum, contraction of Latin Cyprium (aes) "Cyprian (metal)," after Greek Kyprios "Cyprus"
So copper comes from Cyprus (both linguistically and physically). Where does the name Cyprus come from?
large eastern Mediterranean island, late 14c., Cipre, Cipres, from Latinized form of Greek Kypros "land of cypress trees"
Cyprus/cypress. Fair enough. So what is the etymology of cypress? Here we get to a Hebrew connection:
from Old French cipres (12c., Modern French cyprès), from Late Latin cypressus, from Latin cupressus, from Greek kyparissos, probably from an unknown pre-Greek Mediterranean language. Perhaps it is related to Hebrew gopher, name of the tree whose wood was used to make the ark (Genesis vi.14).
Here we probably have arrived at almost the end of the line. Klein doesn't have much to offer as to the origin of gofer גפר:
m.n. ‘gopher’ (a kind of wood of which Noah’s ark was made). [Of unknown origin. Perhaps related to Akka. giparu.]
Sarna, in his JPS commentary on the one appearance of gofer (Bereshit 6:14), writes:
Many modern scholars prefer the cypress both because of a similarity in sound to the Hebrew and because it was widely used in shipbuilding in ancient times, due to its resistance to rot.
Giparu meant a kind of reed in Akkadian. It's unclear to me how a word for a reed became the word for a tree - unless both were used to build boats (compare the ark of Noah to the ark of baby Moses.)
tzohar
צֹ֣הַר ׀ תַּעֲשֶׂ֣ה לַתֵּבָ֗ה וְאֶל־אַמָּה֙ תְּכַלֶּ֣נָּה מִלְמַ֔עְלָה וּפֶ֥תַח הַתֵּבָ֖ה בְּצִדָּ֣הּ תָּשִׂ֑ים תַּחְתִּיִּ֛ם שְׁנִיִּ֥ם וּשְׁלִשִׁ֖ים תַּֽעֲשֶֽׂהָ׃
A light shalt thou make to the ark, and to a cubit shalt thou finish it upward; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it.
In this weeks parasha (Bereshit 6:16), Noach is commanded to "make a tzohar in the ark" צֹהַר תַּעֲשֶׂה לַתֵּבָה
The word tzohar (or tsohar) appears only here in the Tanach and there are a number of explanations for the meaning:
window (Onkelos, Rashi, Ibn Ezra) - based on tsohorayim צהרים - noon. The light of noon is compared to the light entering the ark via the window. Also related to zohar זוהר - brilliance. This may be the window mentioned in 8:6.
lamp, or oil for a lamp (Menachem, Radak, Chizkuni)- based on yitzhar יצהר - oil.
roof (Shadal, Cassuto, Kaddari) - via Arabic zahr, Akkadian seru, Ugaritic zr - meaning "back, top".
luminous stone (Rashi) - based on a Midrash
Klein connects the first three interpretations. He offers a root צהר , meaning "to be bright, clear". He translates yitzhar as "fresh oil" and says it means either "that which newly appears" or "that which shines". He also writes that the Arabic zahara means "appeared, became visible", and this is connected to the roots meaning "back, top". Therefore tzohorayim means "culminating point, zenith". Stahl explains it somewhat differently, by saying that at noon, the sun begins turning away from us.
Based on the root צהר Ben Yehuda coined הצהיר - to declare, from the sense of putting something for all to see, in the light of day (the Biblical verb הצהיר - Iyov 24:11 - meant "to make yitzhar".)
mitzrayim
וּבְנֵ֖י חָ֑ם כּ֥וּשׁ וּמִצְרַ֖יִם וּפ֥וּט וּכְנָֽעַן׃
And the sons of Ham: Cush, and Mizraim, and Put, and Canaan.
Since we discussed the father (Cham), let's talk about the son - Mitzrayim מצרים - the Hebrew name for Egypt. In the last post we ran into difficulties reconciling the Hebrew word cham with the Egyptian kmt. However, with Mitzrayim, there are less difficulties, since this word is only found in Semitic languages - the ancient Egyptians didn't use it themselves. Here's the entry for the etymology of Mitzrayim in the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament:
The Hebrew name for Egypt, misrayim, corresponds to Ugar. msrm, Phoen. msrym, Egyptian Aram. msryn, Syr. mesrem, Akk. Musur/Musru/Misri, Old Persian Mudraya, Arab. Misr; the word is not, however, attested in Old Egyptian. The Egyptians themselves called their land ... t3.wy, the "two lands" (referring to Upper and Lower Egypt) ... If misrayim constitutes a genuine dual form, and if it is connected with Akk. misru, "border, region", and Arab. misr, "border, land, capital city," it might be a translation of t3.wy, although this explanation is extremely uncertain. Meir Fraenkel's derivation of misrayim, associating it with matar, "rain," "water," is untenable.
The singular form masor also occurs in the OT (Mic. 7:12; 2 . K 192:24 par Isa. 37:25; Isa. 19:6) and the gentilic form misri is richly attested.
A few notes about this entry:
1) There is a Hebrew cognate to the Akkadian misru -metzer מצר, which also means "boundary". According to Klein, the word only appears in post-biblical Hebrew (e.g. Bava Batra 61b, 62b) and is a secondary form of the biblical word metzar מצר. That word is said to mean either "distress" or "a narrow place" ("strait" in modern Hebrew). It is familiar from the phrase בין המצרים bein hametzarim - which is used to describe the three weeks preceeding Tisha B'Av.
More from Balashon on Noach
At the table
- Read Genesis 6:14 aloud. Now that you know where גֹ֔פֶר comes from, what do you hear in the verse that you didn't before?
- Why might the Torah say צֹ֣הַר in Genesis 6:16? 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?