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.
pach
וַֽיְרַקְּע֞וּ אֶת־פַּחֵ֣י הַזָּהָב֮ וְקִצֵּ֣ץ פְּתִילִם֒ לַעֲשׂ֗וֹת בְּת֤וֹךְ הַתְּכֵ֙לֶת֙ וּבְת֣וֹךְ הָֽאַרְגָּמָ֔ן וּבְת֛וֹךְ תּוֹלַ֥עַת הַשָּׁנִ֖י וּבְת֣וֹךְ הַשֵּׁ֑שׁ מַעֲשֵׂ֖ה חֹשֵֽׁב׃
And they did beat the gold into thin plates, and cut it into threads, to work it in the blue, and in the purple, and in the scarlet, and in the fine linen, the work of the skilful workman.
The famous jar of oil of Chanukah - the "pach hashemen". Is pach spelled with a chet - פח or with a chaf פך ?
Well, despite over 11,000 hits on Google for פח השמן (!!!) the correct spelling is פך השמן (which sadly only has 3000 more sites on Google.)
What is the cause of the confusion? It seems to me that besides both פח and פך being homonyms to most Israelis, in Modern Hebrew they both can refer to kinds of containers. Let's see how.
The word פך means "flask, jar, cruse". It appears three times in the Bible. Klein writes that the name is probably of imitative origin. Kil mentions this in the Daat Mikra on Melachim II 9:3 - when pouring from the jar it would make a pach-pach-pach sound. In Yechezkel 47:2 we find the phrase מַיִם מְפַכִּים - gushing water, which Kil says indicates the sound as well. (It should be noted that Kaddari and others write that the verb פכה derives from the noun פך ).
What about פח ? It originally meant "a thin plate of metal", and appears twice in the Bible (Shmot 39:3 and Bamidbar 17:3) - where the metal is gold or copper. Stahl writes that perhaps this word too is of imitative origin - from the pach! sound made from hammering the metal.
However, in modern Hebrew the word פח means "tin". I'm not sure how this developed. My first theory was that perhaps this was a misreading of Rashi on Bamidbar who uses the Old French word tenves to describe פחים . The word means "thin", but in Hebrew is spelled טינבי"ש - maybe someone saw the word "tin" in there.
bareket and emerald
וַיְמַ֨לְאוּ־ב֔וֹ אַרְבָּעָ֖ה ט֣וּרֵי אָ֑בֶן ט֗וּר אֹ֤דֶם פִּטְדָה֙ וּבָרֶ֔קֶת הַטּ֖וּר הָאֶחָֽד׃
And they set in it four rows of stones: a row of carnelian, topaz, and smaragd was the first row.
On the breastplate of the High Priest, were affixed twelve gemstones (Shemot 28:17-20). There is almost no mention of most of them anywhere else in the Bible, aside from the parallel passage in Shemot 39:10-13. (A portion are mentioned in Yechezkel 28:13).
Because of the infrequent occurrences in the Tanach, along with the gap between current scientific precision and biblical nomenclature, it is difficult to identify with certainty the gems that appear in these verses. That said, let's take a look at one of them, the third stone - the bareket ברקת (mentioned in Shemot 28:17).
I have found many different translations for this stone, including:
agate, beryl, carbuncle, citrine, emerald, hyacinth, malachite, peridot, pyrite, rock-crystal, smaragd, topaz
And then some take either the easy way out or the more precise method (depending on your point of view), and translate it as "bareketh."
The etymology of bareket isn't much help. It likely derives from the word barak ברק - "lightning", and so means "flashing" or "sparkling" stone. Since gems are almost by definition shiny, all of the stones mentioned above could fit that description.
The attempts to identify the bareket with a gemstone that we know today is based on seeing its translation in ancient translations, as well as explanations offered by midrashim and later commentaries. I won't go into all of the analysis here (to see a good summary of traditional Jewish sources, see the Living Torah commentary on the verse here).
begilufin
Reader Mordecai asked the following question:
Many years ago, I attempted to discover the origin of the use of the Hebrew/Aramaic word "b'gilufin". I was reading an Israeli newspaper that described two woman throwing bottles off a roof. The police investigated and discovered they were "b'gilufin." This word is used regularly in Hebrew (and Yiddish) to mean "inebriated"
I tracked the word down to one of Isaac Luria's Shabbat table hymns - Atkinu S'udata for S'udah Shlishit.
While Lurianic Aramaic might be out of your expertise, my question is really how a word from a relatively obsure Kabbalistic poem whichs means "engraved" in Aramaic came to mean "drunk" in Hebrew.
Good question. I am familiar with the word, but it's origin (and perhaps meaning) is not widely known. This site collects comments on a Ynet article, where the writers (tongue-in-cheek) asked where the town of Gilufin is...
The word gilufin גילופין and other derivatives of the root גלפ appear in the Talmud Yerushalmi, midrashim and the Targumim (for example Shmot 39:6). It always means "to engrave, carve". Klein writes that it is a:
Hebraization of Greek glyphein ( = to hollow out, engrave, carve), which is cognate with Latin glubere ( = to peel, shell)
From glyphein we get the words hieroglyphic and glyph, and from glubere we get glume.
Hesder Oleh brings up an interesting question: is גלפ related to קלפ ? If the word can mean in Greek "to carve" and in Latin "to peel" then shouldn't these two Hebrew roots with the same two meanings also be connected? As Joel points out in the comments there, Jastrow connects the two. Neither Ben-Yehuda or Klein make a connection, but I think the jury's still out.
At the table
- Read Exodus 39:3 aloud. Now that you know where פַּחֵ֣י comes from, what do you hear in the verse that you didn't before?
- Why might the Torah say וּבָרֶ֔קֶת in Exodus 39:10? 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?