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.
Nukhba and Nahbi
לְמַטֵּ֣ה נַפְתָּלִ֔י נַחְבִּ֖י בֶּן־וׇפְסִֽי׃
Of the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi the son of Vophsi.
I was curious about the etymology of Nukhba, the Hamas special forces unit that carried out horrific terrorist attacks on October 7.
The root n-kh-b in Arabic means "choose, select, elect," and so nukhba is an elite military unit. It's a fairly common root in Arabic, appearing in many words related to elections. However, I couldn't fnd any Hebrew cognates.
The Arabic Etymological Dictionary, while including words from that root, didn't provide any additonal Semitic cognates. It left it unknown with the entry (the etymology and cognates go in the brackets):
nachaba: choose, select [?]
I didn't see any entries in Stahl's Arabic dictionary, and a search of Klein's dictionary for related Arabic words also came up blank.
I was about to give up, when I found this brief mention in the Ben Yehuda dictionary:
נחב
ממנו אולי השֵם נַחְבִּי.
בערב' יש שני שרשים, נחב نحب במשמ' בכיה חזקה, ונח'ב نخب במשמ' בחירה ובררה.
This was a strange entry. It was for the root נחב nakhav for which the only word provided was perhaps the Biblical name "Nahbi". Nahbi, the son of Vofsi, appears only once in the Tanakh, in Bamidbar 13:14. He was one of the spies - the representative from the tribe of Naftali.
The Ben-Yehuda dictionary notes that in Arabic there are two (possibly related) roots. One is nahab which means "strong cry." The other is our nakhab, meaning "choice, select."
I still don't exactly understand why this hypothetical root was included in the dictionary, which might have been the source of a name, and may have a connection to one of two cognates. But it does at least leave the door open that Nahbi is related to nukhba, which could make sense, considering he was a prince of the tribe.
cherem and harem
וַיֵּ֤רֶד הָעֲמָלֵקִי֙ וְהַֽכְּנַעֲנִ֔י הַיֹּשֵׁ֖ב בָּהָ֣ר הַה֑וּא וַיַּכּ֥וּם וַֽיַּכְּת֖וּם עַד־הַֽחׇרְמָֽה׃
Then the Amalekite and the Canaanite, who dwelt in that hill-country, came down, and smote them and beat them down, even unto Hormah.
The Hebrew word cherem חרם is familiar to most of us as a ban, an excommunication. This type of censure developed in Talmudic and Medieval times. However, the Biblical word also means "to ban". Klein says that in Biblical Hebrew it meant to ban, devote, confiscate. (There is a discussion here as to whether the meaning "to destroy, exterminate" has the same origin, for in Arabic the two meanings are spelled differently.) In Talmudic Hebrew it also began to refer to a type of vow (as we find in the Kol Nidrei prayer.)
Even-Shoshan, in his Concordance, notes that of the 51 occurrences of the Biblical verb, all but three of them have a sense of "to destroy". One (Yishayahu 11:15) means "to dry up" and two (Micha 4:13 and Vayikra 27:28) refer to dedication to God. This meaning is reflected in the Arabic cognate harim - "sacred, forbidden". This root appears in a number of Arabic phrases, such as Al-Haram ash-Sharif - the Arabic name for the holy Temple Mount.
The English word harem also derives from this root:
1634, from Turk. harem, from Arabic haram "wives and concubines," originally "women's quarters," lit. "something forbidden or kept safe," from root of harama "he guarded, forbade."
Another related word is Marrano - the Jews of Spain and Portugal who were forced to convert to Christianity, but secretly observed Judaism. It has a fairly distasteful etymology:
kash and kashish
וַיִּהְי֥וּ בְנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל בַּמִּדְבָּ֑ר וַֽיִּמְצְא֗וּ אִ֛ישׁ מְקֹשֵׁ֥שׁ עֵצִ֖ים בְּי֥וֹם הַשַּׁבָּֽת׃
And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks upon the sabbath day.
A reader asked if there was a connection between the verb קשש - "to gather", and kashish קשיש - "elderly." I didn't think it was likely, but according to Klein's etymologies, they are related.
Klein writes that the root קשש means "to gather, assemble (especially straw or stubble.)" We find this root in the story of the מקושש עצים mekoshesh etzim - "the stick gatherer" (Bamidbar 15:32-36), as well as the description of the Israelite slaves "gathering stubble [kash] for straw [teven]" לְקֹשֵׁשׁ קַשׁ לַתֶּבֶן (Shemot 5:12).
Klein provides this etymology:
Related to Syriac קַשׁ, Arab. qashsha (= he collected, gathered). The original meaning probably was ‘to become dry’. Compare. Arab. qashsha in the sense ‘became dry, dried up, shriveled up, withered’.
He writes that this is the root of kash קש - "straw." In modern Hebrew, as in English, kash refers to both straw as "dried stalks of grain" and "a thin, hollow tube for drinking." The latter (the drinking straw), however, is often called a kashit קשית.
Klein then goes on to say that the root קשש can also mean "to grow old", and comes from the earlier sense "to become dry, wither, fade." This gives us the word kashish - "old, elderly."
Ben-Yehuda, however, says that perhaps kashish comes from the root קשה kasheh - "hard." So instead of an elderly person being like someone who has withered and faded, this kashish has been hardened, and strengthened, by the challenges of life. This is also the approach of Jastrow, who brings support from Shabbat 53a, where it says that animals can go out into the public domain on Shabbat with "splints" keshishin. These splints were meant to straighten the fracture, to make it stiff (kasheh).
More from Balashon on Shelach
At the table
- Read Numbers 13:14 aloud. Now that you know where נַחְבִּ֖י comes from, what do you hear in the verse that you didn't before?
- Why might the Torah say הַֽחׇרְמָֽה in Numbers 14:45? 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?