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.
bareket and emerald
וּמִלֵּאתָ֥ בוֹ֙ מִלֻּ֣אַת אֶ֔בֶן אַרְבָּעָ֖ה טוּרִ֣ים אָ֑בֶן ט֗וּר אֹ֤דֶם פִּטְדָה֙ וּבָרֶ֔קֶת הַטּ֖וּר הָאֶחָֽד׃
And thou shalt set in it settings of stones, four rows of stones: a row of carnelian, topaz, and smaragd shall be 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).
I'd like to take a look at how the word bareket ended up in European languages, and perhaps that will help us identify the stone.
yashfeh and diaper
וְהַטּוּר֙ הָרְבִיעִ֔י תַּרְשִׁ֥ישׁ וְשֹׁ֖הַם וְיָשְׁפֵ֑ה מְשֻׁבָּצִ֥ים זָהָ֛ב יִהְי֖וּ בְּמִלּוּאֹתָֽם׃
and the fourth row a beryl, and an onyx, and a jasper; they shall be inclosed in gold in their settings.
In Shemot 28:15-20, there is a description of the breastplate of the high priest - the choshen mishpat. The breastplate contained 12 stones, in four rows of three.
The identities of many of the stones listed are highly debated. It's very difficult to find two translations that render each of the stones in the same way. But one stone almost always gets the same translation, the yashfeh יָשְׁפֵה of Shemot 28:20. All the English translations I consulted had it as "jasper."
This should not be surprising, as the English word "jasper" very likely derives from yashfeh or a cognate Semitic word. Here's the Online Etymology Dictionary entry for jasper:
precious stone, c. 1300, from Anglo-French jaspre, Old French jaspre, with unetymological -r-, a variant of jaspe (12c.), from Latin iaspidem (nominative iaspis), from Greek iaspis "jasper," via an Oriental language (compare Hebrew yashpeh, Akkadian yashupu).
Klein has a similar entry for yashfeh:
Probably borrowed from yashupū (also ashpū), whence also Syriac יָשְׁפֵה, יַשֽׁפָא, Persian yashm, whence Arabic yashb (= jasper). Greek. iaspis, whence Latin iaspis, is a Sem. loan word.
All of this isn't so surprising. Gems were rare, and so it makes sense that they would retain the name from where they came. However, the next development surprised me.
In Klein's CEDEL, he has the following entry for the word "diaper":
tenufa
וְשַׂמְתָּ֣ הַכֹּ֔ל עַ֚ל כַּפֵּ֣י אַהֲרֹ֔ן וְעַ֖ל כַּפֵּ֣י בָנָ֑יו וְהֵנַפְתָּ֥ אֹתָ֛ם תְּנוּפָ֖ה לִפְנֵ֥י יְהֹוָֽה׃
And thou shalt put the whole upon the hands of Aaron, and upon the hands of his sons; and shalt wave them for a wave-offering before the LORD.
Today is 7 Adar - the day that Moshe Rabeinu died. We don't know the location of his grave, and in that spirit, my story today will include a number of items whose precise location is hidden...
After discussing teruma last week, Parshat Tetzaveh includes the concept tenufa תנופה. (Shmot 29:24,26,27). The meaning of tenufa is debated - some say it means "raised up" (similar to teruma, and the Aramaic translation uses the same root), others say "waved".
The root נוף (or נפנף) as "wave" leads to the word for banner, according to Klein "that which is moved to and fro". Horowitz points out an interesting development here. In both English and Hebrew, when "N" is the second letter of a syllable, it is difficult to pronounce and often dropped. Therefore in English we say "illegal" and not "inlegal", "irreligious" and not "inreligious". In Hebrew the letter nun is known as a "weak letter", and falls out of many words - nofel נופל in the future becomes e'pol אפול. Horowitz gives a long list of words where the nun falls out (How the Hebrew Language Grew , pgs 32-38). One of the examples he gives is the word for banner. If the root is נוף, the noun should be manpa מנפה. But the nun fell away (our first hidden item), and we're left with the word מפה - mapa. Mapa can mean banner, and also map and tablecloth.
Horowitz points out that "because maps were painted on cloth, mappa in Latin came to mean map. In French the word became nappa, that gave rise to our word napkin." In English the word became napron, and one was called "a napron". But the N fell out again, and instead of calling it "a napron", we began to call it "an apron".
More from Balashon on Tetzaveh
At the table
- Read Exodus 28:17 aloud. Now that you know where וּבָרֶ֔קֶת comes from, what do you hear in the verse that you didn't before?
- Why might the Torah say וְיָשְׁפֵ֑ה in Exodus 28:20? 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?