What’s in a Word?

nature

animal

בהמה · בהמות · חיה · חיות

Bottom line

Behemah is a domesticated animal, one that lives among people and serves them; chayah is a wild animal, one that lives in open country (Ibn Ezra and Radak). Ramban suggests a different line, by diet: behemos eat only plants, chayos eat flesh. The article leaves both live, the Netziv rejecting Ramban and Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky defending him. The one thing not to get wrong is that these are halachic categories before they are descriptions: cheilev is forbidden only in a behemah, and kisui hadam applies only to a chayah. Where a passage is halachic, do not flatten both to "animal."

Distinctions

behemah (בהמה)

Ibn Ezra and Radak: the domesticated animals, which live with people and have a use for them, whether for their meat or as beasts of burden. Among the kosher species, behemah is limited to three families, the same three that alone may be brought as korbanos: the bovine, ovine and caprine families, that is cattle, sheep, and goats. The category is not only kosher, though: other, non-kosher animals such as pigs, camels, and donkeys are seemingly behemos as well, which is why the domestication test, and not the sacrificial list, is what actually defines the word. Ramban instead defines behemos as the herbivores, animals that feed solely on plants and other flora.

chayah (חיה)

Ibn Ezra and Radak: the wild animals, which live in uninhabited country, lions and tigers and bears. Ramban: the carnivores, the meat-eaters. The Netziv favors Ibn Ezra and Radak and doubts Ramban from Bava Kamma 19b, where Chazal state that deer do not generally eat meat. On Ramban's rule a deer would then be a behemah, yet a deer is a kosher animal and is not one of the three behemah families, and everybody agrees it is a chayah; on the strength of that question the Netziv rejects Ramban's approach. A recently published letter of Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, addressed to Rabbi Chaim Tzvi Lehrfeld, offers a defense of Ramban: a deer does eat small insects and other creeping creatures, and that is carnivorous enough to place it among the chayos even though it does not eat animal meat.

Rendering guidance

  • Where the halachic category is at stake, render the category: "domesticated animal (behemah)" and "wild animal (chayah)," or keep the Hebrew and gloss it once. "Beast" and "animal" will not carry cheilev or kisui hadam.
  • In narrative or mussar, behemah is "beast" or "animal" and chayah is "wild beast"; where a baal mussar contrasts a man with a behemah, "beast" is the right word, since the point is the lack of a human faculty, not the animal's habitat.
  • Trap: English "animal" absorbs both, and "cattle" absorbs behemah while losing the pig and the donkey. Where a pasuk or a Gemara lists behemah chayah together (a merism for the whole animal world), render "domestic animals and wild ones" rather than "animals and beasts," which says nothing.
  • Colloquially, the article notes, a Yiddish-speaking bubby calls wild children chayos or behemos; in that register the word is a rebuke to stop acting like an animal, and "you animals" carries it better than either taxonomy.
  • Second trap: do not carry Ramban's diet criterion into an English rendering, since "herbivore" and "carnivore" are his reading of the categories, not the words' meaning. Keep them in a note.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Don't be a Behemah or a Chayah!", What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 11 Cheshvan 5777 (2016-11-12): sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/6999-dont-be-a-behemah-or-a-chayah.md. Primary loci and authorities the article cites: Ibn Ezra and Radak on the domesticated versus wild distinction; Ramban on herbivore versus carnivore; the Netziv's objection from Bava Kamma 19b; Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky's answer, in a letter to Rabbi Chaim Tzvi Lehrfeld. The halachos assumed are the prohibition of cheilev in a behemah and the mitzvah of kisui hadam in a chayah and a bird; the article does not give chapter and verse for either.