balsam

Distinctions

Balsam is a sweet-smelling oil once bound up with Eretz Yisrael. The exact plant is not known today, though some identify it as Commiphora gileadensis, a shrub native to the land; in ancient times it was famous.

Panag (פנג)

One occurrence, Yechezkel 27:17, among the goods Tyre bought from Eretz Yisrael: wheat of Minis, panag, honey, oil and tzari. Neither the word nor its root פ-נ-ג occurs anywhere else, so its sense is not readily recoverable. Yossiphon (I ch. 38), which calls Yericho Ir HaReiach, the City of Scent, for its balsam groves, says outright that balsam oil is also called panag oil; Rashi cites this (to Yechezkel 27:17, Melachim II 20:13, Yeshayahu 39:2, Berachos 43a), presumably endorsing it, and it is also cited by the French exegetes Rabbi Yosef Kara and Rabbi Eliezer of Beaugency, and by Radak (to Yechezkel there and Sefer HaShorashim). Modern scholars agree that Yossiphon was probably written in Italy in the tenth century as a Hebrew adaptation and abridgement of the Jewish Roman historian Flavius Josephus (37 to 100), and Josephus himself mentions Yericho in connection with balsam trees (Antiquities of the Jews IV ch. 6 and XIV ch. 4, War of the Jews I ch. 6 and ch. 18) but says nothing about panag in Yechezkel meaning balsam oil.

• Against it, Radak himself notes that if tzari is balsam oil then panag is unlikely to be, since Yechezkel lists them separately; Rabbi Yosef Teomim-Frankel (Iggros Pri Megadim letter 2) takes that as support for reading tzari as something else (Rashi's "theriaca").
• Rabbi Moshe Tedeschi-Ashkenazi and Rabbi Shmuel David Luzzatto, in their commentaries to Yechezkel, tie panag to pinuk, pleasure or indulgence, by the interchange of gimmel and kuf; ironically, for all their opposition to Kabbalah, their reading can be corroborated from the Zohar (Bereishis 47b, 235b, 245b-246b), which likewise links panag to tafnukim.
• Shoresh Yesha connects it to oneg, also pleasure or delicacy; Rabbi Klein presumes the reason is that ayin and peh are consecutive letters and so somehow interchangeable.
• Dr. Zohar Amar of Bar Ilan University, in Tzimchei HaMikra, gathers a further list of explanations from the commentators: cassia, wax (making panag a synonym of donag), honeycomb, edible grass, rice, millet, some sort of pastry or baked good, a kind of wheat, and a place name (so that the pasuk would mean wheat from there).

Tzari (צרי), nataf (נטף), ketaf (קטף)

Tzari (also tzori at Yechezkel 27:17, tzri at Bereishis 37:25) appears six times in Tanach: Bereishis 37:25 and 43:11, Yirmiyahu 8:22, 46:11 and 51:8, Yechezkel 27:17. Some sort of scented potion used medicinally. Daas Mikra (to Divrei HaYamim I 1:32, among the names it relates to incense at the pasuk of Keturah) suggests that it is also possible that the name Tzeruyah, borne by David's sister, and the name Tzri (Divrei HaYamim I 25:3) derive from tzari. Rabbi Klein notes that the basic sense of צ-ר is a tight bundle of things. From it comes tzarah, distress, so called because one feels he has no options and cannot move this way or that, as though bound in place; from it too comes tzir, the pangs of childbirth; and from there tzari, a potion meant to soothe the pangs of tzir. It heads the ketores list at Kerisus 6a and Yerushalmi Yoma 4:5 and so entered the liturgy. Rambam (Hilchos Klei HaMikdash 2:4) renders it in Arabic al-balasan, balsam. Its name in the incense passage is nataf (Shemos 30:34), "the one that drips," which suits balsam, whose so-called oil is sap dripping from the tree; Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, appended to the ketores teaching, says tzari is what drips (notef) from the ketaf tree, and Rambam's Mishnah commentary at Sheviis 7:6 glosses ketaf as the balsam tree. Targum Onkelos renders both tzari and nataf as ketaf; Rabbi Saadia Gaon and Rabbi Avraham Maimuni render nataf as al-balasan.

Whether Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel explains the earlier teaching or argues with it:

• Rashi (to Shemos 30:34 and Kerisus 6a) reads him as explaining.
• Ramban (there) reads Rambam as taking him to disagree, which would make tzari a piece of the tree itself rather than its oil (see Mahari Kurkus and Kesef Mishneh).

Bereishis Rabbah 91:11 identifies the tzari Yaakov sent to Mitzrayim (Bereishis 43:11) as balsam. That Rabbinic Hebrew word, like the English balsam, comes from the Greek balsamon and the Latin balsamum; the Oxford English Dictionary derives the English balm, an aromatic resinous substance, and balmy, mildly fragrant, from the same terms.

Bosem / besamim (בושם)

The general word, thirty occurrences, for fragrant goods: perfumes, spices, sweet-smelling things, not balsam in particular. It stands behind the names Basmas, borne by two of Esav's wives (Bereishis 26:34, 36:3) and by a daughter of Shlomo (Melachim I 4:15), and Yivsam (Divrei HaYamim I 7:2). It is widely held among linguists that the Greek balsamon derives from bosem itself, or at least from a cognate of bosem in another Semitic language (Arabic basham, Aramaic busma), as many other Greek plant names are of Semitic origin; the generic Hebrew word for sweet-smelling goods was seemingly borrowed by the Greeks for one particular sweet-smelling product, balsam oil.

• Ramban (to Shemos 25:6 and 30:34) denies a root ב-ש-ם and reads bosem as a portmanteau of bo, in it, and sam/samim, potion or elixir.
• Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim similarly traces it to the biliteral ס-ם, putting a thing in its place, since such tonics and potions are commonly stored in specifically designated places (though the bet is usually treated as a radical in Pappenheim's system of roots).

Either way, when Chazal said one should become besumei on Purim (Megillah 7b), this seems to refer to intoxication from wine, the wine serving as the elixir that brings one to that state; others, including Rabbi Moshe ben Yekutiel of Rome (Sefer HaTadir) and Rabbi Yosef of Saragossa, a talmid of Rabbeinu Nissim of Gerona, explain it of drinking a quantity of scented (bosem) wine.

On how bosem became balsamon, there are three attempts.

• Marcus Jastrow notes that an extra lamed was added to bosem to produce balsamon but does not explain where that consonant came from.
• Dr. Richard C. Steiner of Yeshiva University accounts for it by arguing that the Hebrew and Semitic sin was originally pronounced in a way resembling an l sound, or was at least sometimes so perceived by Greeks, hence the ls in balsamon.
• Others surmise that in some unknown early Semitic language bosem itself had a lamed before the sin.

• Earlier, before the derivation from bosem became widely accepted, Rabbi Binyamin Mussafia (Mussaf HeAruch) speculated that Greek balsamon came from the Hebrew baal shemen, master of oil, presumably invoking the interchange of shin and sin.
• Dr. Alexander Kohut (Aruch HaShalem) dismissed that on the ground that baal shemen appears nowhere else, and argued instead for the Hebrew boles, cutting, which occurs once in Tanach (Amos 7:14), together with shemen, oil.

Afarsemon (אפרסמון) and opopalsamun

Afarsemon (also afarsema) is the commonest Rabbinic word for balsam oil. It is absent from the Mishnah but appears with some frequency in Gemara: Jewish kings not anointed with the formal shemen hamishchah of the Torah (Shemos 30:22-33) were anointed with afarsemon oil (Horayos 11b-12a, Kerisus 5b, Yerushalmi Shekalim 6:1 and Sotah 8:3); a special berachah on it (Berachos 43a); its being highly flammable (Shabbos 26a); the Daughters of Tzion using it to entice men to sin (Shabbos 62b, Yoma 9b); its medical use (Shabbos 140a, Avodah Zarah 30a); and the dream in which Rabbi Elazar ben Pedas was shown that Hashem wishes to give him thirteen rivers of balsam oil as his reward in the World to Come (Taanis 25a, and see Yerushalmi Avodah Zarah 3:1). It appears in the Midrash too (Bereishis Rabbah 30:8, 61:2; Vayikra Rabbah 16:1; Eichah Rabbah 4:18). Rashi (to Amos 6:6) calls it the foremost sort of oil, so much so that an unspecified "oil" is sometimes read as afarsemon (Bava Basra 80b and Rosh HaShanah 23a on Yeshayahu 41:19; Rashi to Mishlei 27:9).

• On where afarsemon itself comes from, scholars hold that the Rabbinic Hebrew balsam seems to have been borrowed straight from Greek, while the Talmudic afarsemon was borrowed from Old Persian, which took it from Greek: drop the initial aleph (often added to foreign words taken into Hebrew), swap the bet for a peh and the reish for a lamed, both interchangeable pairs, and afarsemon and balsam show as the same etymon.
• Alternatively, afarsemon may have come into Persian directly from the Hebrew bosem, with bet for peh and an added reish.
• Rabbi Yosef Teomim-Frankel roots the word instead in the Hebrew pirsum or mefursam, publicized, since balsam's good scent made it well known throughout the ancient world.

In Modern Hebrew afarsemon means persimmon, a neologism that does not reflect the Rabbinic word: persimmons were unknown in ancient times, having first been found in North America, and the English persimmon comes from the Algonquin pasimenan, dried fruit.

Opopalsamun is a third Rabbinic term, in Bereishis Rabbah 39:1 (Avraham likened to opopalsamun sealed in a container in the corner of a room, giving off no scent until someone moves it about, just as Avraham gave off nothing of his teaching while he stayed bottled up in Mesopotamia and spread it once Hashem sent him traveling) and 27:3 (its strong smell used to catch and identify a thief who had been breaking into houses at night). The word is most likely a loan from the Greek opobalsamum, flowing fragrant, and so is bound up in the end with balsamon as well.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Ki Sisa: Awesome Balsam," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 11 March 2023.

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Awesome Balsam," What's in a Word? Synonyms in the Hebrew Language (book manuscript).

Cited in the essay: Yechezkel 27:17; Yossiphon I ch. 38; Rashi to Yechezkel 27:17, Melachim II 20:13, Yeshayahu 39:2, Berachos 43a, Amos 6:6, Mishlei 27:9; Radak to Yechezkel 27:17 and Sefer HaShorashim; Zohar, Bereishis 47b, 235b, 245b-246b; Bereishis 37:25 and 43:11 with Targum Onkelos, Yirmiyahu 8:22, 46:11, 51:8; Kerisus 6a and Yerushalmi Yoma 4:5; Rambam, Hilchos Klei HaMikdash 2:4 and his commentary to Sheviis 7:6; Shemos 25:6 and 30:34 with Rashi, Ramban, Rabbi Saadia Gaon and Rabbi Avraham Maimuni; Shemos 30:22-33; Bereishis Rabbah 91:11, 39:1, 27:3, 30:8, 61:2; Vayikra Rabbah 16:1; Eichah Rabbah 4:18; Megillah 7b; Horayos 11b-12a, Kerisus 5b, Yerushalmi Shekalim 6:1 and Sotah 8:3; Shabbos 26a, 62b, 140a; Yoma 9b; Avodah Zarah 30a and Yerushalmi Avodah Zarah 3:1; Taanis 25a; Bava Basra 80b and Rosh HaShanah 23a; Divrei HaYamim I 25:3; Amos 7:14; Bereishis 26:34, 36:3; Melachim I 4:15; Divrei HaYamim I 7:2; Dr. Zohar Amar, Tzimchei HaMikra; Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews IV ch. 6 and XIV ch. 4 and War of the Jews I ch. 6 and ch. 18; Marcus Jastrow; Dr. Richard C. Steiner; Rabbi Binyamin Mussafia, Mussaf HeAruch; Dr. Alexander Kohut, Aruch HaShalem; the Oxford English Dictionary; Daas Mikra to Divrei HaYamim I 1:32.