beast and boor

Where the authorities disagree

The root of behemah. Ibn Janach and Radak (each in his Sefer HaShorashim): a triliteral ב-ה-מ, a single beast or animals in general. Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg: the beis is a prefix and the root is ה-מ-ה, "noise, confusion," since animals make confused sounds while human speech carries meaning. Ohalei Yehuda offers a merger of בה with המה, and alternatively bah mah, "what is in her?", the creature's insignificance beside man (compare Shemos 16:7-8).

Where be'ir sits in the root ב-ע-ר. Ibn Saruk, Ibn Janach and Radak all take be'ir from the triliteral ב-ע-ר, a root that carries removing, grazing, consuming, destroying, burning, kindling, and foolishness. Ibn Janach files be'ir under grazing, since animals are typified by eating; Ibn Saruk files it under ba'ar, "fool." Rashi (to Shemos 22:4) seems to weigh in for grazing, though his exact intent remains unclear (see Rabbi Yaakov Yechiel Weinberg, Seridei Aish vol. 4 Chakiras HaMekoros §7:2). Against them, Mitchell First (Words for the Wise, Kodesh Press 2022, p. 149) reasons that be'ir is unrelated to any of the other senses of ב-ע-ר, and notes that an Arabic cognate of that root means "camel" while in some dialects, South Arabic among them, it is a general word for animals much as biblical be'ir is; on that basis Rabbi Shet bar Yefet (Chemas HaChemdah to Shemos 22:4) argues that be'ir is in fact Arabic and not Hebrew.

Others read the bet of be'ir as no part of the root. Rabbi Shlomo Yehuda Rapoport, a son-in-law of the Ketzos HaChoshen whom the column notes is typically counted a maskil, argues that be'ir should be read "in the city," the bet being the prefix and ir the city, which he takes to reflect that be'ir means specifically the domesticated animals one would find in an urban setting, as against behemah, which can take in wild animals too (Tehillim 8:8). Similarly, Rabbi David Chaim Chelouche takes the core as ע-ר, "bare": the fool is bereft of the adornment of wisdom and so left bare, and the grazing animal bereaves the field of its produce and leaves it bare.

Which way the metaphor runs. Edel and the Malbim: a ba'ar is so called because his want of intelligence makes him like a be'ir. Ohalei Yehuda reverses it: the animal behaves like a ba'ar. A derashah on Tehillim 73:22 turns on the direction; a translation does not.

What bur means. Some explain it as a cognate of the other Mishnaic bur, an uncultivated, desolate field (Peah 2:1; Targum Onkelos to Bereishis 47:19; so Rashi, the Tashbetz, the Bartenura and others to Avos 2:5). Rabbi Dr. Asher Weiser: from bor, a pit, the man whose mind is empty, and he links be'er, a wellspring, which holds only so much water, and biur, explanation, the antidote to the ba'ar's ignorance, to that family. Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur (Sefer HaTishbi): a form of ba'ar (Targum to Mishlei 12:1, 30:2). All three give the same English, differing on the image, not the sense.

Whether the English boor belongs here at all. The column reports that it had assumed the English word came from the Hebrew bur, and that when asked, the translator and literary critic Hillel Halkin, writing as Philologos, replied that the two are unrelated: Rabbinic Hebrew bur, he holds, is closer to the Aramaic bar, outside (as in baraisa), and has nothing to do with either biblical ba'ar or English boor. Halkin adds that the two words reach a similar meaning from opposite ends, bur out of rural values, where the ignorant mind is unfarmed land, and boor out of urban ones, where no one is as ignorant as a farmer. Etymologists give two main accounts of the English word: some derive it from the French bouvier, a herdsman, and so from the Latin bovarius, bovine, from bos/bov (the Celtic tribe called the Boii takes its name from Proto-Indo-European cognates of the same word for cattle, and lives on in the names Bohemia and Bavaria, as the ox's plowing lives on in boustrophedon, a script that runs one line left to right and the next right to left); others tie it to the Old English gebur, a dweller, peasant or farmer, cognate with the English neighbor and the German bauer.