body
blindness
עור · עורון · סומא · סגי נהור · סנורים
Bottom line
Iver is the Biblical blind man and ivaron his blindness; suma is the same in Aramaic. Sagi nahor, "light enough," is the euphemism, to be rendered so the euphemism survives. Sanverim is the harder word: it occurs three times in Tanach, and the column collects a wide range of attempts to say how it differs from ivaron, most of them reading it as a dazzlement or disordering of sight rather than plain absence of sight. Not to be lost: for Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim iver names an eye that works but is covered over, which is what makes the bribed-judge metaphor work.
At a glance
| Hebrew | translit | English | what sets it apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| עור | iver | blind | from ohr, skin: a membrane over a functioning eye (Pappenheim) |
| עורון | ivaron | blindness | the condition rather than the man |
| סומא | suma | blind man | the Aramaic term; root of the name Samael (Zohar) |
| סגי נהור | sagi nahor | one with light enough | euphemism by antiphrasis, or literal (Kli Yakar) |
| סנורים | sanverim | dazzlement | disordered or confused sight, not absence of sight (Rashbam; Malbim) |
Where the authorities disagree
What sanverim is. The word occurs at Bereishis 19:11, of the men of Sodom crowding Lot's door, and twice at Melachim II 6:18.
- Rashbam (to Bereishis 19:11): blindness combined with confusion. Malbim (there): distorted vision, not actual blindness.
- Shadal: a contraction of sonei ohr, "hater of light," an over-sensitivity to light (photophobia); the term primarily names one who cannot tolerate light and was borrowed to mean blindness.
- Rav Hirsch: sneh, a thorn, with ohr, a blind man as though his eye had been poked with a thorn.
- Rabbi Yehoshua Trunk of Kutna: multiplied vision, seeing not double but many (the column gives the medical term polyplopia), leaving the men at Lot's house unable to translate what they saw into reality.
- The Sochatchover Rebbe, Rabbi Shmuel Borenstein: a confusion of the heart's feeling, so one sees a thing plainly and cannot process it emotionally.
- Dr. Immanuel Vilkovsky, whom the column introduces as an academic conspiracy theorist: sanverim differs from ivaron in that it denotes blindness inflicted through hypnosis.
- Dr. Fred Rosner (Medicine in the Bible and the Talmud): sanverim and averes both refer to amaurosis, blindness with no visible organic change, from disease of the optic nerve. On this reading the two words are not far apart.
- Evyatar Cohen: related to snir, snow (Rashi to Devarim 3:9), since sunlight off snow can blind.
- Rabbi Lt. Col. Yehoshua Steinberg: related to tzinur, a pipe, an eye that cannot function resembling a hollow tube.
- Chaim Tawil, in his lexicon of Akkadian: sanverim is borrowed from a similar Akkadian word meaning "radiant light," light apparently understood to be strong enough to blind those exposed to it; alternatively he cites other linguists who tie it to the Akkadian word for night-blindness.
Where this entry has to choose one reading for the rendering guidance below, it follows the common ground of Rashbam, Malbim and Rabbi Yehoshua Trunk, that sanverim is disordered sight rather than no sight. That preference is ours; the column lists the views and does not rule between them.
Whether sagi nahor is ironic or true. The plain reading is antiphrasis, so sagi nahor is a euphemism for one who cannot see. The Kli Yakar (to Bamidbar 24:4) reads it straight: a blind man's other senses are sharpened, so he genuinely has light enough.
Whether the Angel of Death is blind. Bava Basra 16a: the Satan, the yetzer hara and the Malach HaMaves are one, and the Zohar names him Samael, whose name shares the root of suma, blind. But Avodah Zarah 20b describes him as full of eyes. Rabbi Mordechai HaKohen of Tzfas: in himself he is blind, and every time a man sins and tells himself no Eye sees him he hands the yetzer hara another eye, so that by the time he meets the angel it is covered with them.
Distinctions
iver (עור) and ivaron (עורון)
Root ע-ו-ר, spelled exactly like ohr, skin. The Biblical word: "do not put a stumbling block before a blind man" (Vayikra 19:14). Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim ties the two: the commonest cause of blindness is a cataract, a skin-like membrane forming over the eye, so the blind man is an iver and the affliction ivaron. Hence "bribery blinds the eyes of the wise" (Devarim 16:19): a bribed judge has not lost his intellect any more than a man with a cataract has lost his eye; the organ works, but something has settled over it, blinding him to the truth of this case.
suma (סומא)
Root ס-מ-א. The Gemara's and Targumim's word for a blind man; its weight comes from the name Samael, as above.
sagi nahor (סגי נהור)
Aramaic, a portmanteau of sagi, "enough," and nahor, "light." It names the blind man by the rhetorical device of antiphrasis, saying the exact opposite of what is meant, so the phrase is euphemistic or sarcastic. (The later idiom lashon sagi nahor for that device generally is ours, not the column's.)
sanverim (סנורים)
See the dispute above. In both of its narrative settings the sanverim is inflicted, and at Bereishis 19:11 miraculously so; the readings collected above differ on what exactly was inflicted, and one of them (Rosner) does not separate sanverim from averes at all.
Rendering guidance
- עור: "blind"; עורון: "blindness." Where Pappenheim's reading is in play, "clouded" or "covered over" belongs in the surrounding prose, not the word.
- סומא: "blind man"; transliterate only where the passage is about the word.
- סגי נהור: keep the Aramaic and gloss it, "a sagi nahor, literally one with light enough." "Blind" throws away the euphemism and the Kli Yakar with it.
- סנורים: "dazzlement," or "a confusion of sight," with the pshat you follow in a note. "Blindness" is the standard rendering and the standard mistake.
- Trap: English "blindness" will take ivaron, sanverim, and sagi nahor together. If a passage puts sanverim beside iver (a derashah comparing Sodom to an ordinary blind man), the point is that they are different afflictions; give them different English.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "The Man with Enough Light," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 25 Cheshvan 5779 (2018-11-03): https://articles.ohr.edu/articles/the-man-with-enough-light; raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/7974-the-man-with-enough-light.md. Primary loci cited: Bereishis 19:11; Vayikra 19:14; Bamidbar 24:4; Devarim 3:9 with Rashi, 16:19; Melachim II 6:18; Bava Basra 16a; Avodah Zarah 20b; Zohar; Rashbam and Malbim to Bereishis 19:11; Kli Yakar to Bamidbar 24:4; Dr. Fred Rosner, Medicine in the Bible and the Talmud. The article says sanverim "appears only twice more in the Bible (II Kings 6:18)"; both of those occurrences are inside that one verse, which is why the entry counts three in all.