nature
blue
ספיר · תכלת · כחול
Bottom line
The Torah has no word for the color blue. Sapir is a stone, techeiles a dyed wool, and kachol comes from the name of a cosmetic powder. Render sapir "sapphire," leave techeiles transliterated with a gloss, and be wary of "blue" for kachol, whose range runs to dark and black. The trap is writing "blue" three times and giving an English reader a color vocabulary the Hebrew does not have.
At a glance
| Hebrew | translit | English | what sets it apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| ספיר | sapir | sapphire | a gemstone, the color implied by the object (Shemos 24:10) |
| תכלת | techeiles | techeiles | wool dyed from the chilazon; its shade Rashi calls yarok |
| כחול | kachol | dark, kohl-colored | named from the kohl powder, shades running blue to black |
Where the authorities disagree
What shade techeiles is. Rashi (to Bamidbar 15:38 and Shemos 25:4) defines techeiles as wool dyed with the blood of the chilazon, and calls its color yarok, which in his usage is a catch-all covering the band from orange to violet, with yellow, green, blue and indigo in between, so his definition does not settle the shade. The Midrash fixes it by comparison instead: techeiles resembles the color of the sapir stone, which is why looking at the tzitzis recalls the whole Torah, the Luchos having been hewn from sapir. The Bottom line follows the Midrash's comparison and leaves the word transliterated, since the comparison is to an object and not to a name for a hue. On the breadth of yarok, see the entry on yerek/yarok.
Whether kachol is blue. Rashi (Bava Basra 4a and Sukkah 51b) explains avnei kochla, among the materials with which Herod adorned the Beis HaMikdash, as marble that is kachol, apparently blue; compare the Ramban to Bereishis 49:12. Against a simple identification with blue, the column holds that there are places where kachol clearly means black and not blue, and gives as its example the Midrash (Bamidbar Rabbah) on the tribal flags, where Yissachar's is kachol and Dan's is sapir. Besides that, the word itself comes from kohl, the antimony powder applied around the eye for healing or adornment, whose hues ran widely through the dark colors from blue to black, so that it certainly does not mean "blue" alone. The Gemara's kimachol bishfoferes, "like kohl in its tube," refers to the applicator.
Two further arguments the column brings, both from outside the traditional sources. Frankie Snyder, an expert in the tiles found at the Temple's site, wrote to Rabbi Klein that archaeologists have found several colors of marble from Herod's Temple but no blue marble, which suggests to him that kachol does not really mean blue. And Professor Aharon Demsky of Bar Ilan University points to an ancient wine decanter found near Chevron inscribed "[Belonging] to Yachzeyahu, wine kachol"; since there is no such thing as blue wine, the column takes the inscription to mean dark wine, and concludes from the two that kachol originally meant black or dark rather than blue. The rendering guidance below follows that conclusion, keeping "blue" for places, like Rashi's marble, where an authority has read it so.
Distinctions
sapir (ספיר)
The second stone of the second row of the Choshen HaMishpat (Shemos 28:18, 39:11). Under the Kisei HaKavod at Sinai was what looked like livnas hasapir, resembling the clear sky (Shemos 24:10), and Yechezkel's vision of the throne has the likeness of a sapir stone (Yechezkel 1:26, 10:1); sapir is also among the seven precious stones of Gan Eden in the rebuke of the king of Tzor (Yechezkel 28:13). Targum renders even sapir simply as even tava, a good stone, without naming a hue. Which gemstone it is the column leaves open: gemologists, it reports, tend to identify sapir with lapis lazuli or with the sapphire, both blue jewels. Rabbeinu Bachya: the sapir on the Choshen corresponds to Yissachar, who toiled in Torah, since the Luchos of sapir were Torah made physical; tradition holds that Moshe's staff was sapir as well. In Rabbinic literature the word is largely displaced by Aramaic variants, sampiryon, sanpiryon, sampirinon, sanpirinon, which seem to be Aramaic variants of the Hebrew. Etymologists, the column reports, admit that the ultimate source of the word is obscure: some claim it is a Sanskrit loanword, others prefer to see it as a conjugation of the Aramaic shappir, "beautiful" or "good," applied to a gem, adapted into Greek and reborrowed from there.
techeiles (תכלת)
The Torah commands that the tzitzis carry techeiles so that one will remember all the mitzvos (Bamidbar 15:38). Rashi, as above: wool dyed with the blood of the chilazon. What the chilazon is the column leaves unsettled: some claim it might be the murex trunculus, a marine snail found off the coast of Eretz Yisrael, or the sepia officinalis, the common cuttlefish, though traditional sources assert that it is something hidden from us, so that we do not know exactly what it is.
kachol (כחול)
Not a Biblical color word. Its origins are in Arabic, where it was pronounced kohl: the silverish antimony powder applied around the eye for medicinal or cosmetic purposes, mentioned many times in the Gemara and applied with a special tube. Its use as the ordinary Hebrew word for the color blue is modern.
Rendering guidance
- ספיר: "sapphire," and where the passage is describing appearance rather than material, add what the pasuk itself adds ("like the clear sky," Shemos 24:10) rather than supplying a hue.
- תכלת: keep it transliterated, techeiles, glossed once as the dye of the chilazon commanded for tzitzis. "Blue" is a translation of a guess.
- כחול: "dark," or "kohl-colored" where the cosmetic is in view; "blue" only following Rashi on the marble.
- Trap: English "blue" will absorb all three, and a reader will conclude the Torah names a color. Where two of them appear together, the pairing is the point: the Midrash comparing techeiles to sapir is comparing a dye to a stone, and the flags of Yissachar and Dan are kachol against sapir. Different English for each, every time.
- In a passage where Rashi glosses techeiles as yarok, do not render yarok "green." His yarok is a wide band, and "green" makes his gloss look like a contradiction of the Midrash.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "The True Blue," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 2 Adar II 5779 (2019-03-09): https://articles.ohr.edu/articles/the-true-blue; raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/8167-the-true-blue.md. Primary loci cited: Shemos 24:10, 25:4, 28:18, 39:11; Bereishis 49:12 with Ramban; Bamidbar 15:38 with Rashi; Yechezkel 1:26, 10:1, 28:13; Bava Basra 4a and Sukkah 51b with Rashi; Bamidbar Rabbah on the tribal flags; Targum to even sapir; Rabbeinu Bachya on the Choshen. The article gives no chapter-and-verse for the Bamidbar Rabbah on the flags, and none is supplied here.