body
boils
At a glance
In short
Shechin is the umbrella word: boils, or more exactly an inflamed sore, a wound gone hot, not a burn. The other three seem to be kinds of it. Paired with cheres, garav is the moist sort and cheres the dry; on its own, garav is the dry sort (Rashi). Yalefet is the sort that clings, never leaving the man. Avabuos are the blisters of the makkah in Mitzrayim.
Distinctions
Shechin (שחין)
The Mishnah (Nega'im 9:1) defines it as a wound caused by being struck with wood or stone, or by hot gypsum or peat or hot springs, but not by fire, so it is an inflamed or infected wound. Thirteen occurrences: four in the sixth makkah (Shemos 9:8-12), four in the tzaraas that arises on a healed shechin (Vayikra 13:18-23), two in the tochachah (Devarim 28:27, 28:35), two when Yeshayahu treats Chizkiyahu (Melachim II 20:7, Yeshayahu 38:21), and Iyov 2:7.
Rabbi Eliyahu Benamozegh (Eim LaMikra to Shemos 9:9): shechin means heat at root, as the Targum renders vecham (Melachim I 1:2) vesishchan, and shechunah in the Kohen Gadol's prayer (Yoma 53b) is hot, dry weather; he connects it to Arabic sakhun, hot.
Mahari Kara (to Melachim I 1:2) grades that pasuk's two words for warming. Sochen is warming a little, as boke'a eitzim yissachen bam (Koheles 10:9), and cham is more heat than sochen: so the pasuk says vatehi lo sochenes of her standing before the king, and vecham of her lying in his bosom.
Garav (גרב)
Three occurrences, all in Chumash: Devarim 28:27, and Vayikra 21:20 and 22:22, where it disqualifies a Kohen from the avodah and an animal from the mizbeach. The same triliteral ג-ר-ב seemingly gives two proper names, Garev, one of David's warriors (Shmuel II 23:38; Divrei HaYamim I 11:40), and Givat Garev, a hill outside the walls of Yerushalayim (Yirmiyahu 31:38); Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein says he has no deeper onomastic insight into either. In Mishnaic Hebrew the root yields garav, a vessel for storing liquids, a barrel or jug (Terumos 10:8), and in modern Hebrew gerev, plural garbayim, a sock (anpilyaos in rabbinic parlance), which has been connected to the obscure English "greave," leg armor; Rabbi Ernest Klein traces both the Hebrew and the English to the Arabic jawrab, sock. But none of this, Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein writes, seems to have anything to do with the Biblical garav.
Cheres (חרס)
Devarim 28:27, "and with cheres from which you cannot be healed." Written with a samech, so it is a homonym both of cheres with a sin, pottery, and of cheres with a samech meaning the sun (Iyov 9:7; Shoftim 8:13, 14:18); both readings offered for it run through one of those homonyms.
Yalefet (ילפת)
A hapax legomenon at Vayikra 21:20 (the list recurs at 22:22).
- Rashi, from Bechoros 41a: from melafefes, what attaches, since it accompanies a man to the day he dies.
- Pappenheim (Cheshek Shlomo) reaches the same sense from the biliteral ל-ף (the opening yud and closing tav extraneous), a strong hold from which it is hard to break free: aluf, a chieftain ruling from strength; elef, a thousand, the constituency a warlord needs before he can claim the title aluf; vayilafes/vayilpos, to grab or grasp hard (Shoftim 16:29, Rus 3:8); lefes, a turnip rooted fast in the ground, and lefes, a condiment or dip that accompanies bread. On this reading yalefes is the boil that leaves a scar attached to the skin that can never be removed.
Avabuos (אבעבועות)
Shemos 9:9-10 only. Bechoros 41a proves from this word that the Egyptian boils were moist on the outside, and Rashi explains why: the root is ב-ע (so Ibn Saruk classifies it), bubbling forth, which implies a moist exterior. In modern Hebrew chickenpox is avabuos ruach. Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein reports that he used to think the English "bubble," "burble," "buoy" and "bubonic" belonged to this Hebrew root, but that most etymologists take those as onomatopoeic for something swollen and distended.
Where the authorities disagree
Which way the Egyptian shechin ran.
- Rashi (to Devarim 28:27): moist inside and dry outside, so that neither the treatment for moist boils nor that for dry ones could work.
- His source, Bechoros 41a, says the reverse, moist outside and dry inside.
Rabbi Natan Borgel (Chok Nasan) proposes emending Rashi's text to match.
What garav means.
- Rashi to Devarim 28:27: garav and cheres are the less horrid sorts of boils, garav thoroughly moist and cheres thoroughly dry.
- Rashi to Vayikra 21:20: garav is thoroughly dry, and yalefet is the "Egyptian chazazis," both dry and moist.
He resolves it himself, following Bechoros 41a: paired with cheres, garav is the moist one; standing alone, garav is the dry. (David A. Clines' dictionary of Biblical Hebrew renders garav "eczema" and cheres "itch.")
What cheres is.
- Rabbi Avraham Bedersi (Chosam Tochnis): named for cheres, pottery, because it is dry as a shard; Rashi (to Bechoros 41a) says hard like pottery, both comparisons implicitly resting on the interchange of samech and sin.
- Bedersi then offers a second possibility, that cheres is not boils at all but a disease of unbearable itching, reading Iyov 2:8, where Iyov takes a cheres to scratch himself, as his proof (though that cheres has a sin and plainly means a potsherd).
- Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg (HaKsav VeHaKabbalah to Devarim 28:27) cites the same pasuk and still holds explicitly that cheres is a dry garav, which is why a dry shard suits it for scratching, while separately suggesting that perhaps cheres is a skin affliction brought on by bad climate, related to the sun's power over one's environment; Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein wonders whether that means sunburn, noting that Mecklenburg does not say so.
- Ibn Saruk, Ibn Janach and Radak intimate no connection at all between the two senses of ח-ר-ס.
Where shechin comes from.
- Rashi (to Shemos 9:9, Vayikra 13:18, Chullin 8a): from heat, flesh made hot by a wound rather than by fire, as in Mishnaic shechunah, hot weather (Yoma 53b; the Mishnah there, Yoma 5:1, is the Kohen Gadol's short prayer).
- Rabbi Yitzchak of Zeldin (Shoresh Yesha): from shachum, Targum's standard word for chum, brown (Onkelos to Bereishis 30:32), mem and nun interchanging. This would refer to the brownish color of a shechin spot on the skin.
- Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim: from the biliteral ש-ח, bending, which yields hishtachavaah and shuchah, shichah and shachas, pits and caves cramped enough that a man inside must bend, and from there meshichah, anointing, since oil softens what is hard and makes it bendable, so that the skin of one struck with shechin looks smeared with a poisonous emollient; he traces shechunah to the same root, its original sense a blight in which produce develops shechin-like spots from extreme heat and dryness.
How Targum handles it. Targumic Aramaic's standard rendering of cham, hot, and its inflections is related to shechin (Shemos 16:21; Melachim I 1:1; Yeshayahu 44:16; Koheles 4:11; Iyov 37:17), yet Targum leaves the Hebrew shechin itself untranslated, or at most Aramaicizes it to shichana (Onkelos to Devarim 28:27, 28:35).
Also discussed in
Radak on these roots
Sefer HaShorashim
ג-ר-ב
The גָּרָב, one of the diseases of itching: וּבַגָּרָב וּבֶחָרֶס (Devarim 28:27), with the garav and with the cheres.
וּבַגָּרָב וּבֶחָרֶס (דברים כח, כז), מחלאי החכוך.
ח-ר-ס
The sun, and from it the eastern gate of the Beis HaMikdash; in another sense the dry scab, named for the potsherd it is scratched with.
The sun
הָֽאֹמֵר לַחֶרֶס וְלֹא יִזְרָח (Iyov 9:7), who tells the sun and it does not rise, and בְּטֶרֶם יָבֹא הַחַרְסָה (Shoftim 14:18), before the sun went in; their sense is the sun. From this the eastern gate of the Beis HaMikdash is called שַׁעַר הַֽחַרְסִות (Yirmiyahu 19:2), the gate of the sun, because it was set facing the rising of the sun.
What Yonasan renders
מִֽלְמַֽעֲלֵה הֶחָֽרֶס (Shoftim 8:13) Yonasan takes from this same sense, rendering it עַד לָא מֵעַל שִׁמְשָׁא, before the sun set.
The dry scab
Another sense: וּבַגָּרָב וּבֶחָרֶס (Devarim 28:27), with the scab and with the cheres. It is the dry scab, called so because it is scratched with a חרס, a potsherd, as it says וַיִּֽקַּֽח־לוֹ חֶרֶשׂ לְהִתְגָּרֵד בּוֹ (Iyov 2:8), he took himself a potsherd to scrape himself with.
הָֽאֹמֵר לַחֶרֶס וְלֹא יִזְרָח (איוב ט, ז), בשש נקודות, בְּטֶרֶם יָבֹא הַחַרְסָה (שופטים יד, יח), ענינם השמש. ומזה נקרא שער המזרחי בבית המקדש שַׁעַר הַֽחַרְסִות [הַֽחַרְסִית] (ירמיה יט, ב), לפי שהיה מכוון כננד זריחת השמש. ויונתן תרגם ממנו מִֽלְמַֽעֲלֵה הֶחָֽרֶס (שופטים ח, יג) עַד לָא מֵעַל שִׁמְשָׁא. וענין אחר וּבַגָּרָב וּבֶחָרֶס (דברים כח, כז). והוא הגרב היבש נקרא הרס לפי שמתחככין אותו בחרס כמו שאמר וַיִּֽקַּֽח־לוֹ חֶרֶשׂ לְהִתְגָּרֵד בּוֹ (איוב ב, ח).
י-ל-ף
יַלֶּפֶת, the affliction named at Vayikra 22:22; the Chachamim take it for the Egyptian lichen, which winds itself about a man until the day he dies.
The whole entry
One line, and no gloss of his own: אוֹ גָרָב אוֹ יַלֶּפֶת (Vayikra 22:22), or garav or yalefes. What he gives in place of a gloss is the Chachamim's (Bechoros 41a): this is the Egyptian lichen, שמלפפתו עד יום המיתה, which winds itself about a man until the day of death. The edition prints a gap in the middle of their words.
אוֹ גָרָב אוֹ יַלֶּפֶת (ויקרא כב, כב), פירשו רבותינו ז"ל (בכורות מא, ע"א) זו חזזית המצרית..... שמלפפתו עד יום המיתה.
ש-ח-ן
שְׁחִין, an affliction that comes of heat other than fire; the Targum and the Kohen Gadol's tefillah use the word for warmth.
An affliction from heat
שְׁחִין אֲבַעְבֻּעֹת (Shemos 9:10), a boil of blisters, and לִשְׁחִין פֹּרֵחַ (Shemos 9:9), a boil breaking out: he says it is an affliction that comes of heat other than fire, as Chazal teach (Negaim 9:1), איזהו שחין, what is a shechin? לקה בעץ או באבן או בזפת או במי טבריא, one struck by wood or by stone or by pitch or by the waters of Teveriah. And they say further (Negaim 9:1), כל שאינו מחמת האש זהו שחין, whatever is not from fire is a shechin, הבא מחמת האש זה מכוה, and what comes of fire is a burn.
Of warmth
The Targum renders וַיִּקַּח מֵהֶם וַיָּחָם (Yeshayahu 44:15), he takes of them and warms himself, with וּנְסֵיב מִנְהוֹן וּשְׁחֵין, and he took of them and warmed himself; and so the Kohen Gadol's tefillah (Yoma 53b) runs יהי רצון שתהא שנה זו שחונה וגשומה, may it be His will that this year be warm and rainy.
שְׁחִין אֲבַעְבֻּעֹת (שמות ט, י), לִשְׁחִין פֹּרֵחַ (שמות ט, ט), הוא נגע הבא מצד חמימות זולתי האש. כמו שאמרו רבותינו ז"ל (נגעים פרק תשיעי משנה א), איזהו שחין? לקה בעץ או באבן או בזפת או במי טבריא. ועור אמרו (שם) כל שאינו מחמת האש זהו שחין, הבא מחמת האש זה מכוה. ותרגום וַיִּקַּח מֵהֶם וַיָּחָם (ישעיה מד, טו) וּנְסֵיב מִנְהוֹן וּשְׁחֵין. וכן בתפלתו של כהן הגדול (יומא נג, ע"ב) יהי רצון שתהא שנה זו שחונה וגשומה.
Radak, Sefer HaShorashim, Berlin 1847. Public domain, digitised by Sefaria from the National Library of Israel.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Ki Savo: No More Boils," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 21 September 2024.
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "No More Boils," What's in a Word? Synonyms in the Hebrew Language (book manuscript).
Cited in the essay: Shemos 9:8-12, 16:21; Vayikra 13:18-23, 21:20, 22:22; Devarim 28:15-69, 28:27, 28:35; Shoftim 8:13, 14:18, 16:29; Rus 3:8; Shmuel II 23:38; Melachim I 1:1; Melachim II 20:7; Yeshayahu 38:21, 44:16; Yirmiyahu 31:38; Divrei HaYamim I 11:40; Koheles 4:11; Iyov 2:7-8, 9:7, 37:17; Bereishis 30:32 with Onkelos; Yoma 53b; Bechoros 41a with Rashi and Chok Nasan; Chullin 8a; Mishnah Nega'im 9:1, Yoma 5:1, Terumos 10:8; Bedersi, Chosam Tochnis; HaKsav VeHaKabbalah; Shoresh Yesha; Pappenheim, Cheshek Shlomo; David A. Clines' dictionary of Biblical Hebrew; Rabbi Ernest Klein's etymological dictionaries; Benamozegh, Eim LaMikra to Shemos 9:9; Targum to Melachim I 1:2; Yoma 53b; Melachim I 1:2 with Mahari Kara; Koheles 10:9.