body
boils
שחין · גרב · חרס · ילפת · אבעבועות
Bottom line
Shechin is the umbrella word: boils, or more exactly an inflamed sore, a wound gone hot, not a burn. The other three are kinds of it. Paired, garav is the moist sort and cheres the dry; garav on its own means the dry sort (Rashi). Yalefet is the sort that clings, never leaving the man. Avabuos are the blisters of the makkah in Mitzrayim. The thing not to get wrong: garav changes meaning depending on whether cheres stands beside it, so check the pasuk before choosing a word.
At a glance
| Hebrew | translit | English | what sets it apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| שחין | shechin | boil, inflamed sore | the general term; a wound heated and inflamed, not a burn (Nega'im 9:1; Rashi) |
| גרב | garav | moist boils / dry boils | moist when cheres is beside it, dry when it stands alone (Rashi, Bechoros 41a) |
| חרס | cheres | dry boils | dry and hard as pottery (Bedersi; Rashi); or from cheres, the sun (Mecklenburg) |
| ילפת | yalefet | clinging boils | attaches to a man until death, leaving a permanent scar (Rashi; Pappenheim) |
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. Quote Rashi's words and note the Gemara's.
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 on Bechoros 41a: paired with cheres, garav is the moist one; standing alone, garav is the dry. (David A. Clines' dictionary of Biblical Hebrew, which the column cites here, 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, samech and sin interchanging; Rashi (to Bechoros 41a) says hard like pottery. 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 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. The Bottom line follows Bedersi's first reading with Rashi.
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), for the brownish color of the spot, mem and nun interchanging. 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).
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: not a burn, then, but 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.
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 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 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-פ (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 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.
Rendering guidance
- Devarim 28:27 has three of the words in one pasuk. Render them apart: "with the boils of Mitzrayim, and with hemorrhoids, and with moist boils and dry boils from which you cannot be healed." Letting "boils" or "sores" cover shechin, garav and cheres alike is the standard failure, and it makes Rashi on the verse unreadable.
- Check whether cheres is present before rendering garav. Vayikra 21:20 has garav without cheres, so there it means dry boils, the opposite of its sense in Devarim.
- Yalefet has no clean English. Clinging boils with a gloss, or transliterate and gloss; not "ringworm" or a modern diagnosis, since the sources define it by permanence.
- Do not carry the "heat" of the root into the rendering of shechin: a shechin is not a burn, and Nega'im 9:1 says so explicitly.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Ki Savo: No More Boils," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 18 Elul 5784 (2024-09-21): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/11523-ki-savo-no-more-boils.md. Primary loci cited: 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. The article's fuller lists of loci for Pappenheim's lefes and shachas words are not reproduced here.