bone

Of things without life, dragging is slow flowing: וכמים הנגרים (Shmuel II 14:14), "like water that runs off"; ויגר מזה (Tehillim 75:9), "and He poured out of this"; עיני נגרה (Eichah 3:49), "my eye runs". What moves slowly is נוזל, flowing; what comes down drop by drop is נוטף, dripping; and what comes down slowly, neither fast nor drop by drop, is said to יגר, run down. So פרץ נחל מעם גר (Iyov 28:4), "a torrent broke out from where it trickled": from a place where the water only ran gently, a rushing stream burst out.

With a mem added, a bone that holds marrow is גרם, named for the marrow and the fatty juice that runs into it; a bone with no marrow is עץ, wood, since it has dried out like wood, as he explains at the root עץ. יששכר חמר גרם (Bereishis 49:14), "Yissachar is a donkey of bone", is a donkey whose bones have marrow in them. The verb, ועצמתיהם יגרם (Bamidbar 24:8), "and their bones he will drain", is doing something to their bones so as to suck out the marrow in them; and ואת חרשיה תגרמי (Yechezkel 23:34), "and you will suck its shards dry", is sucking out the juice that has run into them. אל גרם המעלות (Melachim II 9:13), "onto the gerem of the steps": the gerem is, as it seems, a kind of gutter into which the water off the roof runs.

So too the berry: שלשה גרגרים בראש אמיר (Yeshayahu 17:6), "three berries at the top of the bough". Each single berry of a fruit, into which the juice runs, is a גרגר.

כאבני גר מנפצות (Yeshayahu 27:9), "like stones of gir, smashed", are stones dragged about over the face of the field with no one to gather them. The verb is והגרתי לגי אבניה (Michah 1:6), "and I will drag her stones down into the valley"; and from the same sense, והגרם על ידי חרב (Yirmiyahu 18:21), "and drag them off by the power of the sword", and וכסאו לארץ מגרתה (Tehillim 89:45), "and his throne You dragged down to the ground", where מגרתה is like הגרת, You dragged, the mem standing in place of a heh.

גרון, the throat, is from dragging: קרא בגרון (Yeshayahu 58:1), "call out with the throat", so named because food and drink are dragged down from there into the belly. The windpipe, called גרגרת, bears the name too, because it is joined to the גרון: וענקים לגרגרתך (Mishlei 1:9), "and necklaces for your neck", since the גרגרת shows more on the outside than the גרון, which is the gullet.

The food dragged to the throat is גרה, the cud: מעלה גרה (Vayikra 11:4), "brings up the cud".

A small coin is also גרה: עשרים גרה השקל (Shemos 30:13), "the shekel is twenty gerah". It is named for dragging, because it is dragged constantly from hand to hand and never stays fixed in its place, unlike the heavy coins that are stored away in a treasury. The same is לאגורת כסף (Shmuel I 2:36), "for a piece of silver", a small coin of whatever kind.

אגרת, as את אגרת הפורים (Esther 9:29), "this letter of Purim", is a writing passed through the whole country from man to man to make its matter known in public. In parentheses he adds צירקולער, a circular.

The saw is מגרה, as מגררות במגרה (Melachim I 7:9), "sawn with a saw", named for the way it is used: not lifted like other tools but dragged over the wood, which splits apart. After this tool the language of the Talmud calls the חרש, the craftsman, נגר: נגר ולא בר נגר (Avodah Zarah 50b), "a carpenter and not a carpenter's son", the craftsman who works with the saw. A craftsman is always called after the tool he does most of his work with: the tailor is חייט after the חוט, the thread he sews with, and the shoemaker רצען after the מרצע, the awl; so the חרש is נגר because most of his work is with the saw.

Also from גרר is the verb אגר, gathering: a gathering that comes by dragging, collecting different things from different places, a little at a time. אגרה בקציר מאכלה (Mishlei 6:8), "she gathers her food in the harvest"; אגר בקיץ (Mishlei 10:5), "he gathers in summer"; ויין לא תשתה ולא תאגר (Devarim 28:39), "and wine you shall neither drink nor gather". The noun is מגרה: נהרסו ממגרות (Yoel 1:17), "the granaries are torn down", and העוד הזרע במגורה (Chaggai 2:19), "is the seed still in the granary?", a store gathered by dragging. Sometimes the alef drops: יגרהו בחרמו (Chavakuk 1:15), "he gathers him in his net", that is, יאגרהו ויאספנו, he gathers and collects him; יגורו עלי עזים (Tehillim 59:4), "the mighty gather against me", gathered against me from every side; and על דגן ותירוש יתגוררו (Hoshea 7:14), "over grain and wine they gather". The noun from it is מגור, as מגור מסביב (Tehillim 31:14), "dread on every side", formed like מקום, place, and מרום, height.

With a nun added, גרן, the threshing floor: גרן ויקב (Hoshea 9:2), "threshing floor and winepress"; כתבואת גרן (Bamidbar 18:30), "as the produce of the threshing floor". It is the place where grain not yet threshed is gathered. That is how it differs from the מגורה: the מגורה is the store of threshed grain, the גרן the store of unthreshed grain and of the sheaves.

From גר in its sense of gathering, the verb גור was borrowed for fear and dread: ויגר מואב (Bamidbar 22:3), "and Moav was in dread"; לא תגורו מפני איש (Devarim 1:17), "do not fear any man". Either it is gathering in to oneself, for fear of being exposed and spreading outward; or it is the gathering and collecting of all one's thoughts so as not to come to harm, as with יראה and מורא, fear, which, as he will explain in their place, come from seeing and watching.

מורא applies when the one afraid knows the one way he could be harmed and need only watch that way alone. מגור applies when the ways of harm are many, and he must gather all his thoughts and consider every way harm could possibly reach him. How the words of fear, מורא, מגור, חיל, אימתה ופחד (fear, dread, trembling, terror and fright), differ from each other is left to their own places.

Also from dragging is the verb גרה, provoking and quarrel: אל תתגרו בם (Devarim 2:5), "do not provoke them"; ואל תתגר בם מלחמה (Devarim 2:9), "and do not provoke them to war"; מתגרת ידך (Tehillim 39:11), "by the strife of Your hand"; איש חמה יגרה מדון (Mishlei 15:18), "a hot-tempered man stirs up strife", an act that drags quarrel and strife after it. It is close to חרחור, as אל תתחר במרעים (Tehillim 37:1), "do not grow heated over evildoers". But חרחור is from חרון, burning anger: the intent to do something that brings on burning wrath. גירוי, provoking, is the intent to do things that will draw one's fellow into dispute, and so it is a cause that drags the quarrel after it as its result. In the language of the Talmud a cause is גורם: זה וזה גורם (Pesachim 26b), "this and that both cause it"; דבר הגורם לממון (Pesachim 5b), "a thing that brings about money".

Of the living, dragging gives the noun גר: כי גר יהיה זרעך (Bereishis 15:13), "your seed will be strangers"; גר ותושב (Bereishis 23:4), "a stranger and a settler"; האזרח והגר (Vayikra 16:29), "the native and the stranger". גר describes one who sojourns in a land not his own, the opposite of the אזרח, who was born in the land where he is. A תושב is one not born here who has taken up his dwelling like one of the land's native-born; a גר is one not born here who also has no fixed home to settle in for all the days of his life.

אזרח is from זריחה, rising. The verb זרח marks the first appearing of anything, as והצרעת זרחה במצחו (Divrei HaYamim II 26:19), "and the tzaraas broke out on his forehead"; so the sun's first appearing on the horizon is called מזרח, as מזרח השמש (Yehoshua 1:15), "the rising of the sun". זריחה is not said once the sun already shines on the land, only of its first coming out and appearing on the horizon. So one who lives in the land of his birth is called אזרח, one found in the place where he rose and first appeared in the world. ומתערה כאזרח רענן (Tehillim 37:35), "spreading out like a fresh native", means like the rising, the first appearing, of a fresh tree, which right from the start of its growth is thick and stout and full of branches; there אזרח is a word that describes, not a noun.

The verb from גר: ויגר אברהם (Bereishis 21:34), "and Avraham sojourned"; האחד בא לגור (Bereishis 19:9), "this one came to sojourn"; לגור בארץ באנו (Bereishis 47:4), "we have come to sojourn in the land"; ארץ מגריהם (Shemos 6:4), "the land of their sojournings". It means dwelling that is not fixed. Sometimes it is said of fixed dwelling as well: אגורה באהלך עולמים (Tehillim 61:5), "I will dwell in Your tent forever"; לא יוסיפו לגור (Eichah 4:15), "they will dwell there no more".

From dwelling, the young of wild beasts is גור: גור אריה יהודה (Bereishis 49:9), "Yehudah is a lion's cub"; רבתה גוריה (Yechezkel 19:2), "she reared her cubs"; היניקו גוריהן (Eichah 4:3), "they suckled their young". It is called גור because it dwells in its den and its hole and does not yet go out to roam the land for prey, the grown beasts bringing it food. So ותעל אחד מגריה כפיר היה וילמד לטרף טרף (Yechezkel 19:3), "she brought up one of her cubs, he became a young lion and learned to tear prey": she brought one of her cubs up out of the hole, and it grew and became a כפיר, the lion that roams the villages, the כפרים, for food, and only afterwards learned to prey. Since the young lion preys more fiercely than the old, the tribes are likened, where preying is meant, to a lion's cub, a young lion, even though as long as it is a cub it does not prey.