chance

Distinctions

mikreh / keri (מקרה, קרי)

Root ק-ר-ה / ק-ר-א. In Tanach a mikreh is a random happening: the Pelishtim test whether their plague was Hashem's hand or merely a mikreh (Shmuel I 6:9); Shlomo HaMelech says one mikreh meets man and beast (Koheles 3:19) and one mikreh the righteous and the wicked (Koheles 9:2-3); the upshot, the column says, is that since all is Divinely pre-ordained it is hopeless to try to escape one's fate. The verb carries the same sense of the unprepared-for: vayikar of Hashem appearing to Bilaam (Bamidbar 23:4, 23:16), karahu of the accident Yaakov feared for Binyamin (Bereishis 42:38, 44:29), karcha of Amaleik chancing upon Yisrael (Devarim 25:18), yikareh of coming upon a bird's nest (Devarim 22:6), and vayiker mikreh of Rus arriving in Boaz's field (Rus 2:3). On the Divine Hand behind every case of mikreh the column points the reader to Professor Stephen B. Chapman's essay "Miqreh and YHWH."

Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim (Cheshek Shlomo) takes the biliteral ק-ר to mean "strong impact," and gathers under it korah (beam) and tikrah (ceiling), kir (wall), kiryah (city), kurei (spider web), krum (membrane), and kor (cold, the clash of temperatures against the body's warmth). On that reading a mikreh is the sudden collision of a person with a new set of circumstances. He treats kara / kriyah (calling) as the same biliteral with an extraneous alef: a call gets attention and so brings about a meeting, an impact; likewise likras, moving toward a meeting.

On keri in Vayikra 26 (26:21, 26:23, 26:24, 26:27-28, 26:40-41, and nowhere else in Tanach) there are two readings. Many commentators, Rav Hirsch (to Bereishis 42:4 and Vayikra 26:21) among them: keri is serving Hashem in a non-deliberate, glib way, and the measure-for-measure is that Hashem deals back offhandedly. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim takes a slightly different approach: keri is the sinner's antagonistic posture, an attempt to anger Hashem through his actions, so that the problem is twofold, the sin itself and the attitude behind it; the word then carries his "stronger impact" and draws a stronger response. The column leaves both standing. Rav Hirsch's reading is the easier default for a translator, since it fits the passage's own reciprocity, but that preference is ours, not the column's.

In the Mishnah keri means a seminal emission (Berachos 3:4-6, Terumos 1:6, Avodah Zarah 3:4, Avos 5:5, Tamid 1:1, Middos 1:9, Keilim 1:5, Mikvaos 3:4 and 8:4, Niddah 5:1, Zavim 1:1-2 and 2:3), the language avoiding the matter by calling it simply "an incident." The euphemism has biblical warrant in mikreh used of ritual impurity (Devarim 23:11, Shmuel I 20:26).

mikreh against metziah (מציאה)

Malbim, as cited in Sefer HaCarmel, treats mikreh and metziah as almost synonymous and attempts to separate them by cause: when the cause is unknown or irregular the happening is a mikreh; when the cause is ordinary and anticipated it is a metziah. Hence Yaakov's sons report the koros that befell them in Mitzrayim (Bereishis 42:29), all of it unexpected, while Yehoshua's spies report motza'os (Yehoshua 2:23), since they were sent out precisely to find things worth reporting.

te'unah (תאונה)

Root א-נ-ה. Tanach uses the verb: "no evil shall befall you" (Tehillim 91:10), "no misfortune will befall the righteous" (Mishlei 12:21), and inah l'yado of the inadvertent killer whose exile Hashem arranges (Shemos 21:13). Rashi there describes the arrangement: Hashem brings the deliberate murderer and the inadvertent killer together so that each receives his due. Malbim (Sefer HaCarmel): mikreh is the meeting-point of things, the impact itself, while te'unah is the confluence of an incident's causes, the more abstract coming-together of factors. His proof is Shemos 21:13: Hashem does not transport the killer to the Ir Miklat, He assembles the circumstances that will send him there. Rabbi Shaul Goldman notes that the same root א-נ-ה yields anah, "where?", of an unknown location, and accounts for the pairing by saying that te'unah looks not so much at an event's causes or effects as at the unpredictability of its landing place, the arbitrary "where" of it. Modern Hebrew te'unas derachim, literally an occurrence of the roads, is this word.

i'rua (אירוע)

Root א-ר-ע. Not in Tanach; the verb is Mishnaic. Five things ir'u on the seventeenth of Tammuz (Taanis 4:6); the verb serves for a disqualification befalling a Korban Pesach (Pesachim 8:6), a Parah Adumah (Parah 4:4), or another korban (Zevachim 12:4), and for a wedding or a bereavement that preoccupies a man (Kilayim 7:7, Taharos 9:2, Moed Katan 2:1-2, Berachos 4:2). It frequently pairs with rabbinic keri (Yoma 1:1, Avos 5:5, Tamid 1:1, Middos 1:9 and 2:2). Targum generally renders mikreh / keri with cognates of i'rua or of ע-ר-ע; at Tehillim 85:11 it renders nifgashu, "met," with a cognate of i'rua.

the falling metaphor

Rabbi Shaul Goldman proposes that an event or occurrence is habitually framed in spatial terms, as something that falls and lands, which conveys a happening with no discernible pattern or intention behind it: it is construed as cast from above and striking the ground at random. The mikreh/keri cluster already implies a convergence of unrelated factors, and he takes it further, that the impact of those converging forces is consistently conceived as a downward fall, perhaps because gravity is the most universal form of impact there is. The column notes that English does the same, an event "falling out" on a date, and that incident, accident and coincidence all come from the Latin cadere, "falling upon," with befalling saying it outright and landing naming the end of a fall; somewhere, wherever and whenever carry the same sense of a place or time not deliberately fixed.

On that model he reads the Hebrew back. By phonetic shift and the interchange of reish with lammed and hey with ayin, ק-ר-ה may also relate to ק-ל-ע, to sling or hurl, the image of a projectile striking a target, which the Talmudic Aramaic ikla, someone who happens to arrive somewhere, seems to corroborate. The same roots reach the ground itself: karka, a doubling of ק-ר, is land, and so is the Biblical Aramaic arka, which appears once (Yirmiyahu 10:11). The standard Aramaic for land is ar'a, cognate to Hebrew eretz with the tzadi becoming an ayin, and its root is the root of i'ra/i'rua, so that an i'rua is not only something that happens but something landing on the ground; other uses of א-ר-ע in Targumic Aramaic mean ruin or collapse. He adds that kara/kriyah/vayikra, primarily to call or proclaim, may also suggest deliberately summoning an event, which gives those words a paradoxical double duty, purposeful invocation (mikra kodesh) beside random occurrence, and a middle ground between accident and intention; and the Targumic rendering by ע-ר-ע comes back to א-ר-ע through the interchange of ayin and aleph. He maintains that arai, non-permanence, is properly spelled ע-ר-א and has nothing to do with i'rua, whatever the occasional spelling with an aleph.

Rendering guidance

• Vayikra 26 keri: "with offhandedness," "casually," "as happenstance." Never "by accident" or "by chance," which turn the Torah's charge from an attitude into a mishap and break the measure-for-measure of the pasuk.
• Trap: English "accident" will absorb mikreh, te'unah and i'rua at once. Keep "occurrence/happenstance" for mikreh, "mishap/befalling" for te'unah, "event/incident" for i'rua, and hold the assignment across a passage.
• Rus 2:3, vayiker mikreh: render the doubling, "an occurrence occurred," or "as it happened, she happened upon"; do not smooth it to "she happened to come," which drops the pointed redundancy the pasuk builds on.
• Koheles 3:19 and 9:2-3 repeat mikreh; keep one English word throughout, since the point is that it is the same mikreh.
• Mishnaic keri stays transliterated with a gloss at first occurrence. Do not render it "accident," and do not let it borrow the Vayikra sense. Where mikreh and metziah stand together, "chance occurrence" against "find" carries Malbim's distinction without a footnote.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Bamidbar/Shavuot: Coincidence or Happenstance? (Part 1/2)," 4 Sivan 5785 (2025-05-31), and "Naso: Coincidence or Happenstance? (Part 2/2)," 11 Sivan 5785 (2025-06-07), What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach: raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/11821-bamidbarshavuot-coincidence-or-happenstance-part-12.md and sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/11822-naso-coincidence-or-happenstance-part-22.md. Primary loci cited: Vayikra 26:14-46 with Megillah 31b; Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim, Cheshek Shlomo s.v. ק-ר; Malbim, Sefer HaCarmel; Rav Hirsch to Bereishis 42:4 and Vayikra 26:21; Rashi to Shemos 21:13; Koheles 3:19, 9:2-3; Shmuel I 6:9 and 20:26; Rus 2:3; Devarim 22:6, 23:11, 25:18; Tehillim 85:11, 91:10; Mishlei 12:21; Yehoshua 2:23; Bereishis 42:29, 42:38, 44:29; Bamidbar 23:4, 23:16; Shemos 21:13; Yirmiyahu 10:11; Rabbi Shaul Goldman; Professor Stephen B. Chapman, "Miqreh and YHWH."