nature
citron
הדר · אתרוג · אתרונגא · טרונגא · תפוח
Bottom line
Hadar means beautiful or splendid; nothing in the word says citron. The Torah's pri eitz hadar (Vayikra 23:40) is the esrog by Mesorah, and the Gemara's derivations are asmachta (Ibn Ezra, Rambam). Esrog is the citron, the Mishnaic and Targumic name. Tapuach is an apple, and only in Shir HaShirim 2:3 does Rabbeinu Tam read it as a citron. Do not render hadar "citron" in the pasuk; translate the word and let the halachah supply the rest.
At a glance
| Hebrew | translit | English | what sets it apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| הדר | hadar | beautiful, splendid | a quality, not a fruit; the identification comes by Mesorah (Ibn Ezra, Rambam) |
| אתרוג | esrog | citron | the Mishnaic name; Onkelos renders pri eitz hadar with it |
| אתרונגא | etronga | citron | an affected form; Shmuel calls its user haughty (Kiddushin 70a) |
| טרונגא | trunga | citron | the Eretz Yisrael Aramaic form (Yerushalmi Sukkah 3:10) |
| תפוח | tapuach | apple | apple, except Shir HaShirim 2:3, where Rabbeinu Tam reads citron |
Where the authorities disagree
How hadar comes to mean the citron. Chazal (Sukkah 35a, Yerushalmi Sukkah 3:5, Sifra to Vayikra 23:40) give four routes: hadar modifies fruit and tree alike, so the fruit must taste like its wood, as the citron's does; hadar from dir, a corral, since a corral holds animals of every size and the citron tree carries blossoms and full-grown fruit at once; ha-dar, "the one that dwells," the citron staying on its tree from year to year; and hadar from the Greek for water, the citron needing much watering. The Midrash (Vayikra Rabbah 30:15, Tanchuma Emor 20) relates that Shlomo HaMelech, for all his wisdom, could not explain how pri eitz hadar means the citron except by appealing to the tradition handed down through the Sages. Against taking any of these as the source of the law, Ibn Ezra (to Vayikra 23:40) and the Rambam (introduction to his Commentary on the Mishnah): the identification is an undisputed Mosaic tradition, and the derashos are exegetical allusions that do not operate on the plain level; both add that the citron is in fact the most beautiful of fruits (Rambam, Moreh Nevuchim 3:43), so the title suits it. The Bottom line follows them.
Whether hadar and esrog are the same word in two languages. The groundwork is the Raavyah's, on the kesubah formula in which a groom writes that his bride may collect from "the better arag of my property": arag is an expression of desirability, since Targum renders nechmad as ragig (Onkelos to Bereishis 2:9 and 3:6; the article files Mishlei 21:20 under Onkelos's name too), and taavah likewise at Devarim 5:18, and arag is a cognate of that term. The Ramban, the Raavyah's younger contemporary, adds that esrog too is a cognate of arag and ragig, so that esrog is rightly "the desirable fruit"; since hadar and nechmad come to the same thing, pri eitz hadar must be the esrog. He goes so far as to say that hadar is simply the Hebrew for what Aramaic calls esrog, the two being wholly synonymous. Parts of this are taken up by the Ra'ah, the Ritva, the Meiri, Rabbeinu Bachya, the Tashbetz, and Rabbi Moshe Mintz. Parenthetically, the article notes that Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim and Rabbi Aharon Marcus trace various Hebrew words to a core biliteral ר-ג (ravishing, subduing, cancelling) without ever thinking to connect the Mishnaic esrog to it.
The gematria route. The Baal HaTurim (to Vayikra 23:40): pri eitz hadar and esrogim match in gematria (the article prints 659 and 660, so the match needs the kollel); Rabbi Meir Mazuz: trung likewise comes to 659.
Distinctions
hadar (הדר)
Root ה-ד-ר. In Tanach the word is glory or beauty, so pri eitz hadar on its face is either a beautiful fruit or the fruit of a beautiful tree, and tells you nothing about which fruit. In Modern Hebrew hadar was reassigned to the whole citrus genus (oranges, grapefruits, lemons, limes, tangerines, pomelos, kumquats, mandarins, clementines and the rest; the fruit closest to the citron is the one called Buddha's Hand, for its finger-like shape); the Chazon Ish discusses whether halachah treats all of these as related to one another for the prohibition of intermixing species.
The article calls archaeology the best outside confirmation of the citron identification: at the Royal Garden in Ramat Rachel, in southern Yerushalayim, analysis of fossilized pollen proved that citron trees already grew in Eretz Yisrael under Persian rule, that is, during the Babylonian exile and the early decades of the second Beis HaMikdash. Dr. Zohar Amar of Bar Ilan clarifies that the want of evidence for citrons before the Persian period does not prove that they were only imported then, since archaeobotany is too sporadic to give a full picture of the land's flora. The article adds that by one Tannaic opinion the forbidden fruit of the Eitz HaDaas was a citron (Bereishis Rabbah 15:7, Berachos 40a), and that Rabbi David Kochavi of Estelle (Provence, 1300s) infers from "the woman saw that the tree was good for eating, and that it was enticing to the eyes" (Bereishis 3:6) that the fruit only looks as though it tastes good while in fact it has very little flesh, which fits the citron.
esrog (אתרוג) and its Aramaic forms
Esrog runs through the Mishnah (Maasros 1:4, Bikkurim 2:6, Sukkah 3:4-7, 4:7, 4:9, Meilah 6:4), and Targum Onkelos (to Vayikra 23:40) renders pri eitz hadar with it; other sources have trunga (Yerushalmi Sukkah 3:10, Gittin 2:3) or trugin (Targum Yonasan and Targum Neofiti there). Kiddushin 70a records the register question: Rav Nachman offered Rav Yehudah an etronga, and Rav Yehudah cited Shmuel that whoever says etronga is suspected of haughtiness; one says esrog as the chachamim do or esroga as ordinary people do.
All of those sources spell the word with a tav, whence the Ashkenazi esrog, but the Peshitta (to Vayikra 23:40), the Syriac translation of Tanach, spells it with a tet. The article suggests that this variant may indicate that esrog and its relatives are not native Hebrew words, or else that the Peshitta's authors did not know how to spell it. On the origins, it reports the linguist Dr. Michael Sokoloff of Bar Ilan, who takes all these variants to be related to the Modern Persian turunj/toranj and the Middle Persian wadrang, which in turn seem related to the Sanskrit narangam, orange, though the actual Sanskrit for citron is matulunga; narangam begat the Persian and Arabic naranj, the etymon of the Spanish naranja, the Portuguese laranja and the English and French orange, and seemingly of the Spanish toronja, grapefruit. As to how naranj became orange in English, the article gives three theories: confusion with the place-name Orange, a town in Provence; a misdivision, whereby the opening n of norange was taken for part of the article ("an orange") and dropped; and influence from the French or, gold, from the Latin aurum, for the fruit's golden color. The color-word followed the fruit, and the House of Orange then took that color for its coat of arms. The columnist adds that he had once thought tangerine a metathesis of orange, since the consonants match, but found on looking into it that the name comes from the Moroccan port of Tangier, from which that variety was imported. He notes further that Josephus (Antiquities XVII 10:7; The War of the Jews II 4:3) mentions one Athronges/Athrongeus, a leader of the revolt against Rome, and that Dr. Alexander Kohut sees that personal name as related to the Hebrew and Aramaic name of the citron.
tapuach (תפוח)
Shir HaShirim 2:3 likens Klal Yisrael among the nations to a lone tapuach in a forest, and Rabbeinu Tam reads tapuach there as the citron (Tosafos to Shabbos 88a and Taanis 29b). The article offers a guess of its own, that Rabbeinu Tam may somehow have connected this to the Old French of his time and place, in which the word for an orange was pomme d'orenge, the apple of the orange. Whether he means every tapuach in Tanach or only that pasuk is not clear. Besides that verse, tapuach is a fruit three more times in Shir HaShirim (2:5, 7:9, 8:5) and twice more in Tanach (Yoel 1:12, Mishlei 25:11), and it is also the name of a Canaanite city the Jews conquered (Yehoshua 12:17, 15:34, 16:8, 17:8) and, once, of a descendant of Kalev (Divrei HaYamim I 2:43).
Rendering guidance
- הדר in Vayikra 23:40: "a beautiful fruit of a tree," or "the fruit of a beautiful tree" where the ambiguity matters. Do not write "citron" in the pasuk itself; that is the halachic identification, and it erases the gap Chazal, Ibn Ezra, and the Ramban work on.
- אתרוג: "esrog" in a frum register, "citron" where a general reader needs the botanical word; Ashkenazi esrog and Sephardi etrog are both correct.
- אתרונגא: keep the form and gloss it, since Kiddushin 70a is about the word itself; "citron" for all three of them destroys the story.
- תפוח: "apple." Only in Shir HaShirim 2:3 is "citron" a live option, and there a note is better than a silent substitution.
- Trap: English "citron" will absorb hadar, esrog, trunga, and Rabbeinu Tam's tapuach alike. Where two of them stand in one passage (a derashah linking hadar to esrog, or the Ramban's claim that they are one word in two languages), keep them distinct or the argument vanishes.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "The Beautiful Citron," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 28 Elul 5782 (2022-09-24): https://articles.ohr.edu/articles/the-beautiful-citron; raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/10055-the-beautiful-citron.md. Primary loci cited: Vayikra 23:40 (the article prints 23:4 twice; the pasuk of the Four Species is 23:40); Bereishis 2:9, 3:6; Devarim 5:18; Mishlei 21:20, 25:11; Yoel 1:12; Shir HaShirim 2:3, 2:5, 7:9, 8:5; Yehoshua 12:17, 15:34, 16:8, 17:8; Divrei HaYamim I 2:43; Sukkah 35a; Berachos 40a; Kiddushin 70a; Tosafos to Shabbos 88a and Taanis 29b; Yerushalmi Sukkah 3:5 and 3:10, Gittin 2:3; Mishnah Maasros 1:4, Bikkurim 2:6, Sukkah 3:4-7, 4:7, 4:9, Meilah 6:4; Sifra to Vayikra 23:40; Bereishis Rabbah 15:7; Vayikra Rabbah 30:15; Tanchuma Emor 20; Rambam, Commentary on the Mishnah introduction and Moreh Nevuchim 3:43; Baal HaTurim to Vayikra 23:40; Peshitta and Targum Neofiti to Vayikra 23:40. The article's archaeology (Ramat Rachel, Dr. Zohar Amar), the Persian and Sanskrit etymologies of Dr. Michael Sokoloff, the excursus on the English "orange," the Peshitta's spelling, and Josephus with Dr. Alexander Kohut are reported here as the article gives them.