clouds

Distinctions

The Yerushalmi (Taanis 3:3), Midrash Tehillim 135 and Bereishis Rabbah 12:12 assert that Hebrew has five words for clouds: avim, eidim, ananim, nesiim and chazizim. Several of the five they explain by what rain does to a market.

anan (ענן)

The unmarked term, and the one the article starts from: anan and its forms come close to a hundred times in Tanach, seventeen of them in Behaaloscha, more than in any other parashah. Chazal: clouds are ananim because the rain they bring makes people anavim, humble with one another, since a surplus makes men deal fairly where scarcity makes them compete; alternatively because it makes them aniyim, poor, in the sense that uneven rainfall leaves everyone dependent on barter and nobody self-sufficient. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim: the root is the single letter ayin, denoting movement, the cloud being what the wind sets moving. Sefer HaChochmah (printed with Peirush HaRokeach) instead makes ananim the clouds that block sunlight.

av (עב)

Shemos 19:9, Shoftim 5:4, Shmuel II 22:12. Chazal: from me'avev, because a heavy cloud darkens the sky or the land by blocking the sun. Pappenheim: the root ע-ב is "especially thick" (see Rashi to Taanis 6b), a cloud dense with water; the English "thick clouds" runs parallel. Sefer HaChochmah: thick and full of water. For how arafel stands to avim, see Rashi to Shemos 19:9 and 20:18.

eid (אד)

Bereishis 2:6. Chazal read it through the two senses of א-ד, "breaking" (Targum to Devarim 32:35) and "festival" (Avodah Zarah 1:1): clouds break the holiday of the price-gouger, since rain means produce, produce means supply, and supply brings prices down. Pappenheim: the root is the single letter dalet, extraction and separation, so eid is water drawn up out of a larger body. This fits Rabbeinu Bachya, who takes eid as water vapor, and it is what the word plainly means in Rabbinic and Modern Hebrew. Ibn Ezra: a smoky cloud. Sefer HaChochmah: the cloud that comes with thunder. Midrash Lekach Tov (Pesikta Zutrasa) links eid to nod, a flask, clouds carrying water as a flask does; Pappenheim does not make that link, though he does derive nod from dalet by way of נ-ד, nadud, being separated from home, nod being the gear one takes along.

nasi (נשיא)

Literally "prince." Chazal: clouds play kingmaker, since whose field gets rain decides who prospers, so Tanach can call them nesiim (Tehillim 135:7, Mishlei 25:14; the article prints Tehillim 137:7, but the locus with nesiim is 135:7). Pappenheim: the root is ש-א, carrying or lifting, either because these clouds carry rainwater from place to place, or because they are light enough to rise, as against heavy clouds that come down as fog.

chaziz (חזיז)

Iyov 28:26, Zechariah 10:1. Chazal: from chazon and chezyonos, sight, since the rain produces flora of many different appearances; others, because Hashem sends such clouds as signs in Heaven for man to read. Pappenheim: the root ח-ז is comprehension through sight or imagination, and chazizim are specifically the clouds that come with thunder, tied to sight because they flash lightning. Sefer HaChochmah: colorful clouds, at which the article registers open surprise. The Zohar draws the parallel between rain, a physical Divine influx, and nevuah, a spiritual one.

the three beyond the five

Rabbi Shlomo of Urbino, a sixteenth-century Italian scholar, writes in Ohel Moed, a lexicon of Hebrew synonyms, that there are two more than the five. He adds nivlei shamayim (Iyov 38:37), explained as clouds by Rashi, Ibn Ezra and others; Menachem Ibn Saruk (Machberes) ties the phrase to neivel, a jug, and Ibn Janach (Sefer HaShorashim) and Rabbi Yehudah Ibn Balaam (Sefer HaTzimud) spell out why: clouds are jugs that pour water out. Kapayim (Iyov 36:32, Eichah 3:41) is taken as clouds by many commentators, Rashi among them, and by Midrash Chuppas Eliyahu Rabbah, which counts six synonyms; Metzudas Tzion explains that clouds are a kippah over one's head. Pappenheim and others dissent, taking kapayim as the sky as a whole. Rabbi Yaakov Chaim Sofer points to an eighth: Peirush HaRokeach on Bereishis 49:25 reads shadayim there as clouds emptying out water the way a nursing mother's breasts empty out milk.

Rendering guidance

• Where the Midrash is being quoted, keep all five words transliterated and gloss each once. The passage is a list of five names; translating each as "cloud" deletes the very thing being counted.
• In ordinary prose: anan "cloud," av "thick cloud" (plural "thick clouds"), eid "mist" or "vapor," nasi "rain cloud," chaziz "thundercloud."
• Bereishis 2:6, v'eid yaaleh min ha'aretz: "a mist would rise from the earth" follows Rabbeinu Bachya and Pappenheim and is the safe rendering. "Cloud" here would be defensible only when quoting the Yerushalmi's list.
• Trap: English "cloud" absorbs anan, av, nasi and chaziz without complaint. When two of them appear in one pasuk or one derashah, force the modifier ("thick cloud," "rain cloud"); when one stands alone in narrative, plain "cloud" is right.
• Nesiim in Mishlei 25:14 (nesiim v'ruach v'geshem ayin) needs "clouds and wind but no rain"; do not let the literal "princes" in, and do not gloss it "princes" in the body even though that is the word's other sense.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "On Clouds," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 12 Sivan 5779 (2019-06-15): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/8287-on-clouds.md. Primary loci: Yerushalmi Taanis 3:3; Midrash Tehillim 135; Bereishis Rabbah 12:12; Bereishis 2:6, 49:25; Shemos 19:9, 20:18; Devarim 32:35 (Targum); Shoftim 5:4; Shmuel II 22:12; Tehillim 135:7 (article: 137:7); Mishlei 25:14; Iyov 28:26, 36:32, 38:37; Eichah 3:41; Zechariah 10:1; Avodah Zarah 1:1; Rashi to Taanis 6b; Pappenheim on the roots ע, ע-ב, ד, ש-א and ח-ז.