coming

Distinctions

bo / biah (בוא, ביאה)

The Tosafists (Baal HaTurim to Shemos 10:1, Hadar Zekeinim to Shemos 9:1, Moshav Zekeinim to Shemos 10:1) observe a pattern in the makkos: when Hashem sends Moshe to Pharaoh in his palace He says bo el Pharaoh, and when He sends him to Pharaoh at the river He says lech el Pharaoh. This seems to suggest that bo somehow implies going inside a building, while lech implies going somewhere but not necessarily inside (see also Ramban to Shemos 8:15). The same idea seems to be echoed by the Zohar (Bo 34a), which reads bo el Pharaoh as Hashem bringing Moshe into some sort of Heavenly Inner Chamber somehow bound up with the sea-creature that characterized Egypt; that mystical reading too seems to presume that bo implies entering and lech does not.

Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk offers two further distinctions: bo implies coming to Pharaoh repeatedly, lech a single occasion; and bo implies coming willingly, while lech is the bare physical act, which can be done against one's will.

Etymologically, l'havi ("to bring") is a conjugation of bo, since bringing a thing is causing it to come; on that basis Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg suggests reading bo el Pharaoh as "bring [the following message] to Pharaoh." Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim derives navi from the same two-letter root ב-א, since a navi brings Hashem's words to his listeners. Rabbi Pappenheim adds the point that matters most for rendering: biah covers both reaching the destination ("I came home") and the approach to it ("I am coming home"). Hence Rachel is described as "coming" while still on her way to the well (Bereishis 29:9), and Yosef as "coming" while his brothers still saw him from afar (Bereishis 37:19).

Rabbi Pappenheim and Rabbi Aharon Marcus take bo back to the single letter ב, "inside," the same sense the letter carries as a non-root prefix: one who comes to a place goes inside it and stops coming, because he has arrived, even though bo/biah can still be used of him while he is on the way. The column adds that this may perhaps give a better understanding of the Tosafists' and the Zohar's assumption that bo implies going inside. Rav Hirsch similarly connects bo to the phonetically similar po ("here") through the interchange of beis and peh: bo fixes on the final destination as po fixes on the present location, and he adds peh ("mouth"), the terminus into which food is destined to go.

The Baal HaTurim also reads bo as a gematria of three, alluding to the three makkos remaining. Rabbi Menachem Mendel Kasher answers that this cannot be why the Torah chose the word, since bo is used for Moshe going to Pharaoh twice more (Shemos 7:26, 9:1) when three makkos did not remain.

lech / halichah (הלך, הליכה)

The counterpart term throughout: on the Tosafists' reading, simply going somewhere without the sense of entering; on Rabbi Elimelech's, without repetition and without any implication of willingness. The column then offers two theories of its own, both as an English speaker's temptation rather than as a finding. First, that bo and lech answer to English "come" and "go": bo fixes primarily on one's destination ("come to"), lech on one's place of departure ("go from"). Alternatively, that biah denotes a change of place however it came about, while halichah denotes specifically the act of walking. The column closes the point by saying that a Biblical concordance would have to be consulted to see how well any of these theories pans out.

atah (אתה)

A biblical word for coming (Devarim 33:2, Yeshayahu 21:12), appearing in both the Hebrew and the Aramaic portions of Tanach. Rabbi Pappenheim: atah is a coming with finality. Like bo it is oriented to the destination, but unlike bo it refers only to arriving, never to the journey there. The Malbim (Yair Ohr) cites this distinction between bo and atah in Rabbi Pappenheim's name.

Rabbi Pappenheim derives atah from the single letter ת, which stands for bordering, since it closes the alef-beis. A border links two bodies and distinguishes them at once; hence es, the particle that links a verb to its object and sometimes means "with," and os ("sign"), which links sign to signified. Atah on this reading is the traveler finally joined to his destination, as against biah, which can still have him on the road. The column adds a parenthesis of its own: perhaps the finality of atah is hinted in its root's being the first and last letters of the alef-beis, while biah has the first and the second. The same root yields tav ("mark"), which serves as a border distinguishing a thing from the rest: Yechezkel saw Hashem command an angel to make a tav on the foreheads of the righteous who bemoaned the abominations in Yerushalayim, which the Gemara (Shabbos 55a) explains to mean writing the letter tav on them, and the os given to Kayin (Bereishis 4:15) is what some explain to be that same letter. The column notes further that in the original Ivri script the letter tav was written in the shape of the English letter x (and the Greek chi), so that as X marks the spot and stands for what is missing, as in algebra, the tav too marks a thing off as distinguished.

Rendering guidance

• Keep the English pair honest: bo is "come," lech is "go." Where the same parashah alternates them, as the makkos do, hold the pair even when English idiom would prefer otherwise, because the Tosafists' reading of bo el Pharaoh depends on it.
• Bo el Pharaoh in a sefer that follows the Tosafists or the Zohar is better rendered "come in to Pharaoh," which keeps the sense of entering.
• Atah: "arrive," "has come," "came upon." Not a plain "come," which throws away the finality.
• Trap: English "come" absorbs both bo and atah, and English "go" will quietly absorb bo whenever the sentence is about travel. If a phrase has both (a prophecy of what will atah to one who ba), render the bo as coming and the atah as arriving, and do not smooth the two together.
• Participles: ba of a man still on the road is "coming," not "has come." The Rachel and Yosef pesukim are the test cases.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Bo: Come To Pharaoh," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach (2021-01-23): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/9039-bo-come-to-pharaoh.md. Primary loci: Shemos 10:1, 7:15, 7:26, 9:1, 8:15; Bereishis 29:9, 37:19, 4:15; Devarim 33:2; Yeshayahu 21:12; Zohar Bo 34a; Shabbos 55a; Ramban to Shemos 8:15; Baal HaTurim, Hadar Zekeinim, and Moshav Zekeinim on the makkos pesukim; Malbim, Yair Ohr, citing Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim.