corner

Distinctions

peah (פאה)

The commonest biblical word for corner, roughly eighty-five occurrences, but in most of them it names a cardinal direction (Shemos 27:9; Bamidbar 35:5), usually alongside a word for north, south, east or west, where Onkelos gives rucha/ruach; only in the four instances where it means "corner" proper (the peah of the head and of the beard, Vayikra 19:27, and the peah of the field, Vayikra 19:9, 23:22) does he leave it untranslated. For the four rings on the four peah of the Shulchan (Shemos 25:26, 37:13) Onkelos renders zavit, the word that will matter later. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim (1740 to 1814) gives two etymologies: in Yerios Shlomo from PEH-HEY, "mouth," a corner being where one enters and leaves an area as the mouth is where food enters and words leave; in Cheshek Shlomo from PEH-ALEPH, "wide corner." The Moabite noblemen called paas (Bamidbar 24:17; Yirmiyahu 48:45) are those set apart at the corner of their society and the cornerstones on which it rests. Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg (1785 to 1865): peah need not be in a corner at all, only cut off and set apart, which is why the peah of a field may be left in the middle (Mishnah Peah 3:1).

keren (קרן)

Primarily an animal's horn, and in Tanach the horn-like protrusions at the four corners of the Altar (Shemos 38:2; Vayikra 8:15; Yechezkel 43:20); the Mishnah widens it to any corner while keeping the biblical altar sense (Kilayim 6:7, Yoma 5:5, Zevachim 5:3, 6:2, 6:5, 11:3, Tamid 2:5, 4:1, 7:3, Middos 3:2-3, 4:3, 4:5, Keilim 17:9-10). Malbim: the core sense is the horn that bulges from the head, borrowed for anything projecting outward, so a ray of sunlight is a keren and a corner is a keren because it juts from an otherwise smooth surface. Rabbi Mecklenburg (HaKsav VeHaKabbalah to Shemos 27:2, Vayikra 4:7) makes a similar point, and Radak even insinuates a connection between the Hebrew keren and the Latin cornu, from which the English "corner" derives by way of French. Pappenheim instead traces it to KUF-REISH, "strong impact," which yields korah, tikrah and kir, weight-bearing points of impact; a corner is where two sides collide.

zavit (זוית)

Twice in Tanach: the beauty of Jewish daughters likened to the hewn corners of a palace (Tehillim 144:12), and Yisrael drinking "like the corners of the Altar" (Zechariah 9:15). What that image means is disputed. Rashi: their victories will leave them overflowing with the good things of the spoil, as the corner of the Altar overflows with wine. Alternatively, that in defeating their enemies they will figuratively drink their blood, spilled as abundantly as the wine that overflows the Altar's corners (Radak and Mahari Kara there). Onkelos uses zavit as his standard rendering for every other corner word. Pappenheim links zavit to ziv (radiance), and offers two ways of making the connection. The first, as Rabbi Yehoshua Steinberg of the Veromemanu Foundation explains him, seems to be that turning a corner is a change of direction, and a shiny thing likewise makes one change direction by drawing the eye to it. In a separate discussion he seems to give a slightly different account: light bouncing off a shiny object toward the eye travels at an angle, and so produces a corner. He also claims that Iyar was originally called Ziv (Melachim I 6:1) because in that month the sun somehow turns a corner, which the column suggests, with a question mark, may mean its ushering in the new season of spring.

The last of Haman's ten sons was named Vayzasa (Esther 9:9), an anagram of zavit, and Rabbi Benzion Chaim Lubetzky (d. 1945) argues that in so naming him Haman meant to show off his own importance, as though his sons were the cornerstones of the Persian Empire.

The Gemara's set phrase for a corner is keren zavit (Berachos 53b, where one may use a torch's light without seeing the fire if the two of them stand on opposite sides of a keren zavit; Kiddushin 66a, where Torah was so neglected that it was relegated to a mere keren zavit for whoever wished to take it). Dr. Avi Hurvitz, a veteran linguist and expert philologist, notes that the phrase is a semantic redundancy, since keren already means corner and so does zavit.

pinah (פינה)

Twice in the Chumash, both for the corners of the Altar (Shemos 27:2, 38:2), where Onkelos gives zavit, and twenty-eight more times in Tanach. If the column has understood him correctly, Pappenheim distinguishes the two thus: zavit is the inner face of a corner, pinah the outer. Stand inside the room and it is a zavit; stand in the street and the same corner is a pinah. Hence a pinah must be built stronger than the rest, being exposed, and hence leaders are pinos (Shoftim 20:2; Shmuel I 14:38), men required to be of better quality than the rest. He derives it from PEH-NUN, "front/surface," the root of panim and of panah, to turn and face: at a pinah one must turn to keep following the perimeter; peninim (precious stones) he reads the same way, a gem cut so its faces and their corners show. Rabbi David Chaim Chelouche (1920 to 2016), late Chief Rabbi of Netanya, traces both peah and pinah to the single letter PEH, "end/edge" (with an added alef in peah and an added nun in pinah), peah naming more broadly the edge of a given area and pinah the edge where two of its sides meet; and the Rashba (responsa vol. 4 §278) presumes pinah and zavit are plain synonyms. Mordechai Zer-Kavod (Daas Mikra to Nechemiah 3:24) makes the primary sense "raised place," from rosh pinah (Tehillim 118:22) and pinos u'gevohos (Tzefaniah 1:16) and migdalim hapinos (Divrei HaYamim II 26:15); the even pinah stands against the even mosad in Yirmiyahu 51:26, foundation stone underground and corner stone all the way on top, so that a pinah is something prominently placed.

miktzoa (מקצוע)

Root ק-צ-ע, which yields a verb (cutting, removing, peeling) and three nouns: maktzua, the tool for doing it (Yeshayahu 44:13; Shabbos 123b), miktzoa itself, and ketziah, a spice or incense. The column's guess at what links the first three is that in cutting or scraping one holds the blade perpendicular to the surface, forming an angle; and perhaps ketziah too comes from the verb, its plant having had to be cut. Miktzoa as corner appears in the Mishnah as well (Tamid 1:4, 3:3, Middos 2:5), and Onkelos renders it, like the rest, zavit (Shemos 26:23; see also Rashi to Nechemiah 3:19). Pappenheim: where pinah covers any angle, right, acute or obtuse, miktzoa is specifically the acute angle (he concedes it can sometimes be a right angle), a single sharp point where two sides converge rather than an area spread out; hence he reads the Mishnah's praise of monetary law as a miktzoa baTorah (Bava Basra 10:8) as the discipline that sharpens the mind and opens it to higher intellectuality, and he suggests too that the ketziah spice is so called because its plant has many sharp angles, thorns perhaps. Rabbi Yishmael ben Chachamon, who lived in Egypt in Rambam's time, notes in his commentary (Bava Basra 175b) that the Mishnah's miktzoa means "corner" just as it does in Tanach, which as the column observes does not much clarify the usage; Rabbi Yitzchak Zev Yadler (1843 to 1917) reads it as the cornerstone of Torah study, monetary law being rooted in logical structures, a keystone and wellspring from which all other chiddushim in learning may be drawn. In Modern Hebrew miktzoa means a profession or occupation, which seems altogether unrelated to the original sense.

katzeh (קצה)

Root ק-צ-ה, "edge/end," and Onkelos renders this one zavit too (Shemos 38:5). Pappenheim: the corner that forms a right angle, and like peah a spacious area at the corner rather than miktzoa's single point. He separates katzeh from peah by orientation, katzeh being a corner above, below, in front or behind, and peah one at the side, a distinction the column says frankly it is not sure it understands. He groups here miketz/keitz, katz (being disgusted, since the disgusted man feels the thing will bring about the end of his life), ketzitzah, kayitz, yekitzah, kotz and katzin (officer), which stands to katzeh as paas stands to peah; the full family is set out in waking-yekitzah-oorah.md.

Paam is a further biblical word for corner, which Onkelos likewise renders zavit; the column sends the reader elsewhere for it.

Two rarities complete the set, both too infrequent to carry weight in a rendering: atik (Yechezkel 41:15, 42:3), which Ibn Saruk gives a quadriliteral root of its own, א-ת-י-ק, Ibn Janach and Radak trace to נ-ת-ק (disengaging, uprooting), and Pappenheim to TAV-KUF ("static," a panel holding a wall in place and not letting it move); and demeshek (Amos 3:12), a hapax that Radak takes from the context as the corner of a bed, while Rashi explains it as though it meant Damesek, the city, even though demeshek is vocalized with a shin where the place name has a sin.

Rendering guidance

• Default renderings: peah "corner" when it is a corner and "side/direction" when the pasuk pairs it with north, south, east or west; keren "horn" unless the context is plainly a corner; zavit "corner" (inner); pinah "corner" in a building, "cornerstone" or "leading man" when it is figurative; miktzoa "angle"; katzeh "edge" or "end."
• Trap: English "corner" will happily absorb peah, zavit, pinah, miktzoa and katzeh at once. Where the passage turns on the difference (Onkelos levelling four Hebrew words to zavit, or Pappenheim's angle grades), name the geometry: "the sharp angle," "the outer corner," "the right-angled edge."
• keren zavit is the Gemara's set phrase for a corner (Berachos 53b; Kiddushin 66a). Render it as one thing, "a corner," not "the horn of the corner." Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzenski (reported by Rabbi Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg at a Degel HaTorah rally) noted the redundancy over a century ago and read the phrase as "a corner of a corner," Torah consigned not even to a whole corner; the article, having reported it, says that an explanation given in a polemic context should probably not be taken as actual linguistic analysis. Treat it as a derashah for a note, not a lexical claim.
• Mishnaic peah is a halachic term of art. Leave it as peah and gloss it; "the corner of the field" is misleading, since the peah may sit in the middle (Mecklenburg on Mishnah Peah 3:1). The Mishnah's rosh tor (Kilayim 2:7, 3:3, Keilim 18:2), literally "ox head" in Aramaic, is likewise not a generic word for corner: Shadal (to Shemos 25:31) explains that it is a corner whose angle is intersected by another line, a shape said to look like an ox's head.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Vayakhel-Pekudai: Turning the Corner (Part 1/2)" (2023-03-18) and "Vayikra: Turning the Corner (Part 2/2)" (2023-03-25), What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach: raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/10884-vayakhel-pekudai-turning-the-corner-part-12.md and sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/10883-vayikra-turning-the-corner-part-22.md. Primary loci: Shemos 25:26, 26:23, 27:2, 27:9, 37:13, 38:2, 38:5; Vayikra 4:7, 8:15, 19:9, 19:27, 23:22; Bamidbar 24:17, 35:5; Shoftim 20:2; Shmuel I 14:38; Melachim I 6:1; Yeshayahu 44:13; Yirmiyahu 48:45, 51:26; Yechezkel 41:15, 42:3, 43:20; Amos 3:12; Tzefaniah 1:16; Zechariah 9:15; Tehillim 118:22, 144:12; Esther 9:9; Divrei HaYamim II 26:15; Nechemiah 3:19, 3:24; Mishnah Peah 3:1, Kilayim 2:7, 3:3, 6:7, Yoma 5:5, Zevachim 5:3, 6:2, 6:5, 11:3, Tamid 1:4, 2:5, 3:3, 4:1, 7:3, Middos 2:5, 3:2-3, 4:3, 4:5, Keilim 17:9-10, 18:2, Bava Basra 10:8 with the commentary of Rabbi Yishmael ben Chachamon to Bava Basra 175b; Berachos 53b; Kiddushin 66a; Shabbos 123b; Rashba responsa vol. 4 §278; Pappenheim, Yerios Shlomo and Cheshek Shlomo; Mecklenburg, HaKsav VeHaKabbalah; Shadal to Shemos 25:31. The article's aside on Radak and the Latin cornu, and its citation of Dr. Avi Hurvitz on keren zavit, are reported above as the article reports them.

The source article for this cluster is truncated mid-sentence in every published copy, cutting the close of an aside on rosh tor and the letter aleph; nothing the entry rests on is affected.