delay

Distinctions

ichur (איחור)

From achar, after. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim: ichur is neutral, meaning only that a point in time has passed, with no verdict on whether the tardiness was excusable. Malbim: ichur is anything past a pre-set time. Rabbi Yehuda Leib Shapira-Frankfurter (HaRechasim LeVik'ah): ichur is an acceptable lateness, what we would call fashionably late.

Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg quotes an elaborate discussion of these words from the writings of R' Naftali Hertz (Wessely) Weisel, a figure the column describes as often maligned as a maskil but whose rabbinic bona fides are also attested to. Weisel reverses the value: ichur is being late willingly and deliberately, while boshesh is being held up by forces beyond one's control. On that reading Shemos 32:1 says boshesh because the people assumed Moshe had been prevented from coming down, by illness or death, which is why they were ready to accept another leader; in truth his delay was an ichur, since he was deliberately staying to bask in Torah.

boshesh (בושש)

Rashi (to Shemos 32:1) glosses boshesh as an expression of ichur without saying what separates them. Rabbi Yehuda Leib Shapira-Frankfurter: boshesh is an excessive delay, hours upon hours; Malbim says the same, a lateness beyond the lateness. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim: boshesh is the delay one ought to be ashamed of, tying it directly to bushah.

The Midrash (Bereishis Rabbah 18:6) parses boshesh as ba'u shesh sha'os, "six hours have come," the people reckoning that midday had passed and Moshe was still not there. Rabbi Chanoch Zundel of Bialystok (Eitz Yosef) explains the derashah's warrant: the Torah's use of boshesh where ichur was expected screams for further interpretation, and the Midrash fills that lacuna. Rabbi Yehuda Leib Shapira-Frankfurter, on his own supposition that boshesh denotes excessive lateness, suggests that perhaps the appearance of this word is what led Chazal to assume the people thought Moshe was late by many hours: not late, but very late.

Rabbi Avraham Saba (Tzror HaMor) reads boshesh against Aramaic bshash, food without salt or seasoning, and hears in the word choice the Erev Rav's argument that Moshe's teachings had no taste and could be discarded. His two attestations: Targum renders the bland food of Iyov 6:6 as bshash, and Berachos 40a describes a bread so good it "requires no bshash." The Rishonim read the Gemara's bshash as delay, that is, tasty bread need not wait for a relish; Piskei HaRosh and Talmidei Rabbeinu Yonah prove it from Shemos 32:1, while Rashi proves it from Shoftim 5:28, and Maadanei Yom Tov asks why Rashi passed over the pasuk in Shemos.

hismahmeah (התמהמה)

Rabbi Yehuda Leib Shapira-Frankfurter: a delay caused by moving slower than one should, dawdling where speed was called for. His cases are Lot dragging his feet leaving Sedom (Bereishis 19:16) and David holding back his flight from Avshalom to hear from Achimaatz (Shmuel II 15:28). Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim gives it the opposite valence: hismahmeah is a delay that is positive and at times the right thing to do. He ties it to the biliteral מ-ה, mah, "what," an expression of uncertainty: one who is hismahmeah is standing about doing nothing in particular because he is still asking himself what he ought to do.

boshesh and bushah

Four accounts of why the same root gives lateness and shame. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim: it is the kind of delay to be ashamed of. Rav Hirsch: the root's core is disappointment, and shame is disappointment in oneself upon seeing one's own shortcoming, while boshesh is a delay so long that those waiting are disappointed in the man and give up on him. Rabbi Dovid Golumb (Targumna): one who is shamed is so belittled and ashamed that nobody views him as important, and the upshot is that he is no longer deemed worth waiting for when he is delayed (boshesh). Rabbi Aharon Marcus: the core of ב-ש is something being delayed or withheld, whence both lateness and the shame that turns a man's face white, his blood withheld from travelling its usual way.

Rendering guidance

• Shemos 32:1: "long overdue," "so long in coming," or "held up." Not "was late" or "delayed," which are ichur and lose the very anomaly the Midrash and the Rishonim are reading.
• Trap: English "delay" absorbs all three. Where a passage sets them against each other, use "late" for ichur, "long overdue" for boshesh, and "tarried" or "lingered" for hismahmeah, and hold the assignment.
• Bereishis 19:16 and Shmuel II 15:28: "he tarried" or "he lingered." Do not use "delayed," which reads as an outside cause; the point is that the man himself was slow.
• Where a piece quotes Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim's scheme, keep the three-way valence visible in the English: neutral, blameworthy, and commendable. Where it quotes Mecklenburg's citation of Wessely instead, the valences of ichur and boshesh swap; do not blend the two readings in one paragraph.
• Bushah is "shame," not "embarrassment," in a sefer; see the bushah cluster entry.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Better Late Than ……..," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 18 Adar II 5780 (2020-03-14): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/8644-better-late-than-aeuraeur.md. Primary loci cited: Shemos 32:1 with Rashi; Bereishis Rabbah 18:6 with Eitz Yosef; Bereishis 19:16; Shmuel II 15:28; Shoftim 5:28; Iyov 6:6 with Targum; Berachos 40a with Piskei HaRosh, Talmidei Rabbeinu Yonah, Rashi, and Maadanei Yom Tov; HaRechasim LeVik'ah to Shemos 32:1; Malbim ad loc.; Tzror HaMor ad loc.; Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim on ב-ש and on biliteral מ-ה; Targumna. The view attributed above to R' Naftali Hertz (Wessely) Weisel is given only as Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg quotes it; the article notes that he is often maligned as a maskil but that his rabbinic bona fides are also attested to. The article glosses bushah "embarrassment"; this guide renders it "shame," and see the bushah / klimah / cherpah entry, which covers the shame side of this root.