destruction

Distinctions

churban (חורבן), charbah (חרבה)

Root ח-ר-ב. Malbim: churban is the word commonly applied to the destruction of a built-up urban area, and it is the milder of the pair. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim (1740 to 1814) reads it differently and more sharply: churban names a thing that is not damaged in itself but has been severed from something outside it that it needed in order to thrive. A ghost town wholly intact but abandoned is a churban; it is destroyed with nothing about it looking destroyed. On the same logic an arid land is a charbah, its barrenness owing not to a defect in the soil but to its being cut off from rain.

shemamah (שממה)

Root ש-מ-ם. Malbim: the general term for the utter desolation of a land, and more severe than churban. Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg (1785 to 1865): shemamah is specifically destruction that shows, so a land or building physically wrecked is shamem, because whoever sees it registers the ruin at once. Radak (Sefer HaShorashim) notes that the root carries two senses, destruction and astonishment, the latter in mishtomem, a man taken aback. Mecklenburg joins them: one who comes upon utter ruin stands dumbfounded at the sight. Shemamah is destruction in the eye of the beholder.

the two words on the Beis HaMikdash

This is where the column is going, and it is the article's own answer to the question it opens with. Just as a man's neshamah is his lifeline to the Upper Realms, so the Beis HaMikdash below was joined to a corresponding Mikdash above that served as its lifeline. Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin (Nefesh HaChaim 1:4) asserts that the Jewish sinners whose misdeeds brought on the Churban were far worse villains than Nevuchadnetzar and Titus, who destroyed the first and second Batei Mikdash: their sins defiled the Heavenly Mikdash and so disconnected the physical buildings below from their Heavenly counterparts, and the direct result of that disconnection was that the foreign armies were able to come and destroy them. Following this approach, the column posits that Churban HaBayis does not name the physical destruction of the Mikdash at all but its spiritual disconnection through sin, while the Torah's shemamah of the Mikdash does name the physical wrecking of the buildings, the sight of which should deter from further sin. When we mourn the Churban HaBayis we do not simply mourn the demolition of a building; we mourn the spiritual decline that let the destruction happen.

shahm (שם)

Ibn Ezra: shahm is not always the ordinary "there"; it can belong to ש-מ-ם and mean desolation. Mecklenburg applies this to al naharos Bavel sham yashavnu gam bachinu (Tehillim 137:1), where "there" is otherwise redundant, since "by the rivers of Bavel we sat" already says where. On his reading sham names their condition, not their location: they sat in desolation and wept.

Rendering guidance

• Default renderings: churban "destruction," charbah "ruin" or "waste place," shemamah "desolation," shamem "laid waste" or "desolate."
• Trap: English "destruction" absorbs both words, and "devastation" absorbs both as well. Where they stand together (Vayikra 26:31), keep one for ח-ר-ב and one for ש-מ-ם, with the shemamah word the heavier of the two.
• Churban HaBayis is a fixed term. Leave it transliterated and gloss it once; "the Destruction" with a capital D is acceptable in running English where the reference is unmistakable.
• Where a sefer builds on Pappenheim's sense of churban as severance, do not render it "demolition." The point of the word there is precisely that nothing visible was demolished. On the column's reading of Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin (above), Churban HaBayis names that severance and shemamah names the rubble.
• Mishtomem in a mussar context is "stands astounded," not "is desolate"; Radak's two senses share a root but not a rendering.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Words of Destruction," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach (2017-07-29): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/7366-words-of-destruction.md. Primary loci: Vayikra 26:31; Tehillim 137:1; Radak, Sefer HaShorashim s.v. שמם; Ibn Ezra on shahm as desolation; Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg, HaKsav VeHaKabbalah; Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, Nefesh HaChaim 1:4.