drunkenness

Distinctions

sove (סבא)

Root ס-ב-א, appearing at least eight times in Tanach for getting drunk or for the drink that does it. Menachem Ibn Saruk (Machberes Menachem) defines sove simply as shichrus, drunkenness. Rabbi Shlomo of Urbino (Ohel Moed) counts it as a fourth synonym for drinking. Malbim (Yair Ohr): sove is drinking things that could intoxicate, whether or not intoxication follows, while shichrus is having actually become drunk.

On the root, Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim reduces it to the two-letter ס-ב of sivuv, going around: the drunkard goes around from store to store, tavern to tavern, wherever the drink is. (He adds that they do so to reach better wine and be able to say HaTov V'HaMeitiv over the upgrade, see Shulchan Aruch Orach Chaim 175:2; Rabbi Moshe Tzuriel notes in his glosses to Yerios Shlomo that this last was a sarcastic witticism, drunkards in reality caring nothing for berachos.) Rabbi Moshe Tedeschi Ashkenazi (Otzar Nirdafim) takes the same ס-ב differently: people sitting around a table drinking together, which would make sove kin to mesibah. Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh of Carpentras (Aholei Yehudah), Rav Hirsch (to Bereishis 24:25 and Devarim 21:19), Rabbi Shimon Yehuda Leib Goldblit (Leshon Chachamim) and Rabbi Dr. Asher Weiser (Mikra V'Lashon) all tie ס-ב-א to its homonym שׂ-ב-ע, seviah, satisfaction: the sove keeps drinking past the point of being full. Rav Hirsch also suggests a connection between ס-ב-א and צ-מ-א, on the interchangeability of samech with tzadi and of beis with mem.

sava (סבא, as a noun)

The same root as a noun for drink. Targum, Rashi (to Bava Basra 15b) and Rabbi Yosef Kara (to Yeshayahu 1:22, "your sava is diluted with water") take sava as wine; so does Rashi to Hoshea 4:18. Elsewhere Rashi seems to treat it as a general term for drinks (Yeshayahu 1:22, Nachum 1:10; and savyuta, wine merchants, at Avodah Zarah 77a). Rabbi Yosef Nechemias (to Mishlei 23:20): because drunkards are called sovim, the word sava came to refer to wine itself. Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer explains the Yeshayahu charge sharply: a man drunk enough to be a sava is no longer sensitive to the taste of what he is drinking, so unsavory sellers serve him wine diluted with water at the full price of the unadulterated article, and he never realizes he has been cheated.

Sva, or Seba, is one of the sons of Kush (Bereishis 10:7; Divrei HaYamim I 1:9), and his descendants the Sabeans appear later alongside the Kushites (Yeshayahu 43:3, 45:14). On the savaim of Yechezkel 23:42, Radak in his commentary reads that Sabean people, while in Sefer HaShorashim he writes that they were drunkards; Targum Yonasan and Rashi there read merchants who go around, taking savaim as a cognate of sivuv.

shachar / sheichar (שכר)

Root ש-כ-ר. The verb of getting drunk (Noach, vayishkar, Bereishis 9:21) occurs nineteen times in Tanach on Even-Shoshan's biblical concordance; the noun shikaron, drunkenness, appears in three places (Yirmiyahu 13:13; Yechezkel 23:33 and 39:19), and is also the name of a town in Yehudah's territory (Yehoshua 15:11); post-biblical shikur, a drunkard, is the etymon of the Yiddish shikker. The noun sheichar, the beverage that renders one drunk, appears twenty-three times. Rabbi Moshe Tedeschi Ashkenazi: strictly it is any intoxicating drink, but in Tanach it sometimes means strong wine in particular. Targum Onkelos and Rashi to Bamidbar 6:3 read it as aged wine against yayin, new wine; Rashi to Bamidbar 28:7 as intoxicating wine, and at Zevachim 91a he ties sheichar to seviah, the libation satisfying the altar's pipes. But sometimes sheichar in Tanach could refer to other intoxicating drinks: Vayikra 10:9 forbids drinking sheichar before entering the Mikdash, and there is ample reason to hold that one may be liable even for other intoxicating substances besides wine (Nazir 4a, Kerisus 13b, Ramban to Vayikra 10:9). In Rabbinic Hebrew sheichar is what we call beer or mead (Pesachim 3:1).

Rav Hirsch (to Shemos 13:12) makes a comment the column calls somewhat cryptic, connecting shachar with sheger, shir and sheker on the interchangeability of kaf, gimmel, yod and kuf: all of them name something born from oneself, and he gives no further detail. Dr. Lawrence Resnick (1,000 Words, which elucidates Rav Hirsch's word connections) spells it out as a production coming from within, mentally or physically: sheger is one's live offspring, the handiwork of one's own reproductive system; shir an enthusiastic expression of one's own mental vision; shechar the drunken state in which the imagination forms a reality of its own making; and sheker a falsehood consciously presented as true. Rabbi Aharon Marcus instead proposes that ש-כ-ר derives from the biliteral כ-ר(-כ-ר), dancing, with the initial shin peripheral to the stem, as in David mecharker before the Aron (Shmuel II 6:14, 6:16): getting drunk brings on a dizziness as though the head were dancing around.

Rendering guidance

• זולל וסובא (Devarim 21:20): "a glutton and a swiller," or "gorging on meat and swilling wine." The Mishnah (Sanhedrin 8:2) fixes zollel to meat and sove to wine, so the pair must stay two words in English.
• Trap: "drunkard" for sove. It states the result, and by Malbim sove names the drinking without asserting the result; reserve "drunk / drunkenness" for ש-כ-ר. Where a passage contrasts them, "he swilled" against "he became drunk."
• Note the halachic layer: Sanhedrin 71a and Sifrei Ki Seitzei 219 concede that the wine reading of sove has no proof from the pasuk in Devarim, only a hint from Mishlei 23:20, and Rambam (Hilchos Mamrim 7:1) grounds it in tradition. So sove on its own is best rendered "swilling" or "drinking himself drunk," not "drinking wine."
• שכר as a noun in a pasuk: "strong drink" (Vayikra 10:9, Bamidbar 6:3) rather than "beer"; save "beer" for the Rabbinic usage.
• Do not render both סבא and שכר as "drink." One is the excess, the other the substance or the state.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Ki Seitzei: Getting Drunk," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 11 Elul 5784 (2024-09-14); raw text at sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/11520-ki-seitzei-getting-drunk.md. Primary loci cited: Devarim 21:20 with Sanhedrin 8:2 and 71a and Sifrei Ki Seitzei 219; Rambam, Hilchos Mamrim 7:1; Mishlei 23:20 with Rabbi Yosef Nechemias; Yeshayahu 1:22 with Targum, Rashi to Bava Basra 15b and Rabbi Yosef Kara; Hoshea 4:18; Nachum 1:10; Avodah Zarah 77a; Bereishis 10:7 and Divrei HaYamim I 1:9; Yeshayahu 43:3 and 45:14; Yechezkel 23:42 with Radak and Targum Yonasan; Bereishis 9:21; Yirmiyahu 13:13; Yechezkel 23:33 and 39:19; Yehoshua 15:11; Bamidbar 6:3 and 28:7 with Targum Onkelos and Rashi; Zevachim 91a; Vayikra 10:9 with Nazir 4a, Kerisus 13b and Ramban; Pesachim 3:1; Rav Hirsch to Bereishis 24:25, Shemos 13:12 and Devarim 21:19; Shmuel II 6:14 and 6:16; Shulchan Aruch Orach Chaim 175:2; Dr. Lawrence Resnick, 1,000 Words. The counts of ש-כ-ר forms are given above with the column's own attribution to Even-Shoshan's biblical concordance.