dry

Distinctions

charev (חרב), chareivah / charavah (חרבה)

The root ח-ר-ב appears over 500 times in Tanach and carries several senses, among them "sword," "destruction, desolation," and "dry." The Vilna Gaon (to Yeshayahu 8:23): chorev means most of the liquid has gone but some is left; yavesh means totally dry. His raya is the drying of the world after the Mabul, where the two words mark two stages: charvu hamayim and charvu penei ha'adamah on the first of the first month, then yavshah ha'aretz on the twenty-seventh of the second (Bereishis 8:13-14). Rashi there already has it: at charvu the ground was "like mud whose upper surface crusted over," at yavshah it was dry land as it ought to be. Sefer HaChochmah (ascribed to Rabbi Elazar Rokeach of Worms) writes that in general yabashah is a place truly dry, while chareivah is a muddy place still dripping with moisture.

The Malbim reaches the same reading and adds the ordering proof: in every pasuk where the two appear side by side, charev precedes yavesh (Yeshayahu 19:5, Iyov 14:11), which shows yavesh to be the more intense.

Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer applies it to a halachic difficulty: the Torah distinguishes a minchah mixed with oil from one that is chareivah (Vayikra 7:10), yet no minchah is bone dry. On this reading chareivah means only "oil-free," drier than its neighbor but not absolutely dry, and the Torah's choice of chareivah over yeveishah says exactly that. Against this, the column enters a caution of its own: Rabbi Tanchum HaYerushalmi's lexicon of rabbinic Hebrew equates chareivah in Mishlei 17:1 with yavesh, which leaves open the possibility that the two terms are indeed synonymous.

Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim gives two accounts. In Cheshek Shlomo and in one place in Yerios Shlomo he takes the difference as quantitative, as above. Elsewhere in Yerios Shlomo he makes it qualitative, keyed to the two kinds of moisture he distinguishes under ratuv and lach: chorev is dryness on the outside, yavesh is an interior empty of liquid, and in either case it does not matter whether the thing was ever wet before. A marsh can be called charavah, its surface firm enough to walk on, and can never be called yavesh, its inside still saturated. Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg, commenting on Shemos 14:21-22, where the sea is first made charavah by the east wind and Bnei Yisrael then come into it bayabashah, quotes Pappenheim's second explanation and adds nothing of his own. The reading that the seabed dried in stages, firm on the surface first and only afterward dry within, is the column's inference about what Mecklenburg intends, not something Mecklenburg says.

On the root: Shoresh Yesha takes ח-ר-ב at core as destruction, the opposite of living and thriving, which yields both cherev (the instrument of destruction) and dryness (what withers for lack of juice); Pappenheim says something similar. Rabbi Avraham Maimuni (to Bereishis 31:40) reads chorev as dryness caused by heat, which fits Radak in Sefer HaShorashim on ח-ר-ה, where heat is the core and anger the result. On that footing the column offers two speculations of its own, both flagged as such. First, that ח-ר-ב may somehow be an offshoot of ח-ר-(ה), the "destruction" sense alluding to the eventual consequence of uncontrolled anger and the "sword" being the tool of that destruction; the column names the downside itself, that most grammarians and lexicographers agree a beis cannot serve as a radical added to a biliteral root. Second, that ח-ר-ב may be a portmanteau of ח-ר, hole, as in chor, and ר-ב, many, as in rav, harbeh, rabbim: as a thing dries it has less moisture holding it together and may develop many holes or cracks, and a thing full of holes is that much more open to destruction, whence also "destruction" and "sword."

yavesh (יבש), yabashah (יבשה)

Pappenheim: the root is ב-ש, delay or withholding, as in boshesh Moshe laredes (Shemos 32:1), Moshe's return withheld from the people, and as in bushah, where a man withholds his face from the public. Yavesh is accordingly the withholding of the flourishing a thing should have shown; in plants that comes of dryness, and from there the word covers anything drained of its life-giving liquid. So Yeravam's hand at the mizbeach in Beis El, vativash yado (Melachim I 13:4), shriveling rather than literally drying.

Rabbi Aharon Marcus writes that the core meaning of ב-ש is finishing or completing a project, and claims that this original sense is still known to us through Akkadian. It shows, he says, in two Hebrew roots: י-ב-ש, dryness, the end or completion of the drying process, and ב-ש-ל, giving bishul as cooking and bishul as ripening (Bereishis 40:10), the completion of preparing food. He also supposes that the shin of ב-ש stands for aish, fire, alluding to the part heat plays in cooking, ripening and drying alike. His completion sense dovetails with the Vilna Gaon and Malbim on yavesh as completely dry.

negev (נגב)

Of its 110 appearances in Tanach nearly all mean "south"; only a few can mean "dry" (Yehoshua 15:19, Shoftim 1:15, Yeshayahu 21:1, Tehillim 126:4). In Mishnaic Hebrew, however, its cognates are the ordinary verb for drying something off (Chagigah 3:1, Avodah Zarah 2:11 and 5:11, Menachos 3:3 and 8:4, Keilim 25:6, Taharos 2:1, Machshirin 3:5, Mikvaos 10:4, Tvul Yom 3:6, Parah 5:2, and elsewhere).

Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur (Meturgeman) observes an asymmetry in Targum: it may leave charev as charev (Yeshayahu 19:5) and yavesh as yavesh (Bereishis 8:14, Shemos 14:22, Yeshayahu 19:5, Iyov 14:11, Tehillim 102:12), and it may render charev as negev (Bereishis 8:13, Tehillim 106:9, Iyov 14:11) or as yavesh (Bereishis 7:22, Shemos 14:21), but it never renders yavesh as negev. Rabbi Yaakov Zev Lev (Me'at Tzari to Bereishis 8:13) offers a partial resolution: negev cannot carry the total dryness of yavesh, only the partial dryness of charev.

Why negev is also "south": Rabbi Yehuda Leib Shapira-Frankfurter holds that in Hebrew it means only "south" and that the region called the Negev (Bereishis 12:9) is named for the direction, dryness being an Aramaic sense alone; the column notes that he says this explicitly and adds that he is probably basing himself on Ibn Ezra there. The column itself calls it most plausible that the core meaning is indeed "dry," the arid southern region being named for that. Various explanations are then given for why negev also means the direction, most of them assuming the south always gets more light and heat from the sun (Ibn Ezra to Bereishis 12:9; Peirush HaRokeach there; Rav Hirsch there), but the column thinks the most reasonable is that once the southern part of Eretz Yisrael was called the Negev on account of its dryness, the word was borrowed for the southern direction everywhere.

Rendering guidance

• Bereishis 8:13-14 and Shemos 14:21-22 both stage the drying. Render the first "the waters had drained" or "the surface had dried" and the second "the land was dry." Using "dry" twice erases the whole reading of the Vilna Gaon and the Malbim, and the staged reading the column draws out of Mecklenburg.
• Yabashah as a noun opposite the sea: "dry land." Charavah in the same role: "dry ground," with the sense of ground firm enough to cross.
• Vayikra 7:10 chareivah: "dry," meaning without oil. If the passage is citing Wertheimer, say "unmixed with oil" and note the word, since a plain "dry" invites the very objection he is answering.
• Trap: English "dry" absorbs all three. When two appear in one pasuk, the first must be weaker than the second; when negev means the region, leave it as the proper name Negev and do not translate it "the dry land," which would collide with yabashah.
• Vativash yado (Melachim I 13:4): "his hand withered." Not "dried," which reads literally where the pasuk is figurative.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "On Dry Land," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 10 Tammuz 5782 (2022-07-09): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/9775-on-dry-land.md. Primary loci: Bereishis 7:22, 8:13-14, 12:9, 31:40, 40:10; Shemos 14:21-22, 32:1; Vayikra 7:10; Yehoshua 15:19; Shoftim 1:15; Melachim I 13:4; Yeshayahu 8:23, 19:5, 21:1; Tehillim 102:12, 106:9, 126:4; Mishlei 17:1; Iyov 14:11; Vilna Gaon to Yeshayahu 8:23; Rashi to Bereishis 8:13-14; Radak, Sefer HaShorashim on ח-ר-ה; Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur, Meturgeman; Mishnah Chagigah 3:1, Avodah Zarah 2:11 and 5:11, Menachos 3:3 and 8:4, Keilim 25:6, Taharos 2:1, 3:8, 10:2 and 10:8, Machshirin 3:5 and 4:9, Mikvaos 10:4, Tvul Yom 3:6, Parah 5:2, 7:8, 9:1 and 11:8. Rabbi Aharon Marcus's claim that the original sense of ב-ש is still known through Akkadian is reported above as the column reports it.