exaggeration

Distinctions

The sugya that frames the question

Moshe reports the spies as having seen "great and fortified cities in the heavens" (Devarim 1:28). Tamid 29a and Chullin 90b say the Torah is speaking hyperbolically there, since the spies did not literally see Canaanite cities reaching the heavens: in Rabbi Ami's words, the Torah speaks in divrei havai. Rabbi Ami adds that the nevi'im, and even the rabbis, are also wont to speak in hyperbolic exaggerations. The same passage uses both havai and guzma for this, apparently interchangeably, so that they seem to be synonyms; their etymologies, as the column shows, are another matter.

havai (הבאי / הואי)

The older of the two; it is already in the Mishnah, where guzma is not. Nedarim 3:1-2 rules that nidrei havai do not take effect: a man who vows on the strength of having seen on this road as many people as left Mitzrayim, or a snake as long as the beam of an olive press, has not undertaken a vow at all, because he meant only to stress how many and how long, not to bind himself to the literal figure. Rashi (to Chullin 90b) glosses divrei havai as the way plain people speak, coarse and overstated; they are not setting out to lie, but they are not careful to say exactly what is so. The word has two spellings and a derivation for each:

• Spelled with a vav, it looks like the verb "to be," so havai is what simply is: this is how people talk, and no more should be read into it.
• Spelled with a beis, it goes back to the biliteral ה-ב. Rabbi Aryeh Leib Feinstein of Brisk gives that root's core as raising the voice (Mishlei 30:15), and hyperbole is a figurative raising of the voice to be heard; Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim reads ה-ב as calling others to make something ready, though he does not treat havai itself.
• Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur suggests havai is derived from the Aramaic hovai, a thorn (Targum to Yeshayahu 7:25, 32:13; Iyov 30:4): just as thorns count for nothing against the rest of the plant, so divrei havai count for nothing, and as untrue, beside other rhetorical devices. Rabbeinu Nissim (to Nedarim 20b) cites this first, on nidrei havai. The column notes that it bears some thematic resemblance to Dr. Alexander Kohut's comparison of havai to a similar Persian word meaning breath, air, nothingness, futility.
• Rabbeinu Tam and Rabbi Eliezer of Metz are quoted as relating havai to the Biblical habaim, engaging in stupidities (Targum to Yechezkel 20:29), presumably, the column adds, because a hyperbole that does not fully answer to the reality it purports to describe is nothing but so much foolishness (see also Tosafos Yeshanim to Nedarim 20b).
• Rabbi Menachem Azariah of Fano refuses to let the word mean "null": havai points to something that still wants study. He reads it as an acronym for hinei barchu es Hashem (Tehillim 134:1).

guzma (גוזמא)

Neither in Tanach nor in the Mishnah; it is the Gemara's word. Rashi (to Bava Metzia 38a, Chullin 90b, and Erchin 11a) explains it as extra words, speech that does not answer to the fact. At Beitzah 4a the Gemara asks why a baraisa troubled to permit two obviously permitted things, and answers that the baraisa is a guzma; Rashi there takes guzma as a rhetorical device, adding to a matter in order to press it home, so that rulings entirely true were framed as though they were novel. Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur (Sefer HaTishbi), gathering these sugyos, declares that guzma and havai mean exactly the same thing, the act of overstating something in a way that is not literally true. On where the word comes from:

• Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur (Sefer HaTishbi) and Rabbi Binyamin Mussafia (Mussaf HaAruch) hold it is a Greek loanword. The column reports that after some searching it could not pin down any specific Greek word behind it, and for that reason prefers to assume a Semitic origin.
• In Biblical Hebrew the root ג-ז-ם appears only five times: three as gazam, a type of grasshopper (Yoel 1:4, 2:25; Amos 4:9), and twice as the proper name Gazam, whose family were among the Nesinim who came up with Zerubavel (Ezra 2:48, Nechemiah 7:51). In rabbinic Aramaic the root took on the further sense of threatening.
• Rabbi Yaakov Emden: from that Aramaic sense of ג-ז-ם, to threaten (Targum to Tehillim 8:3, Mishlei 15:30, Iyov 30:21; Shevuos 46a). Most threats are empty, made to frighten and never meant to be carried out, and a guzma likewise does not answer to the truth.
• Rav Hirsch (to Bereishis 11:6, Vayikra 26:4, Devarim 18:10): from gazam, the locust (Yoel 1:4, 2:25; Amos 4:9), which comes in swarms; a guzma is something true whose numbers have been swelled. He further links the root, by the interchangeability of gimmel, yod and kuf, to yazam, planning or enterprise, the ability to make something more out of something less, and to kasam, magic, which circumvents nature's limits to yield more than usual, or else because the magician claims access to more knowledge than an ordinary man; and, by the interchangeability of zayin and shin, to geshem, a solid mass made up of a hyperbolic quantity of parts.
• Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim does not treat guzma, but his core for ג-ז is trimming that leaves part attached and part cut away: geiz, the grass left after mowing (Tehillim 72:6), gozez, shearing (Bereishis 31:19, 38:12), gazam the locust that eats some and leaves some, geza, a stump, gazis, hewn stone. The article builds on this together with the rabbinic gozem, to prune for the plant's own good (Avodah Zarah 50b), and suggests that a guzma is an exaggeration still rooted in a truth rather than cut loose from it.
• Rabbi Shmuel Jaffa-Ashkenazi (Yefeh Mareh, end of Yerushalmi Shekalim) reads guzma as a portmanteau of egoz plus meah, speaking of one nut as though there were a hundred; he does not explain, the column notes, why egozim in particular were chosen for the illustration (compare Eruvin 2b on guzma and the number one hundred).

How far the exaggeration goes

Chazal's examples are all from the Mishnah: the tamid drinking from a golden cup (Tamid 3:4), three hundred kor of ash on the Mizbeach (Tamid 2:2), the Golden Vine that took three hundred Kohanim to move (Middos 3:8), the paroches that took three hundred Kohanim to immerse (Shekalim 8:5). Rabbi Yissachar Ber Eilenberg notes that these are a sample of rabbinic hyperbole in the Mishnah, not a complete list. Rabbi Yaakov Emden insists that the Mishnah is not lying: what it says is not to be taken literally exactly as it sounds, but is still true when properly understood. Three hundred Kohanim really were involved with the Golden Vine, and it took that many, Rabbi Emden assumes, because as some tired under the weight others had to take their place; only the impression that all three hundred were needed at one time is the guzma. Rabbi Eliyahu HaKohen of Izmir reads the spies' cities "in the heavens" the same way, since anything very tall looks to the eye as though it reaches the sky. Rabbi Meir Pozna of London adds a further point on that pasuk: the spies themselves said only that the cities were great and fortified (Bamidbar 13:28), and it was Moshe Rabbeinu who reported them as saying "in the heavens" (Devarim 1:28, and again 9:1), so the havai is his framing of their report.

Rendering guidance

• Divrei havai: "words of hyperbole," or "a manner of speech." Avoid "exaggeration" alone in a halachic context, which makes the Mishnah sound careless; the Gemara's point is that this is a recognized register.
• Nidrei havai: "vows of hyperbole," never "false vows." The vow is void because nothing was meant, not because something untrue was said.
• Guzma: "an overstatement," or "hyperbole." In Beitzah 4a, where nothing untrue was said at all, "overstatement" is right and "exaggeration" is wrong.
• Trap: English "exaggeration" absorbs both words and carries an accusation with it. Where a sugya sets havai beside guzma as two labels for one thing, use "hyperbole" for havai and "overstatement" for guzma and say in a note that the Gemara treats them as one.
• Second trap: do not translate either word as "not literally true." Rabbi Yaakov Emden's whole position is that the words are true and the implication is not, so an English rendering that decides against him is not neutral.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Empty Exaggerations," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 3 Tamuz 5782 (2022-07-02): sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/9756-empty-exaggerations.md. Primary loci: Devarim 1:28 and 9:1; Bamidbar 13:28; Tamid 29a and Chullin 90b (Rabbi Ami); Mishnah Tamid 2:2 and 3:4, Middos 3:8, Shekalim 8:5, Nedarim 3:1-2; Nedarim 20b with Rabbeinu Nissim and Tosafos Yeshanim; Bava Metzia 38a, Erchin 11a, Beitzah 4a, Eruvin 2b, Shevuos 46a, Avodah Zarah 50b, with Rashi where cited; Yoel 1:4, 2:25; Amos 4:9; Ezra 2:48 and Nechemiah 7:51; Tehillim 8:3, 72:6, 134:1; Mishlei 15:30, 30:15; Iyov 30:4, 30:21; Yeshayahu 7:25, 32:13; Yechezkel 20:29; Bereishis 11:6, 31:19, 38:12; Vayikra 26:4; Devarim 18:10; Sefer HaTishbi; Mussaf HaAruch; Yefeh Mareh to the end of Yerushalmi Shekalim. Dr. Alexander Kohut's comparison of havai to a Persian word is reported here as the article reports it.