food

Distinctions

ochel (אוכל), maachal (מאכל)

Root א-כ-ל, and so anything eaten. The grammarians note that the root covers consuming and destroying generally, by fire (Shemos 3:2, 24:17) or by sword (Devarim 32:42; Yirmiyahu 46:10). Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim (1740 to 1814) traces it to the biliteral כ-ל, utter destruction, kilayon. Rabbi Yehuda HaChassid notes that dagan and ochel share a gematria of 57.

mazon (מזון)

Bereishis 45:23. Narrower than ochel: food that gives the body what it needs. Menachem Ibn Saruk and Pappenheim take the root as the biliteral ז-ן; Ibn Chayyuj, Ibn Janach and Radak as ז-ו-ן. The sense is not in dispute.

yevul (יבול)

Ibn Saruk and Pappenheim: root ב-ל; Ibn Janach and Radak: י-ב-ל. Pappenheim reads ב-ל as decomposition and gives two applications: in Yerios Shlomo, all produce is yevul because the seed decomposes to let what grows from it come up; in Cheshek Shlomo, the especially perishable produce is yevul because it rots if it is not looked after.

tevuah (תבואה)

Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer (1866 to 1935): root ב-א, coming or bringing, so whatever comes forth from a seed or a tree; hence its extension to the fruits of any conduct (Mishlei 3:14, 18:20, and 10:16, which the article prints as 10:15). Wertheimer stresses that produce is tevuah even before full ripeness and even while still attached to the ground, once it has reached a third of its growth (Yerushalmi Kilayim 7:5). Ibn Janach: produce is tevuah because it comes in at set times of the year. Radak (to Yehoshua 5:11 and Sefer HaShorashim) sets tevuah against avur: avur goes with avar, past, and is grain of previous years, while tevuah goes with ba and is this year's. Rav Hirsch: tevuah is the choicest produce, the kind a farmer wants to bring into his house.

tenuvah (תנובה)

Pappenheim: root נ-ו-ב, fully developed products, agricultural and verbal alike, so tenuvah is specifically ripe produce (Devarim 32:13), and niv sefasayim (Yeshayahu 57:19), the product of the lips, is well-formed speech.

dagan (דגן)

Wertheimer: the five grains (wheat, barley, oats, spelt and rye), and only once they have been ripened, reaped, and heaped into a smooth pile (see Rashi to Berachos 47b).

bar (בר)

Pappenheim: the biliteral ב-ר is separating and excluding, which gives bar as son (separated from the mother at birth), bor and boris (cleansers that separate off filth), and bari and barah (a clarity reached by excluding every other possibility). As food, bar is grain already separated from its chaff. Rabbi Yitzchok of Volozhin (1780 to 1849) says the same, that bar means chosen or refined, grain without chaff (see also Ramban to Bereishis 41:49), and explains that Yosef had the Egyptians store the grain that way (Bereishis 41:35) because otherwise there would not have been room for it all.

The column adds a note on the English: the King James Version renders bar "corn," which did not then mean the yellow stuff on the cob. "Corn" originally meant grain with the seed still inside, and was used of whatever staple grain a given place grew; only after the discovery of the Americas did it attach almost exclusively to what is now called corn, or maize in the Native American languages the word comes from.

shever (שבר)

The word seems to derive from the triliteral ש-ב-ר, breaking. Radak (to Amos 8:5, Bereishis 41:56, and Sefer HaShorashim) and the Meiri (to Mishlei 10:3): produce is shever because it breaks the famine, which is why most of its occurrences in Tanach are in the Yosef narrative. Rabbi Yechezkel Weinfeld of Ramat Eshkol compares shever, which breaks a famine, to the English breakfast, the morning meal that breaks the night's fast. Peirush HaRokeach connects shever to sever, hope, since men look to Hashem trustingly and hopefully while He gives them their food (Tehillim 145:15). Ibn Saruk, Peirush HaRokeach and Rabbeinu Bachaya all take shever as food regarded as a purchased commodity; Rabbeinu Bachaya says the word implies a sale, which is seen in rabbinic Hebrew, where shover is a receipt, attesting to payment and so breaking a litigant's ability to claim a debt. (In Modern Hebrew shover is a voucher and kabbalah is the receipt.) Rabbi Avraham Rivlin points out that shever thus carries two diametrically opposed senses at once, breaking or destroying and building or sustaining. Rabbeinu Bachaya adds that Yaakov asked his sons for shever rather than ochel or bar because shever implies the edible grain together with its chaff, alluding to them that in time they would endure the bad, the exile in which they would be broken as a people, along with the good.

avur (עבור)

The Aramaic leveller. Onkelos renders ochel, bar, shever and dagan all as avur (Bereishis 41:35, 42:1; Devarim 2:28, 7:13), and Targum Yonasan does the same to both words in the single pasuk of Amos 8:5. The Hebrew form is at Yehoshua 5:11, where Radak reads it as last year's grain.

Rendering guidance

• Default renderings: ochel "food"; mazon "sustenance" or "nourishment"; yevul "produce"; tevuah "crop" or "yield"; tenuvah "ripe produce"; dagan "grain"; bar "cleaned grain" or "kernels"; shever "provisions" or "rations."
• Trap: English "grain" will absorb dagan, bar and shever together, and "produce" will absorb yevul, tevuah and tenuvah. Where two stand in one pasuk (Amos 8:5 has shever and bar), translate the state of the grain and not just the substance: "provisions" against "cleaned grain."
• Do not read Onkelos back into the Hebrew. His single avur is a feature of Aramaic, not evidence that the Hebrew words are synonyms; Radak's avur is itself a distinct thing, old grain.
• Mezonos in a halachic context stays transliterated. So does tevuah where it is the technical produce of the year for maaser or shemittah.
• The King James Version renders bar as "corn," which then meant any staple grain with the seed still in, not maize. In a modern sefer "corn" is a false friend; use "grain."
• Shever in the Yosef narrative is a purchase, not a gift. "To buy provisions" keeps Rabbeinu Bachaya's sense of a sale; "to get food" loses it.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "A Biblical Feast," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach (2020-01-04): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/8546-a-biblical-feast.md. The eightfold list of words for food is from Chuppas Eliyahu and Pirkei Rabbeinu HaKadosh. Primary loci: Bereishis 41:35, 41:49, 41:56, 42:1, 45:23; Shemos 3:2, 24:17; Devarim 2:28, 7:13, 32:13, 32:42; Yehoshua 5:11; Yeshayahu 57:19; Yirmiyahu 46:10; Amos 8:5; Tehillim 145:15; Mishlei 3:14, 10:3, 10:16 (the article prints 10:15), 18:20; Yerushalmi Kilayim 7:5; Berachos 47b with Rashi; Radak, Sefer HaShorashim, and to Yehoshua 5:11, Bereishis 41:56, Amos 8:5; Meiri to Mishlei 10:3; Ramban to Bereishis 41:49; Rabbeinu Bachaya on the Yosef narrative; Peirush HaRokeach; Pappenheim, Yerios Shlomo and Cheshek Shlomo.