What’s in a Word?

body

foot

פעם · רגל · פעמון · פעמותיו

Bottom line

Both words mean foot and both can mean time, instance. Regel is the plain foot, the limb; paam is the foot as it strikes the ground, so its primary sense is step and, by extension, corner (the low corner of a thing) and each occurrence. Shalosh regalim and shalosh peamim both render "three times." The trap: regel in the sense of "instance" occurs in Tanach in only two contexts, Bilaam's donkey (Bamidbar 22:28 and 32) and the three festivals (Shemos 23:14); everywhere else it is the limb, and a translator should not reach for "time" without one of those two contexts.

Distinctions

paam (פעם)

Malbim: the core sense is corner, close to peah. The four paamosav at the bottom of the Aron (Shemos 25:12) are its four corners, and a man's feet are called paam because they sit at his lower corner. On this reading paam appears to be synonymous with regel, which is what makes the doublet in Yeshayahu 26:6 work: raglei ani, paamei dalim, the feet of the poor, the feet of the destitute.

Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim derives paam from the biliteral פ-ע, whose words all denote steady, repeated motion or sound: efeh, the cry of a woman in labor (Yeshayahu 42:14) and the steady noise of the rattlesnake; po'em, the steady beat of the heart (Bereishis 41:8); paamon, a bell, named for the sound of the clapper striking its hollow shell. A foot earns the name from its metronomic tread, so a paam is one contact of the foot with the ground, that is, a step; and from there, one occurrence of anything at all.

Rabbi Shmuel Dovid Walkin: "foot" is the borrowed sense of paam; "step" is primary. That is why the Aron has paamosav, feet: even the holiest object in the Mishkan is not meant to stand still. A Jew is likewise never to stagnate in his learning but to keep climbing. He contrasts the malachim, who have a single regel (Yechezkel 1:7), fixed in the form they were created in, with no bechirah and so no growth; man has paamim, feet that move, because he must meet changing situations and choose rightly each time. Bilaam did not, and so the word paam is withheld from him.

regel (רגל)

The ordinary word for foot, and the one used for Bilaam's foot crushed against the wall (Bamidbar 22:25). Its extension to "time" is narrow: the donkey's shalosh regalim and the shalosh regalim of Pesach, Shavuos, and Succos (Shemos 23:14), where all able men present themselves before Hashem in the Beis HaMikdash. There the two senses fuse, since the olei regel came up to Yerushalayim on foot; and the tradition applies to those pilgrimages the pasuk mah yafu pe'amayich ba'ne'alim, bas nadiv, how lovely are your footsteps in sandals, daughter of nobles (Shir HaShirim 7:2).

the paamos of the Aron

Targum Onkelos and Rashi (to Shemos 25:12): the four paamos are the Aron's four corners. Ibn Ezra disagrees and reads them as four feet attached underneath; see Ramban there.

Rendering guidance

  • Regel: "foot." Paam: "step" as a movement, "time" or "instance" as a count, "corner" only where the sense is a low corner of an object.
  • Trap: English "time" absorbs both paam and regel in the counting sense, and English "foot" absorbs both in the bodily sense, so a passage that plays the two words against each other (Yeshayahu 26:6; the donkey saying shalosh regalim where shalosh peamim was expected) will read flat. Where the point is the choice of word, keep the Hebrew and gloss it.
  • Shalosh regalim as the festivals: the article renders Shemos 23:14 literally, "the three times." Our call for a sefer is "the three festivals," or keep shalosh regalim transliterated, since English "three times" there reads as a count and not as the pilgrimage; "three times" is the right rendering at Bamidbar 22:28 and 32, where the phrase is identical.
  • Where a derashah rests on paam meaning movement rather than a limb (Rabbi Walkin on the Aron), do not translate paamosav as "its corners"; that reading needs "its feet," and the disagreement between Rashi and Ibn Ezra should be noted rather than silently decided.
  • Yechezkel 1:7: regel yesharah, the single straight foot of the malachim. Do not import "step" there; the whole force of the contrast is that they do not move.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Foot Festivals," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 17 Tammuz 5778 (2018-06-30): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/7828-foot-festivals.md. Primary loci: Bamidbar 22:25, 22:28, 22:32; Shemos 23:14, 25:12; Yeshayahu 26:6, 42:14; Bereishis 41:8; Yechezkel 1:7; Shir HaShirim 7:2; Targum Onkelos, Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and Ramban to Shemos 25:12.