hammer
At a glance
In short
Makeves is the heavy hammer, mallet or sledgehammer, the tool Yael used (Shoftim 4:21); halmus is the poetic word for the very same tool (Shoftim 5:26). Patish is the plain hammer, for Rashi (to Shabbos 21b) the blacksmith's; kurnas, Mishnaic only, is the smith's hammer. The sources grade their sizes against each other, and HaBachur and the Aruch disagree over whether kurnas is a big or a small makeves.
Distinctions
Makeves (מקבת)
Five times in Tanach: Yael's (Shoftim 4:21); the quarry-tool of "the makeves of the pit you were dug from" (Yeshayahu 51:1); the tools not heard at the building of the Beis HaMikdash (Melachim I 6:7); and twice of making idols (Yeshayahu 44:12; Yirmiyahu 10:4); in the Mishnah, Keilim 29:5 and 29:7 (how much of the handle counts as part of the tool for tumah) and Parah 3:11. Rabbi Moshe Tedeschi-Ashkenazi: the hammer used primarily to wedge a nail into a hole.
Patish (פטיש)
Three times: the artisan flattening metal for an idol (Yeshayahu 41:7); "is My word not like fire, and like a patish that shatters rock" (Yirmiyahu 23:29); and Bavel as "the patish of the whole earth" (Yirmiyahu 50:23). In the first two the Targum simply Aramaicizes it as patisha. Its root פ-ט-(י)-ש yields nothing else, so its base is hard to pin down:
- Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh of Carpentras (Aholei Yehuda) connects it with פ-ש-ט, spreading or flattening, which a hammer is adept at.
- Rabbi Moshe Tedeschi-Ashkenazi derives it from either ט-ו-ש, "to fly" (Iyov 9:26), or נ-ט-ש, "to spread" (Bamidbar 11:31), for the chips of rock that fly and scatter when stone is struck.
Kurnas (קורנס)
Absent from Tanach, Hebrew and Aramaic parts alike, but Rashi glosses makeves by it (to Yirmiyahu 10:4), and it is the hammer that beat the Menorah from a single block of gold (Rashi to Shemos 25:31, Bamidbar 10:2, Menachos 28a). It is in the Mishnah at Shabbos 12:1 and 17:2 and Keilim 13:4 and 29:6. (Kohut prefers the vocalization kornas, HaBachur karnas.)
Its etymology is disputed.
- Rabbi Binyamin Mussafia (Mussaf HeAruch) already writes that the word comes from Greek, and Rabbi Ernest Klein, in his etymological dictionary of Hebrew, derives it from the Greek koryne, bat or baton or club or mace, apparently related to korys (helmet), korymbos (zenith, cluster of flowers) and koryphe (head, summit).
- Dr. Alexander Kohut (Aruch Completum), on the other hand, contends that kurnas is a native Aramaic and Syriac word.
- Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein proposes a possible link between kurnas and the name of the Greek deity Cronus, on phonetic similarity and shared consonants, some scholars having traced Cronus to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to cut"; he concedes he knows of no evidence that Cronus was ever depicted with a hammer, and says only that the convergence warrants further exploration.
Halmus (הלמות)
Once, in Devorah's song: "her hand to the peg, her right hand to the halmus of the toilers, and she struck (halmah) Sisera" (Shoftim 5:26). Since the prose account calls the same tool a makeves, the two are one thing, as Ibn Janach and Radak say outright in their Sifrei HaShorashim and as Targum confirms by rendering both arzafta (Shoftim 4:21 and 5:26). Arzafta or marzafta is the Talmudic Aramaic word (Berachos 34a, Megillah 25a, Gittin 56b), which Rashi defines as kurnas (to Berachos 34a, Gittin 56b, Bava Basra 20a), bringing the cluster full circle; see also Targum Yonasan to Yeshayahu 41:7, rendering holem as kurnas, and Targum to Tehillim 73:10. There is also an Arabic cognate, marzaba, sledgehammer.
- The root ה-ל-ם (so Ibn Saruk, Ibn Janach and Radak) also gives the verb "to break".
- Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim (Yerios Shlomo, Cheshek Shlomo) reduces it to the biliteral ה-ל, "spreading out," as in yahel (light diffusing), yahalom, mahul (a thick liquid diluted through a thinner one), hallel and tehillah, halah and halom, and ohel (a tent spread over its pegs), so halmah is smashing that scatters the pieces; Pappenheim does not say so explicitly, but Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein adds that halmus is then the instrument that brings that about.
- Rabbi Moshe Tedeschi-Ashkenazi instead reads ח-ל-ם or א-ל-ם, "healthy, strong, powerful," a hammer so big that even a strong man is left tired out by a blow with it.
Where the authorities disagree
Which hammer is bigger.
- Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur (Meturgeman): kurnas is a big makeves.
- Rabbi Nosson of Rome (Sefer HeAruch): kurnas is a small makeves and a big patish.
- Rashi (to Shabbos 21b): patish is a big kurnas, the blacksmith's, though elsewhere (Shabbos 73a, Moed Katan 11a) he simply equates the two.
- Radak: patish is a big makeves. Rabbi Yitzchak Avineri similarly writes that makeves is a type of patish with one sharp head.
Where makeves comes from.
- Ibn Janach, Ibn Parchon, and Radak file it under נ-ק-ב, "to bore," Ibn Parchon explaining that the dagesh in the mem stands for a dropped nun, as though the word were menakeves.
- Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim takes a similar approach but treats the mem as extraneous and reads the biliteral ק-ב, "making a hole," which also gives nekev (hole), nekeivah (female), kav (a measure taken with a hollowed piece of wood), yekev (a wine-pit), kubah (a chamber of hewn stone), keivah (the stomach, with a hole at each end) and nokev (stating something explicitly, or cursing, as boring an opening into what ambiguity had closed).
- Menachem Ibn Saruk (Machberes Menachem) ignores the word altogether and lists it under no root.
What makavan means (Bechoros 7:1, a blemish disqualifying a kohen).
- Bechoros 43b says he is hammer-headed; the Mainz Commentary ascribed to Rabbeinu Gershom and Rabbi Nosson of Rome (Sefer HeAruch), that his forehead and back-head protrude outwardly so that his head looks like a makeves.
- Rashi takes a slightly different approach, seeing makavan as another word for kardum, a hatchet.
Whether Maccabee means "hammer."
- With a kaf it is an acronym of mi kamocha ba'eilim Hashem (Shemos 15:11): Peirush HaRokeach there, Rabbi Avraham Saba (Tzror HaMor), Alshich, the Shelah, and Zohar Chadash 73b with the Biur HaGra; the Chasam Sofer reads Matisyahu Kohen ben Yochanan; the Ramak (Ohr Yakar) and the Maggid of Kozhnitz tie it to kibui, extinguishing.
- With a kuf it is makeves, "hammer," already in Rabbi Yochanan Treves; on that understanding Abraham Kahana and Rabbi Eliyahu Shmuel Hartom spelled the word with a kuf when they translated the apocrypha into Hebrew, explaining that Yehudah was called Maccabee because he fought like a hammer smashing its opponents, which Kahana compares to the Frankish king Charles Martel, martel being Old French for hammer.
- Rabbi Hartom also floats two further readings: that the nickname was given at birth because Yehudah's head was shaped like a hammer (compare makavan above), and that Maccabee is a shortened makav-yahu, from nakav in the sense of marking or designating, "the one designated by Hashem."
Also discussed in
- Cutting toolsקורנס (kurnas)
- Hereהלמות / הלום (ה-ל-ם, ה-ל)
Radak on these roots
Sefer HaShorashim
ה-ל-ם
To be broken and crushed, or to strike; the הַלְמוּת is a hammer. A second sense is הֲלֹם, here.
Striking and breaking
אָז הָלְמוּ עִקְּבֵי־סוּס (Shoftim 5:22), then the horses' heels were broken, that is, נשברו ונכתתו, broken and crushed; the verb here takes no object, as though it had said נהלמו, they were struck; and so וְהִנֵּה הֶֽהָמוֹן נָמוֹג וַיֵּלֶךְ וַֽהֲלֹֽם (Shmuel I 14:16), and behold, the multitude melted away and went on and was broken, meaning it went on going and being broken. Transitive are הֲלָמוּנִי בַּל־יָדָעְתִּי (Mishlei 23:35), they struck me and I did not know it, בְּכַשִּׁיל וְכֵֽילַפֹּת יַֽהֲלֹמֽוּן (Tehillim 74:6), with hatchet and hammers they strike, and הֲלוּמֵי יָיִן (Yeshayahu 28:1), men struck down by wine. The noun is הוֹלֶם פָּעַם (Yeshayahu 41:7), the one who strikes, and with a mem added, לְמַֽהֲלֻמוֹת (Mishlei 18:6), for blows.
The tool
לְהַלְמוּת עֲמֵלִים (Shoftim 5:26), to the הַלְמוּת of the workmen: the name of a tool, which is the מַקֶּבֶת, the hammer.
Here, in this place
אַל־תִּקְרַב הֲלֹם (Shemos 3:5), do not come near here, and כִּי הֲבִיאֹתַנִי עַד־הֲלֹם (Shmuel II 7:18), that You have brought me this far: their sense is as הנה, here.
Where Rabbi Yonah differs
Radak takes יָשׁוּב עַמּוֹ הֲלֹם (Tehillim 73:10), His people return here, in this second sense: they come back again and again here, to this matter, to weigh and consider why the wicked have their ease, and why the waters of a full cup are drained out to them, that is, that they are sated with every good of this world. Rabbi Yonah puts the pasuk in the first sense, of being broken. Radak takes that to mean that the people come back broken at seeing the ease of the wicked, and that the waters of the full cup are then the tears of their weeping.
The stone
In נֹפֶךְ סַפִּיר וְיָהֲלֹם (Shemos 28:18), a nofech, a sapphire and a yahalom, the yud may be an addition, and the word is a precious stone. Rabbi Avraham ben Ezra writes there that a great Sephardi sage said it is the one called in Arabic אל מא"ס, which breaks every stone and pierces crystal, and that the name comes from הוֹלֶם פָּעַם (Yeshayahu 41:7), the one who strikes.
אָז הָֽלְמוּ עִקְּבֵי־סוּס (שופטים ה, כב), כלומר נשברו ונכתתו והוא בודד כאילו אמר נהלמו וכן וְהִנֵּה הֶֽהָמוֹן נָמוֹג וַיֵּלֶךְ וַֽהֲלֹֽם (שמואל א' יד, טז), רצונו לומר וילך הלוך והשבר. והעובר הֲלָמוּנִי בַּל־יָדָעְתִּי (משלי כג, לה), בְּכַשִּׁיל וְכֵֽילַפֹּת יַֽהֲלֹמֽוּן (תהלים עד, ו), הֲלוּמֵי יָֽיִן (ישעיה כח, א). והשם אֶת־הוֹלֶם פָּעַם (ישעיה מא, ו). ובתוספת מ"ם לְמַֽהֲלֻמוֹת יקרא (משלי יח, ו). ושם הכלי לְהַלְמוּת עֲמֵלִים (שופטים ה, כו), והוא המקבת. וענין אחר ויאמר אַל־תִּקְרַב הֲלֹם (שמות ג, ה), וַיֹּאמְרוּ לוֹ מִֽי־הֱבִיאֲךָ הֲלֹם (שופטים יח, ג), כִּי הֲבִֽיאֹתַנִי עַד־הֲלֹֽם (שמואל ב' ז, יח), לָכֵן יָשׁיּב [יָשׁוּב] עַמּוֹ הֲלֹם (תהלים עג, י), ענינם כמו הנה. ופירוש יָשׁיּב [יָשׁוּב] עַמּוֹ הֲלֹם ישוב עמו פעם אחר פעם הנה בזה הענין לחשוב ולהתבונן בו למה תהיה שלות הרשעים ולמה מֵי כוס מָלֵא יִמָּצוּ לָֽמוֹ כלומר שהם שבעים מכל טוב בעולם הזה. ורבי יונה הכניס לָכֵן יָשׁיּב [יָשׁוּב] עַמּוֹ הֲלֹם בענין הראשון כלומר ישוב עמו נשבר בראותם שלות הרשעים וּמֵי מָלֵא יִמָּצוּ לָֽמוֹ (שם) רצונו לומר דמעת הבכי. נֹפֶךְ סַפִּיר וְיָֽהֲלֹֽם (שמות כח, יח), אפשר שתהיה היו"ד נוספת והיא אבן יקרה. וכתב רבי אברהם בן עזרא (שם) כי חכם גדול ספרדי אמר שהוא הנקרא בערבי אל מא"ס שהוא שובר כל האבנים ונוקב הבדולח והוא מגזרת הוֹלֶם פָּעַם (ישעיה מא, ז).
נ-ק-ב
To bore and pierce; מַקֶּבֶת is the hammer that bores, and נְקֵבָה, female, derives from this sense. In another sense, to name, and to spell out the Name and curse.
Boring a hole
וּבָא בְכַפּוֹ וּנְקָבָהּ (Yeshayahu 36:6), and it goes into his palm and pierces it; אֶל־צְרוֹר נָקֽוּב (Chaggai 1:6), into a bag with a hole in it; וַיִּקֹּב חֹר (Melachim II 12:10), and he bored a hole; בְּמֽוֹקְשִׁים יִנְקָב ־אָֽף (Iyov 40:24), with snares his nose is pierced.
The hammer that bores
וְאֶל־ מַקֶּבֶת בּוֹר (Yeshayahu 51:1), and to the bored pit, is the pit you were quarried from. The tool with which stones are dressed and bored is likewise called מקבת: a hammer with one end sharp for boring and dressing, while with the other end they strike and pound, in work of iron and copper and the like. וַתָּשֶׂם אֶת־ הַמַּקֶּבֶת בְּיָדָהּ (Shoftim 4:21), and she put the hammer in her hand; וּמַקָּבוֹת וְהַגַּרְזֶן (Melachim I 6:7), hammers and the axe; וּבְמַקָּבוֹת יְחַזְּקוּם (Yirmiyahu 10:4), and with hammers they fasten them.
Male and female
From this sense of piercing he derives זָכָר וּנְקֵבָה (Bereishis 1:27), male and female.
Naming, and cursing by name
The other sense: נָקְבָה שְׂכָֽרְךָ עָלַי (Bereishis 30:28), name your wage to me; נְקֻבֵי רֵאשִׁית הַגּוֹיִם (Amos 6:1), those named first of the nations; אֲשֶׁר פִּי י"י יִקֳּבֶֽנּוּ (Yeshayahu 62:2), which the mouth of Hashem will name. וַיִּקֹּב בֶּן־הָֽאִשָּׁה הַיִּשְׂרְאֵלִית (Vayikra 24:11), and the son of the Yisraelite woman spelled out, means that he spelled out the Name in its letters and cursed; and together with the sense of cursing, וְנֹקֵב שֵׁם (Vayikra 24:16), one who spells out the Name, means one who spells it out and curses, for he is not liable until he spells it out and curses. And יִקְּבֻהוּ אֹֽרְרֵי־יוֹם (Iyov 3:8), let those who curse the day curse it; יִקְּבֻהוּ לְאוֹם (Mishlei 11:26), the people curse him; and וָֽאֶקּוֹב נָוֵהוּ פִתְאֹֽם (Iyov 5:3), and I cursed his dwelling suddenly.
וּבָא בְכַפּוֹ וּנְקָבָהּ (ישעיה לו, ו), נָקַבְתָּ בְמַטָּיו (חבקוק ג, יד), בְּמֽוֹקְשִׁים יִנְקָב־אָֽף (איוב מ, כד), אֶל־צְרוֹר נָקֽוּב (חגי א, ו), וַיִּקֹּב חֹר (מלכים ב' יב, י). והשם וְאֶל־מַקֶּבֶת בּוֹר (ישעיה נא, א), כלומר אל בור נקובה שנוקרתם ממנה. וכן שם הכלי שפוסלין בו האבנים ונוקבים. אותם בו נקרא מקבת, והוא הפטיש שראשו האחד חד לנקוב ולפסול בו ובראשו האחר מכין בו והולמים בו במלאכת הברזל והנחשת וזולתם. וַתָּשֶׂם אֶת־הַמַּקֶּבֶת בְּיָדָהּ (שופטים ד, כא), וּמַקָּבוֹת וְהַגַּרְזֶן (מלכים א' ו, ז), וּבַמַּקָּבוֹת יִצְּרֵהוּ (ישעיה מד, יב), במסמרות וּבְמַקָּבוֹת יְחַזְּקוּם (ירמיה י, ד). ומן הענין הזה נגזר זָכָר וּנְקֵבָה (בראשית א, כז). וענין אחר נְקֻבֵי רֵאשִׁית הַגּוֹיִם (עמוס ו, א), נָקְבָה שְׂכָֽרְךָ עָלַי (בראשית ל, כח), אֲשֶׁר פִּי י"י יִקֳּבֶֽנּוּ (ישעיה סב, ב), וַיִּקֹּב בֶּן־הָֽאִשָּׁה הַיִּשְׂרְאֵלִית (ויקרא כד, יא), פירש השם באותיותיו וקלל. ועם ענין הקללה וְנֹקֵב שֵׁם־י"י (ויקרא כד, טז), כלומר מפרש ומקלל, שאינו חייב עד שיפרש ויקלל. יִקְּבֻהוּ אֹֽרְרֵי־יוֹם (איוב ג, ח), יִקְּבֻהוּ לְאוֹם (משלי יא, כו), וָֽאֶקּוֹב נָוֵהוּ פִתְאֹֽם (איוב ה, ג).
פ-ט-ש
A big hammer: the large מקבת.
The one pasuk
וּכְפַטִּישׁ יְפֹצֵֽץ סָֽלַע (Yirmiyahu 23:29), and like a hammer that shatters rock: it is the large מקבת, the big hammer.
וּכְפַטִּישׁ יְפֹצֵֽץ סָֽלַע (ירמיה כג, כט), היא המקבת הגדולה.
Radak, Sefer HaShorashim, Berlin 1847. Public domain, digitised by Sefaria from the National Library of Israel.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Vayeshev: The Hebrew Hammers (Part 1/2)," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 21 December 2024.
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Miketz: The Hebrew Hammers (Part 2/2)," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 28 December 2024.
Cited in the essay: Shoftim 4:21, 5:26; Yeshayahu 41:7, 44:12, 51:1; Yirmiyahu 10:4, 23:29, 50:23; Melachim I 6:7; Shemos 15:11, 25:31; Bamidbar 10:2, 11:31; Iyov 9:26; Tehillim 73:10; Mishnah Keilim 13:4, 29:5, 29:6 and 29:7, Shabbos 12:1 and 17:2, Parah 3:11, Bechoros 7:1; Bechoros 43b with Rashi and the Mainz Commentary ascribed to Rabbeinu Gershom; Shabbos 21b, 73a; Moed Katan 11a; Berachos 34a; Megillah 25a; Gittin 56b; Bava Basra 20a; Menachos 28a; Sifrei HaShorashim; Machberes Menachem; Meturgeman; Sefer HeAruch and Mussaf HeAruch; Yerios Shlomo and Cheshek Shlomo; Aholei Yehuda; Rabbi Ernest Klein and Dr. Alexander Kohut (Aruch Completum) on kurnas; Peirush HaRokeach to Shemos 15:11, Tzror HaMor, Zohar Chadash 73b with Biur HaGra, and Ohr Yakar on Maccabee; Abraham Kahana and Rabbi Eliyahu Shmuel Hartom on the kuf spelling of Maccabee.