other
hammer
מקבת · פטיש · קורנס · הלמות · ארזפתא
Bottom line
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), so render both mallet. Patish is the plain hammer, in the Gemara the blacksmith's; kurnas, Mishnaic only, is the smith's hammer. The sources grade their sizes against each other and contradict each other doing it, so follow whichever source is being quoted rather than a fixed hierarchy.
At a glance
| Hebrew | translit | English | what sets it apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| מקבת | makeves | mallet, sledgehammer | the heavy one; from נ-ק-ב, what makes a hole (Radak) |
| פטיש | patish | hammer | "a big makeves" (Radak); the blacksmith's (Rashi to Shabbos 21b) |
| קורנס | kurnas | smith's hammer | Mishnaic; big makeves (Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur) or small (Sefer HeAruch) |
| הלמות | halmus | mallet | the poetic twin of makeves; from ה-ל-ם, "to break" (Ibn Saruk, Ibn Janach, Radak) |
Where the authorities disagree
Which hammer is bigger. Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur (Meturgaman): 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 reverses the axis: makeves is a patish with one sharp head. Nothing reconciles them, so render each word by its own character rather than by relative size.
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. Either way it is the tool that drives into a hole.
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 HaAruch), 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 Rokeach 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." The spelling follows the derivation; keep whichever the source uses.
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. The column adds a proposal of its own, offered as no more than that: 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"; it concedes it 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. The column notes 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 the column 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.
Rendering guidance
- Shoftim 4:21 and 5:26 are one story told twice. Render מקבת "mallet" and הלמות "mallet" too, so the reader sees it is the same tool.
- Trap: English "hammer" absorbs all four. Where a source grades two at once (Sefer HeAruch; Rashi to Shabbos 21b), keep "hammer" and "sledge" apart.
- קורנס in a Mishnah or in Rashi is "smith's hammer"; the generic "hammer" is now פטיש.
- מכבי / מקבי: transliterate "Maccabee"; rendering it "the Hammer" silently picks one side of the machlokes.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "The Hebrew Hammers," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, in two parts, 20 Kislev 5785 (2024-12-21) and 27 Kislev (2024-12-28): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/11627-vayeshev-the-hebrew-hammers-part-12.md and 11634-miketz-the-hebrew-hammers-part-22.md. Part 1 is about the name Maccabee, not the cluster; only its bearing on makeves is carried here. Primary loci: 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; Meturgaman; Sefer HeAruch and Mussaf HeAruch; Yerios Shlomo and Cheshek Shlomo; Aholei Yehuda; Rabbi Ernest Klein and Dr. Alexander Kohut (Aruch Completum) on kurnas; Abraham Kahana and Rabbi Eliyahu Shmuel Hartom on the kuf spelling of Maccabee.