hook

Distinctions

Vav (וו)

Thirteen appearances, all in the Mishkan chapters of Shemos (26, 27, 36, 38).

• Targum Onkelos never translates it; he leaves vav standing as vav.
• Menachem Ibn Saruk, Ibn Janach and Radak all take the root as ו-ו.
• Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim seems somewhat inclined to the single letter ו.
• Rabbi Aharon Marcus (1843-1916) supposes that vav is not a root-word at all: the sixth letter is shaped like a hook, much as the Arabic numerals 6 and 9 are, so the letter itself came to stand for "hook" in early Hebrew, without the word vav actually meaning "hook." He goes as far as to claim that the crude usage was abandoned once Klal Yisrael entered Eretz Yisrael, on the evidence that the word appears nowhere else in Tanach.
• Rashi (to Shemos 27:10) glosses vavim as ankliyot.

Ankliyot (אנקליות)

The Mishnaic word (Pesachim 5:9, Tamid 3:5, Middos 3:5, Keilim 12:2-3), especially the barbed part of a hook. It appears to be a Greek loanword, and seems to be related to the English anchor, angle, angling, ankle and hang: on the linguists' account Greek and English/Germanic both descend from Proto-Indo-European, and the forebear of the family is the PIE ang/ank, "to bend." Some scholars even trace to that word the name of the Angles, the Anglo-Saxon tribe behind the name England, arguing either that their homeland was a hook-shaped peninsula off the continent or that they were expert fishermen adept at angling; if so, onkliyot is also the ultimate etymon of the word English. Targum uses ankliyot to render shfataim at Yechezkel 40:43, where it is spelled with an initial ayin, and to render agmon at Iyov 40:26, at least there.

Rabbi Klein adds a speculation of his own: he began to wonder whether the Greek onkliyot is somehow related to the Greek personal name Onkelos, borne by the author of the Targum; a similar Greek name, Akylas, belonged to another famous translator of the Torah, and some have argued the two translators were one man. The question is treated at length in A. E. Silverstone's Aquila and Onkelos (Manchester University Press, 1970), which cites a letter Shadal wrote to the Maskilic scholar Rabbi Shlomo Yehuda Rappaport of Prague (1786-1867). There Shadal argues that the Greek onkliyot actually derives from the Hebrew root ע-ק-ל, "crooked," and that people who knew the Hebrew term therefore mispronounced Onkelos as Akylas. The aleph/ayin difference between the two need not trouble us, Rabbi Klein remarks, since in this Greek word the two letters interchange anyway.

Rabbi Moshe Yitzchak Ashkenazi Tedeschi (Hoil Moshe to Yechezkel 40:43): unkelin comes from ע-ק-ל with a nun added, as sha'ananim and shenanim.

Agmon (אגמון)

Five appearances (Iyov 40:26, 41:12; Yeshayahu 9:13, 19:15, 58:5). This is the third biblical word, one that Rabbi Shlomo of Urbino does not explicitly list as a synonym of vav and shfataim.

• Machberes Menachem defines it as a cane with a hooked top.
• Radak takes it as a kind of reed, reading א-ג-ם against ג-מ-א by metathesis, from which gome, reed.
• Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim works the same ground from the two-letter root ג-ם, absorbent or spongy matter: agam is a swamp, which soaks up water and stays wet; gome is the spongy reed that grows there; agmon is primarily a hook-topped thistle that also commonly grows in such marshland; it was commonly used as a fishhook, and from there the word came to mean anything hooked or bent.
• Targum renders agmon differently in Yeshayahu 9:13 and 19:15, as hegmon, itself a word of Greek origin and the antecedent of English hegemony, a reading Radak cites in Sefer HaShorashim; at Yeshayahu 58:5 Targum leaves it untranslated.

Shfataim (שפתים)

Once only, Yechezkel 40:43.

• Rabbi Shlomo of Urbino, in his lexicon of Hebrew synonyms Ohel Moed, gives shfataim as an alternate word for "hook, hanger." Targum there renders ankliyot, hooks, and Rashi and Radak cite that reading.
• But Radak himself (in his commentary and in Sefer HaShorashim s.v. ש-פ-ת) and Abarbanel explain shfataim instead as the place on which pots were set, a sort of stovetop; Machberes Menachem implies the same by filing the word under his fifth category of the ש-ף root. Rabbi Pappenheim also follows this approach, deriving it from the two-letter root ש-ף, moving without lifting the feet from the ground: Bilaam who went shefi (Bamidbar 23:3), the ashafim (Daniel 1:20, 2:2, 2:10), and the shefifon, the snake that never lifts itself off the floor. On that reading shfataim is where the pots sit and are not lifted until the cooking is done.
• Rabbi Eliezer of Beaugency (to Yechezkel 40:43) reads it as a ledge or lip running around the perimeter of the Table.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "On Hooks and Hangers," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 5 February 2022.

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "On Hooks and Hangers," What's in a Word? Synonyms in the Hebrew Language (book manuscript).

Cited in the essay: Shemos 26, 27, 36, 38 with Targum Onkelos; Rashi to Shemos 27:10; Mishnah Pesachim 5:9, Tamid 3:5, Middos 3:5, Keilim 12:2-3; Yechezkel 40:43 with Targum, Rashi, Radak, Abarbanel and Rabbi Eliezer of Beaugency; Radak, Sefer HaShorashim s.v. שפת; Machberes Menachem; Iyov 40:26, 41:12; Yeshayahu 9:13, 19:15, 58:5; Bamidbar 23:3; Daniel 1:20, 2:2, 2:10; Rabbi Shlomo of Urbino, Ohel Moed; A. E. Silverstone, Aquila and Onkelos (Manchester University Press, 1970), with Shadal's letter to Rabbi Shlomo Yehuda Rappaport of Prague; Hoil Moshe to Yechezkel 40:43.