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 the column reports it as 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.

The column adds a speculation of its own, that it 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, since in this Greek word the two letters interchange anyway.

agmon (אגמון)

Five appearances (Iyov 40:26, 41:12; Yeshayahu 9:13, 19:15, 58:5). This is the third biblical word, and the column notes that Rabbi Shlomo of Urbino does not explicitly list it 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-מ, 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 a hook-topped thistle of the same marshland, used as a fishhook, and from there the word came to mean anything hooked or bent. Note that 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-פ root. Rabbi Pappenheim also follows this approach, deriving it from the two-letter root ש-פ, 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.

Rendering guidance

• Vav in the Mishkan chapters: hook. The pillars' vavim are their hooks; the word does not need transliteration except where the letter-name play is the point.
• Agmon: reed where the plant is meant (Yeshayahu 58:5, the bowed head like a reed), hook where the fishing sense is (Iyov 40:26). Choose by context; the word carries both.
• Shfataim: give the Targum's hooks with a gloss for Radak's hearths or ledges, or the reverse; do not print one silently.
• Trap: English "hook" absorbs vav, agmon, ankliyot and one reading of shfataim. Where a source glosses one Hebrew word with another (Rashi explaining vavim as ankliyot), keep the gloss visible: "vavim, that is, ankliyot, hooks," rather than "hooks, that is, hooks."
• Second trap: agmon and gome both name marsh plants, and "reed" will cover both. Where they stand together, take gome as bulrush and agmon as hooked reed.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "On Hooks and Hangers," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 4 Adar Alef 5782 (2022-02-05): https://articles.ohr.edu/articles/on-hooks-and-hangers, raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/9565-on-hooks-and-hangers.md. Primary loci cited: Shemos 26, 27, 36, 38 (the thirteen occurrences of vav) 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.