nature
horse
At a glance
In short
Sus is the ordinary horse. Rechesh is a particular kind of horse, fast and used for couriers or for pulling: a swift steed or courier horse, not plain "horse." Radak, though, holds that it is some swift animal and not necessarily a horse at all. Achashtranim and remachim occur together only in Esther 8:10, and Megillah 18a says outright that we do not know what they mean. Many commentators take achashtranim to be mules and remachim the mares that bore them.
Distinctions
Sus (סוס)
Roughly 140 times in Tanach, and in the name Gadi ben Susi (Bamidbar 13:11); at Yeshayahu 38:14 the same word is a bird.
- Ibn Janach and Radak take the root as SAMECH-VAV-SAMECH, Menachem Ibn Saruk as biliteral SAMECH-SAMECH.
- Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim offers two: in Yerios Shlomo, the one-letter root SAMECH, repellence, yielding nisah, fleeing, the animal one flees on; in Cheshek Shlomo, SIN-SIN, liveliness, the root of sasson.
- Rav Hirsch (to Bereishis 1:21) reads SAMECH-VAV-SAMECH alongside ZAYIN-VAV-ZAYIN, SIN-VAV-SIN, and TZADI-VAV-TZADI as degrees of movement: zuz, the most basic shifting; sasson, the active movement of joy; tzitz, fertile blossoming.
- The link predates the grammarians: Shir HaShirim Rabbah 1:49 (on 1:9) has Hashem glad to drown Pharaoh's cavalry as He is always glad to destroy Israel's enemies, which Eitz Yosef there and Rabbeinu Bachya (to Bereishis 2:19) ground in this very pun and in the horse's gladness in war (see Pesachim 113b, that horses love war).
- Rabbi Avraham Saba (Tzror HaMor to Bereishis 2:20) writes that the horse is the happiest of all animals, so much so that a man who is sad or worried is made glad at once simply by riding one, and that is why sus and sasson are related.
- Rabbi Yaakov Ashkenazi of Janow (Tzeina U'Reinah, Bereishis) has Adam name them susim because he saw, when the animals came before him, that horses were especially jovial.
- Maharal (Ohr Chadash to Esther 8:1) makes a like point: the Megillah stresses that the proclamations permitting the Jews to defend themselves went out specifically by horse, because that proclamation heralded happiness, while the earlier decrees to kill the Jews are not said to have gone by horse (Esther 3:13-15), because they projected none.
Rechesh (רכש)
Four times in Tanach: Esther 8:10, 8:14; Melachim I 5:8 (tribute to Shlomo HaMelech); Michah 1:13 (harnessing a wagon). The Gemara's arkavei a'trei richashei, "he mounted him on two rechashim" (Kesubos 55b, Bava Basra 152a, Yerushalmi Kiddushin 1:5), first reads as two horses pulling in opposite directions, leaving the wagon where it stood, and then settles on two horses pulling the same way, so that a recipient holding two claims to one gift has the stronger case rather than a void one. Pre-Islamic Persian folklore tells of the hero Rostam and his stallion Rakhsh, a beast said to be of unusual intelligence who would let no one but Rostam ride him; those stories were written long after the Megillah, and Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein takes the name Rakhsh as clearly coming from the Aramaic rechesh.
The name of Achashverosh's horse
Targum Sheini (to Esther 6:10) and Peirush HaRokeach (to Esther 9:4) give the king's horse the name Shifrigaz, which Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur vocalizes in Meturgeman as Shfargaz.
- Rabbi Yaakov Daniel Amash derives Shifrigaz from a portmanteau of shapir, beautiful, and gaz, transporting (see Rashi to Tehillim 90:10): the horse was apparently beautiful, and a horse's work is to carry its rider.
- Dr. Alexander Kohut (1842-1894), in Aruch HaShalem, renders the name on his understanding of Persian into German as rothweisses Pferd, the red-white horse.
- Dr. Dan Shapira, a linguist and philologist at Bar Ilan, in a letter to Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, says he thinks the name comes from the Persian shap/shab, black or night-colored, plus rechesh, horse, assuming kaf and gimmel interchange and shin and zayin; he compared it to Shabdiz, apparently the horse of the Persian king Khosrow Parviz (590-628), said to be the fastest in the world, and Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein offers that perhaps Shifrigaz is somehow related to or conflated with that later horse.
(Rabbi Yehuda Spitz points out that this tradition differs from the animated Megillas Lester, where the king's horse is named Hangover.)
Achashtranim (אחשתרנים) and remachim (רמכים)
Remachim appears only at Esther 8:10; achashtranim appears there and at 8:14. Menachem Ibn Saruk, Ibn Janach, and Radak parse achashtranim from a six-letter root, Ibn Janach holding the NUN not a root letter, and elsewhere implying the same of the ALEPH, so that for him the root is four or five letters; Ibn Ezra's rule is that four- and five-letter roots in Hebrew are typically either compounds of several roots fused or loanwords from another language, and scholars take both routes here. REISH-MEM-KAF is nowhere else in Tanach, but ramach is in Kilayim 8:5, which Yerushalmi Kilayim 8:4 ties to the Megillah's word.
Where the authorities disagree
Is rechesh a horse at all?
- A superior, especially fast young horse (Ralbag to Esther 8:10; Ibn Janach in Sefer HaShorashim; and in a similar vein the German linguist Wilhelm Gesenius, 1786-1842, who ties rechesh to the Arabic verb for a horse's running or galloping and so takes it as a superior breed known for remarkable speed).
- Some unspecific swift-running animal, not necessarily a horse, since Esther 8:10 and Melachim I 5:8 list rechesh beside sus (Radak, who elsewhere identifies it with the mules).
- A permutation of rechush, property, so the king's own horses (Ibn Ezra, Rabbi Moshe Ibn Chalava; Solomon Rabinowitz of New York, d. 1943, in Sefer HaMishkalim, reads rechush in Ezra 1:4 the other way about, as the rechesh horse rather than ordinary property).
- A horse decked in its rider's weapons, itself a kind of rechush, or from reches, "tying," the horse-and-rider team bound together (Ohalei Yehuda, Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh of Carpentras).
- From ר-כ-ס, tying, by the shin/sin-samech interchange, hence the wagon-horse (Rav Hirsch to Bereishis 12:5), so sus is general and rechesh specific. The Maskilic Hebrew scholar Naftali Torczyner, Tur-Sinai (1886-1973), likewise reaches the wagon-horse, taking ר-כ-ש as a metathesis of ק-ש-ר, tying and tethering, probably on the kuf/kaf interchange; he goes further and has rechush derive from rechesh, since a man's main property was his livestock, or because moveable goods were typically carried by rechashim.
What achashtranim are.
- Mules, from a male donkey and a mare, as against the typically weaker hinnies (Rav Saadia Gaon, Ibn Ezra, Radak, Rabbi Moshe Ibn Chalava, Ralbag); Rabbi Yosef Kimchi (Sefer HaGalui) reports Rav Saadia Gaon's etymology, Persian achash, "big," plus Aramaic trein, "two," one beast merging two species.
- An adjective on rechesh, from CHES-SHIN, speed, plus TAV-REISH, scouting, the mounts spies used (Midrash Lekach Tov).
- Similarly, a name built on the same roots with TAV-REISH as "jumping," so that the animal's swiftness is in its leap rather than its run (Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim).
- Fast-running camels (Rashi), somewhat an outlier.
- No animal at all but an ordinary adjective, "government-owned," from the Old Persian khshathrana/khshathra, "dominion, government, province" (Rabbi Ernest Klein), another outlier.
- Ibn Janach adds that it is not too farfetched to presume achashtranim and rechashim are the same thing.
- Eight-legged beasts that run on one set of four legs, then draw those into the body and let the other four down when tired, with האחשתרנים in gematria (1014) equalling shel shemonah raglaim, "of eight legs" (Peirush HaRokeach to Bereishis 1:25 and Esther 8:10, who reads the extra es in v'es habehemah as including the otherwise unmentioned achashtranim, though he does not say what sort of animal they are). A similar tradition is in Rabbi Yosef Kara's commentary to Esther, though he attaches it to "sons of the remachim" and makes them flying camels with two sets of four legs, close to Rashi's camels.
What "sons of the remachim" means.
- In his Mishnah commentary (Kilayim 8:5) Rambam identifies the ramach as a kind of frigid horse one might have thought a separate species for the interbreeding prohibition; in Hilchos Kilayim 9:5 he calls it a wild horse, as against the domesticated sus.
- Rabbi Shlomo Sirilio (1485-1554), without explaining why, says he thinks the ramach is what we call a zebra.
- On the mule reading, remachim are the mares that bore them (Radak in Sefer HaShorashim), and there is apparently an Arabic cognate resembling remachim that likewise means a female horse.
- Simply young horses (Rabbi Tuviah ben Eliezer), a reading also implied by Rashi (to Taanis 23a; see too Shenos Eliyahu to Kilayim 8:5 and Gilyonei HaShas), and Ibn Yachya claims outright that they were small horses.
- Or the riders, the jockeys, on REISH-MEM, raising or lifting, with MEM-KAF, hitting or whipping, the rider lifting his arm to whip the horse on (Rabbi Tuviah).
Against Megillah 18a's flat "we do not know," Rabbeinu Nissim of Gerona (Teshuvos HaRan 79, cited in Teshuvos HaRivash 390-391) holds that only the masses do not know, while the talmidei chachamim know, or at least could know. Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein adds that the Gemara's saying it of these two words implies we do know what rechesh means, which is why the commentators offer their readings of it.
Also discussed in
Radak on these roots
Sefer HaShorashim
ס-ו-ס
סוּס, a horse, with סוּסָה for the mare; and a bird of the same name.
The horse
כִּי בָא סוּס פַּרְעֹה (Shemos 15:19), for Pharaoh's horse came, and the feminine, סוּסָה, as in לְסֻסָתִי בְּרִכְבֵי פַרְעֹה (Shir HaShirim 1:9), to my mare among Pharaoh's chariots. On דָּרַכְתָּ בַיָּם סוּסֶיךָ (Chavakuk 3:15), You trod the sea with Your horses, he says the horses are a figure for the clouds.
The bird
A bird carries the same name: כְּסוּס עָגוּר כֵּן אֲצַפְצֵף (Yeshayahu 38:14), like a sus, a crane, so do I chirp, which he explains as כסוס ועגור, like a sus and a crane, after the manner of שֶׁמֶשׁ יָרֵחַ (Chavakuk 3:11), sun, moon, where two are named without an and between them. Elsewhere the name is said with a yud in place of the vav, וְסִיס, standing between the turtledove and the crane (Yirmiyahu 8:7), and that too is a bird's name.
כִּי בָא סוּס פַּרְעֹה (שמות טו, יט). והנקבה סוּסָה לְסֻסָתִי בְּרִכְבֵי פַרְעֹה (שיר השירים א, ט), כִּי תִרְכַּב עַל־סוּסֶיךָ (חבקוק ג, ח), דָּרַכְתָּ בַיָּם סוּסֶיךָ (חבקוק ג, טו), רמז לעננים. ושם עוף בזה השם כְּסוּס עָגוּר כֵּן אֲצַפְצֵף (ישעיה לח, יד), פירוש כסוס ועגור כמו שֶׁמֶשׁ יָרֵחַ (חבקוק ג, יא). ובמקום אחר אמרו ביו"ד תחת הו"ו וְתֹר וְסִוס [וְסִיס] וְעָגוּר (ירמיה ח, ז), והוא שם עוף. ואמר בו התרגום וְשַׁפְנִינָא וְכוּרְכַיָא וּסְנוּנִיתָא. ובדברי רבותינו ז"ל (קידושין מד, ע"א) קם ריש לקיש צוח ככורכיא [וצווח ריש לקיש כי כרוכיא] ופירש רבינו שלמה ז"ל גרוא"ה בלע"ז.
ר-כ-ש
רֶכֶשׁ, beasts ridden: to Rabbi Yonah good horses not many years old, to Radak perhaps another kind; and רְכוּשׁ, all a man's wealth, cattle, silver, gold, movables.
What a רכש is
Rabbi Yonah wrote that they are the good horses over whom many years have not passed. Radak holds it may rather be some other beast we do not know, since one pasuk sets the couriers בְּיַד הָרָצִים בַּסּוּסִים רֹכְבֵי הָרֶכֶשׁ (Esther 8:10), by the hand of the runners on horses, riders of the רֶכֶשׁ, and another gives וְהַשְּׂעֹרִים וְהַתֶּבֶן לַסּוּסִים וְלָרָכֶשׁ (Melachim I 5:8), the barley and the straw for the horses and for the רֶכֶשׁ: it looks like a kind besides horses.
What רכוש takes in
The noun covers all a man's money: his cattle, silver and gold, and every movable thing. So וְאֶת־כָּל־רְכֻשׁוֹ אֲשֶׁר רָכָשׁ (Bereishis 31:18), all his goods that he had gathered. And on תֶּן־לִי הַנֶּפֶשׁ וְהָרְכֻשׁ קַח־לָךְ (Bereishis 14:21), give me the souls and take the goods to yourself, he says נפש is the souls of the men, for he asked of him nothing but the people, and let him take the livestock and all the money.
רֹכְבֵי הָרֶכֶשׁ (אסתר ח, י), רְתֹם הַמֶּרְכָּבָה לָרֶכֶשׁ (מיכה א, יג), בשש נקודות. כתב רבי יונה כי הם הסוסים הטובים שלא עברו עליהם שנים רבות. ויתכן היותם בהמות אחרות לא ידענום כי הנה אמר בְּיַד הָרָצִים בַּסּוּסִים רֹכְבֵי הָרֶכֶשׁ (אסתר ח, י), ואמר וְהַשְּׂעֹרִים וְהַתֶּבֶן לַסּוּסִים וְלָרָכֶשׁ (מלכים א' ה, ח), דומה שהוא מין אחר זולתי הסוסים. וְאֶת־כָּל־רְכֻשׁוֹ אֲשֶׁר רָכָשׁ (בראשית לא, יח), וְאַֽחֲרֵי־כֵן יֵֽצְאוּ בִּרְכֻשׁ גָּדֽוֹל (בראשית טו, יד), וּמִגְרְשֵׁיהֶם יִהְיוּ לִבְהֶמְתָּם וְלִרְכֻשָׁם וּלְכֹל חַיָּתָֽם (במדבר לה, ג), וְאֵת כָּל־הָֽאָדָם אֲשֶׁר לְקֹרַח וְאֵת כָּל־הָֽרְכֽוּשׁ (במדבר טז, לב), כָּל־אֵלֶּה שָׂרֵי הָֽרְכוּשׁ אֲשֶׁר לַמֶּלֶךְ דָּוִֽיד (דברי הימים א' כז, לא). השם הזה כולל כל ממון האדם קנה הבהמה וכסף וזהב וכל מטלטלין. וכן תֶּן־לִי הַנֶּפֶשׁ וְהָֽרְכֻשׁ קַח־לָֽךְ (בראשית יד, כא), פירוש הנפש נפש האדם כי לא היה מבקש ממנו כי אם האדם ויקח לו המקנה וכל הממון.
ר-מ-ך
Mares, in his father's reading: בְּנֵי הָרַמָּכִים (Esther 8:10) are sons of the mares, since in Arabic a mare is called רמכה.
Sons of the mares
His father wrote that בְּנֵי הָֽרַמָּכִֽים (Esther 8:10), sons of the ramachim, are בני הסוסיות, sons of the mares, since in Arabic a mare is called רמכה.
The achashteranim
His father goes on to explain אחשרתרנים as a large beast of two kinds, from a horse and from a donkey, since אח"ש is large in Persian, and to say that perhaps they were large mules, sons of the mares.
בְּנֵי הָֽרַמָּכִֽים (אסתר ח, י) כתב אדוני אבי ז"ל בני הסוסיות ובלשון ערבי קורין לסוסיה רמכה. ופירוש אחשרתרנים גדול מתרין מינין מסוס ומחמור, כי אח"ש גדול בלשון פרס. ואולי היו פרדים גדולים בני הסוסיות.
Radak, Sefer HaShorashim, Berlin 1847. Public domain, digitised by Sefaria from the National Library of Israel.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Purim/Trumah: Speedy Horsepower (Part 1/2)," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 11 February 2023.
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Purim/Titzaveh: Speedy Horsepower (Part 2/2)," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 11 February 2023.
Cited in the essay: Esther 3:13-15, 8:1, 8:10, 8:14; Melachim I 5:8; Michah 1:13; Bereishis 1:21, 1:25, 2:19, 2:20, 12:5; Bamidbar 13:11; Yeshayahu 38:14; Shir HaShirim 1:9 and Shir HaShirim Rabbah 1:49; Megillah 18a; Pesachim 113b; Kesubos 55b; Bava Basra 152a; Taanis 23a with Rashi; Yerushalmi Kiddushin 1:5; Kilayim 8:5 with Rambam's commentary, and Yerushalmi Kilayim 8:4; Rambam, Hilchos Kilayim 9:5; Teshuvos HaRan 79 and Teshuvos HaRivash 390-391; Ezra 1:4; Tehillim 90:10 with Rashi; Esther 6:10 with Targum Sheini, and 9:4; Peirush HaRokeach to Bereishis 1:25 and Esther 8:10, 9:4; Midrash Lekach Tov; Sefer HaGalui; Tzror HaMor to Bereishis 2:20; Tzeina U'Reinah to Bereishis; Ohr Chadash to Esther 8:1; Shenos Eliyahu to Kilayim 8:5 and Gilyonei HaShas; Sefer HaMishkalim; Meturgeman; Aruch HaShalem.