nature
horse
סוס · רכש · אחשתרנים · רמכים · רמך
Bottom line
Sus is the ordinary horse. Rechesh is a particular kind, fast, used for couriers or for pulling: swift steed or courier horse, not plain "horse." Achashtranim and remachim occur together only in Esther 8:10, and Megillah 18a says outright that we do not know what they mean; the majority reading makes achashtranim mules and remachim the mares that bore them. Never render the four words of that pasuk as four synonyms for "horse."
At a glance
| Hebrew | translit | English | what sets it apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| סוס | sus | horse | the general term; root tied to sasson, gladness (Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim, Rav Hirsch) |
| רכש | rechesh | courier horse, swift steed | a specific fast or wagon-pulling horse, not the hypernym (Ralbag, Rav Hirsch) |
| אחשתרנים | achashtranim | mules | born of a male donkey and a mare (Rav Saadia Gaon and most); Rashi: fast camels |
| רמכים | remachim | mares | the mares that bore them (Radak); a wild horse (Rambam); or simply young (Lekach Tov) |
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), reaches the wagon-horse independently, 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 carried by rechashim. Our own working choice, not the column's, is Rav Hirsch and Ralbag.
What achashtranim are. Mules, from a male donkey and a mare, as against the 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 CHET-SHIN, speed, plus TAV-REISH, scouting, the mounts spies used (Midrash Lekach Tov), or 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), whom the column marks as 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 the column reports that 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. The column 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.
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 Bachaya (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. The column adds that pre-Islamic Persian folklore tells of the hero Rostam and his stallion Rakhsh, a beast of unusual intelligence who would let no one but Rostam ride him; those stories were written long after the Megillah, and the column 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 beautiful, and a horse's work is to carry its rider. Dr. Alexander Kohut (1842-1894), in HaAruch HaShaleim, 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, wrote to the columnist that 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, the horse of the Persian king Khosrow Parviz (590-628), said to be the fastest in the world, and the column offers that perhaps Shifrigaz is somehow related to or conflated with that later horse. (The column also notes, from Rabbi Yehuda Spitz, that this tradition differs from the animated Megillas Lester, where the king's horse is named Hangover.)
achashtranim (אחשתרנים) and remachim (רמכים)
Both are confined to Esther 8:10. Menachem Ibn Saruk, Ibn Janach, and Radak parse achashtranim from a six-letter root, Ibn Janach holding the NUN, and probably the ALEPH, not root letters, 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.
Rendering guidance
- Esther 8:10 is the whole problem in one verse. A defensible rendering: "the couriers riding swift steeds, the royal mules, offspring of the mares," with a note that Megillah 18a says the last two words are not known. Rendering all four as "horses" erases the difficulty the Gemara itself flags.
- Trap: English "horse" swallows sus and rechesh together. Where a pasuk has both (Esther 8:10, Melachim I 5:8), give sus "horses" and rechesh "swift steeds," as Radak's argument from those pesukim requires.
- Kilayim 8:5: render ramach "wild horse" after Rambam, not "mare."
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Speedy Horsepower," Parts 1 and 2, What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 20 Shevat 5783 (2023-02-11): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/10842-purimtrumah-speedy-horsepower-part-12.md and .../10843-purimtitzaveh-speedy-horsepower-part-22.md. Primary loci cited: 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; Yerushalmi Kiddushin 1:5; Kilayim 8:5 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, 9:4; 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; HaAruch HaShaleim. Dr. Dan Shapira's reading of the horse's name and Rabbi Yehuda Spitz's aside the article gives as private communications to the author, and they are marked as such here.