level

Distinctions

maalah (מעלה)

Root ע-ל-ה, near-unanimously: al, maalah (above), oleh, aliyah. The word names stairs by their upward use, as English "elevator" and "escalator" do, because going up is the feat; a stair goes down too, but the word looks up. Tanach: the six maalos of Shlomo's throne (Melachim I 10:19), which Rashi glosses as madreigos and Targum Yonasan as dargin; the fifteen Shir HaMaalos (Tehillim 120-135), matched by the Mishnah (Sukkah 5:4) to the fifteen steps on which the Leviim sang between the courtyards; the three maalos of the stone before the Menorah (Tamid 3:9), on which the Kohen stood to set it up. In the parallel to Shlomo's throne, pseudo-Rashi (to Divrei HaYamim II 9:18) likewise explains the maalos as madreigos, while Targum Rav Yosef there uses masok, an inflection of the Aramaic verb to ascend. From that pattern the column offers a suggestion of its own, hedged: we may argue that the difference is that maalos is Hebrew while madreigos comes from another language, Aramaic or Akkadian. Rambam (Hilchos Beis HaBechirah 1:17) uses madreigos when stating that no stairs may be built to the altar and the Torah's own maalos when fixing the lashes for ascending by them. Talmudic maalyuta, "advantage, superb," is a step up in the abstract, the root of the abstract sense of maalah.

madreigah (מדרגה)

Root ד-ר-ג (Menachem Ibn Saruk, Ibn Janach, Ibn Parchon, Radak), a root with no other Biblical derivative; twice in Tanach (Yechezkel 38:20, Shir HaShirim 2:14) and twice in the Mishnah (Kilayim 6:2, Sheviis 3:8), each pair carrying one plural and one singular. Rav Hirsch (to Bereishis 6:9, Tehillim 25:4): conceptually akin to derech, a path that carries a person to his destination, which the column takes as implying that ד-ר-ג and ד-ר-ך are kin, possibly through the interchange of gimmel and kaf; Rabbi Yitzchak of Zeldin (Shoresh Yesha) makes the same connection more prosaically, both words naming a place the foot treads. The German philologist Wilhelm Gesenius likewise held ד-ר-ג related to ד-ר-ך, and connected the Hebrew root to Arabic daraja, walking by foot, and a stair or step; later scholars, the column says, among them Rabbi Dr. Ernest Klein and Avraham Even-Shoshan, connect these to the Akkadian cognates durgu/daragu, path.

Wertheimer (Beiur Shemos HaNirdafim, a work written to show that no two Hebrew words are truly synonymous): the two look synonymous on the surface, both naming what people use to go up and down, but in Biblical Hebrew madreigos is specifically a walkway built to climb a mountain, where the incline is too steep to be traversed and earth is filled in around it to make a terraced rampart (Rashi to Yechezkel 38:20 and Shir HaShirim 2:14), while maalos is a free-standing stairwell in a house or courtyard, not built into a mountainside, which is why the Torah forbids maalos to the altar and not madreigos.

From the staggered, graded shape the word widened to any scale: degrees of heat or of a circle, and any level of attainment, the spiritual madreigah. Aramaic darga is the same word (Yevamos 63a, "go down a darga to take a wife," Rashi: not a woman of a more prestigious class than oneself, lest she not be willing to accept him); Modern Hebrew darga is a military rank. There is also a cantillation mark called darga, of which the column says it is unsure how it bears on the discussion; and it notes that darga shares its consonants with English grade and degree, probably by pure coincidence.

sulam (סולם)

The column first asks what really separates a ladder from a staircase, whether being moveable rather than built in, or standing nearer to vertical, and leaves the question open. Root ס-ל-ם for the four lexicographers, though again no other Biblical word comes from it; a hapax in Tanach (Yaakov's dream, Bereishis 28:12), common in the Mishnah (Beitzah 1:3, Bava Basra 2:5, 3:6, Makkos 2:1, Zavim 3:1, 4:3). Three accounts of the root stand in the article.

Dr. Chaim Tawil (An Akkadian Lexical Companion for Biblical Hebrew) cites Landsberger that ס-ל-ם is by metathesis a cognate of Akkadian simmiltu, stairway, the word used of the staircases up the Babylonian ziggurats; on that reading the mem is part of the root and sulam means much what maalos and madreigos mean.

What the column calls the more conservative approach takes sulam from Hebrew ס-ל-ל, paved, whence mesilah, with the final mem paragogic and so no part of the root, which puts sulam on the same footing as madreigah, a path up; so Rav Hirsch (to Bereishis 28:12, Bamidbar 20:19, Tehillim 84:6), Gesenius, Kohut, and the Enhanced Brown-Driver-Briggs. Rabbi Dr. Ernest Klein takes ס-ל-ל to mean paving a path by lifting the stones in the way and throwing them aside, so that sulam comes from the "lifting" sense, a means of lifting a person higher; Pappenheim takes a similar approach and reduces the root further to the biliteral ס-ל.

Rabbi Aharon Marcus proposes that where the essential root is ס-ל, the samech stands in for the ayin that precedes it in the alef-beis, so the root of sulam is ע-ל, the very root of maalos.

Rashi defines sulam with maalos (to Bava Metzia 25a, Sukkah 53b) and with madreigos (to Beitzah 36a), which the column brings as its closing proof that the three belong to one cluster.

Rendering guidance

• Madreigah in the abstract (a person's madreigah, madreigos of avodah): "level"; "degree" where a scale is explicit. Physical madreigos: "steps," or "terraces" on a hillside (Wertheimer).
• Maalah in the abstract: "virtue," "advantage," "a step up"; in Tanach physical maalos are "steps" or "stairs" (the altar, the throne). Shir HaMaalos: "Song of Ascents."
• Sulam: "ladder" for Yaakov's dream and in the Mishnah unless the Gemara's context is plainly a fixed stair; then "stairway" is defensible from Rashi.
• When maalos and madreigos stand together (Rambam, Hilchos Beis HaBechirah 1:17; Rashi glossing one by the other), the second is a gloss, not a second object; render the Torah's own word and let the gloss be silent or bracketed.
• Trap: "step" absorbs maalah and madreigah, and "level" absorbs madreigah and abstract maalah. Where a text climbs (a ladder of madreigos, a maalah above a maalah), keep one English word per Hebrew word, and remember that only maalah carries the upward sense in its root.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Yisro: Stairs to Above," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 24 Shevat 5784 (2024-02-03): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/11245-yisro-stairs-to-above.md. Primary loci the article cites: Shemos 20:23 with Rambam, Hilchos Beis HaBechirah 1:17; Sukkah 5:4; Tamid 3:9; Yechezkel 38:20 and Shir HaShirim 2:14 with Rashi; Kilayim 6:2; Sheviis 3:8; Beitzah 1:3; Bava Basra 2:5, 3:6; Makkos 2:1; Zavim 3:1, 4:3; Yevamos 63a with Rashi; Melachim I 10:19 with Rashi and Targum Yonasan, and Divrei HaYamim II 9:18 with pseudo-Rashi and Targum Rav Yosef; Rav Hirsch to Bereishis 6:9, 28:12, Bamidbar 20:19, Tehillim 25:4, 84:6; Shoresh Yesha s.v. דרג; Wertheimer, Beiur Shemos HaNirdafim; Bereishis 28:12; Rashi to Bava Metzia 25a, Sukkah 53b, Beitzah 36a; Tawil, An Akkadian Lexical Companion for Biblical Hebrew; The Enhanced Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. The article gives Yaakov's dream once as Bereishis 28:2 and once as 28:12; 28:12 is correct and is what this entry uses. The comparative and academic material the article carries (Gesenius, Klein, Even-Shoshan, Tawil citing Landsberger, Kohut, Brown-Driver-Briggs) is reported here as the article reports it.