nature
lice
At a glance
In short
Kinnim is lice, the plural; kinam is the same creature named as a species; kinah is a single louse, a word of the Mishnah and Gemara rather than of Tanach. The Aramaic is kalmta, and in the Gemara kalmei. A parosh is a flea; Metzudas Tzion defines it as a black kinah that jumps. At Yeshayahu 51:6 and Bamidbar 13:33 the standard reading of kein is "so, likewise", but certain commentators read it as "louse". The seventeenth century Dutch Protestant scholar Ludovicus de Dieu first proposed that possibility at Yeshayahu 51:6, and others took it up, Malbim among them.
Distinctions
Kinnim (כנים) and kinam (כנם)
Six undisputed occurrences: five in Shemos 8:12 to 14, once in Tehillim 105:31. Two of the five (Shemos 8:13 to 14) are vocalized kinam. The Torah's consistency in keeping the mem is exactly what prompted the rishonim to note that it is not a radical.
Kinah (כנה)
Not in Tanach. Once in the Mishnah (Parah 9:2), and repeatedly in the Gemara (Shabbos 12b, 107b; Chullin 105b; Eruvin 65a; Chagigah 5a; Bava Metzia 107b; Zevachim 19a). The Mishnah's instance is a kinah of the grain, which is a field pest rather than a body louse.
Kalmta (קלמתא) and kalmei (כלמי)
Targum Onkelos and Targum pseudo-Yonasan render kinnim and kinam as kalmta (so too the Targum to Tehillim 105:31), spelled with a kuf in our editions. The Gemara's form is spelled with a kaf: "from rags come kalmei" (Berachos 51b), where Rashi, following the notion of spontaneous generation, explains kalmei as kinnim, the Gemara meaning that worn-out scraps of cloth generate lice, and adduces this from the Targum's kalmta, which he treats as a cognate; and at Niddah 20b, where Ifra Hormiz, mother of the Sassanian king Shapur II, used to send Rava questions about menstrual blood, and Rava sent her a lice-comb to hint that the blood she asked about was the blood of crushed lice. The Aramaic word has a counterpart in Akkadian kalmatu, also lice. Sefer HeAruch of Rabbi Nosson of Rome is itself inconsistent about the kuf and the kaf (see his entries on the roots ס-ר-ק and כ-ל-ם).
A third form of the word may stand behind both. In 2022 an international group of archaeologists led by Dr. Daniel Vainstub of Ben-Gurion University reported an ivory comb bearing a Canaanite inscription reading "May this tooth root out the lice (kamal) of the hair and the beard." Canaanite is closely related to Biblical Hebrew, so a cognate there is unsurprising; what is surprising is that the last two consonants are transposed, KUF-MEM-LAMED rather than KUF-LAMED-MEM. Being Canaanite, the text is almost certainly older than the Targumim, so it seems to Rabbi Klein that KUF-MEM-LAMED is the original Semitic spelling and KUF-LAMED-MEM a later metathesis; the Canaanite form survives in Arabic quml, still lice. The Sefire treaty texts, Aramaic inscriptions found in northern Syria and dating to the end of the First Temple period, recording a treaty between two Syrian kings with its oaths and curses, spell the word the same way, KUF-MEM-LAMED, in a curse calling for lice to do something to a violator, though the text breaks off before saying what. Professor Chaim Tawil questions rendering that word "lice" at all, since in context it is a crop-consuming pest rather than a creature that stays on the body, and reads it "vermin of the field," which lines up with the Mishnah's lone kinah, the kinah of the grain (Parah 9:2). Biblical Hebrew also has a triliteral ק-מ-ל meaning rotting, molding or withering (Yeshayahu 19:6, 33:9), and Rabbi Klein thinks it quite possible that the Sefire word is a form of that root instead.
Parosh (פרעש)
David tells Shaul it is beneath a king to pursue him, comparing himself to a parosh (Shmuel I 24:15, 26:20).
- Metzudas Tzion (to 24:15): a black kinah that jumps, which in ordinary speech is a flea.
- Ibn Saruk, Ibn Janach, and Radak treat the root as the four-letter פ-ר-ע-ש.
- Rav Hirsch (to Bereishis 25:6) includes it among four-letter roots that are really three-letter roots with a final shin added.
Parosh also occurs in Tanach as a man's name, in lists of people from the start of the Second Temple period (Ezra 2:3, 8:3, 10:25; Nechemiah 3:25, 7:8, 10:15). On the possible differences between a parosh and a kinah, see Tosafos and Tosafos HaRosh to Shabbos 12a.
Where the authorities disagree
Where kinnim comes from. Both readings run through Pappenheim's biliteral כ-ן, whose core sense he gives as "base", the root of kein and nachon (a claim resting on a valid basis), tochnis and hachanah (the groundwork of any undertaking), kohen (who sees to the preparations for the avodah), kavanah, and kan, a stand or base on which a thing rests.
- From kinui, an epithet. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim (Cheshek Shlomo): a kinui is a linguistic base for referring to something without saying its name, and lice are so repellent that people would not give them a proper word, naming them obliquely instead.
- From kan, a base. Rav Hirsch (to Shemos 8:12), more simply: a kan is what a thing rests on and is secondary to it, and lice are parasites resting on a host's body or hair, secondary to him.
Hirsch's is the simpler explanation.
Whether the mem is part of the root.
- Ibn Janach (Sefer HaShorashim), Rashbam, Ibn Ezra (to Shemos 8:12), and Ibn Parchon (Machberes HeAruch) all take pains to say it is not: the root is the biliteral כ-ן, kinnim is the plural, kinam the species. Ibn Saruk and Radak likewise trace the word to כ-ן.
- Against them stands Rabbi Klein's own thesis: he believes that kinnim and the two Aramaic words are not synonyms at all but three forms of one word. His reasoning is that no cognate of the Aramaic word turns up in Ugaritic or Phoenician, and that just as the kuf of Imperial Aramaic shifts to a kaf in Talmudic Aramaic, the lamed of the Aramaic forms may answer to the nun of Hebrew kinam, on the phonetic interchange of lamed, mem, nun and reish; so KAF-LAMED-MEM would equal KAF-NUN-MEM, the mem in kinam would be a radical after all, contrary to the classical lexicographers, and Biblical Hebrew would hold two distinct words, kinnim, the plural of kinah, and kinam, cognate with the Aramaic. Rabbi Klein consulted Rabbi Dr. Yitzchak (Jared) Greenblatt and Rabbi Shaul Goldman, who agreed the supposition is tenable; and Dr. Alexander Kohut, in Aruch HaShalem, cites the maskilic scholar Peretz Smolenskin that Talmudic Aramaic KAF-LAMED-MEM is cognate with Biblical Hebrew KAF-NUN-MEM. Rabbi Klein puts his conclusion conditionally: if the supposition is correct, then KAF-NUN-MEM (Biblical Hebrew), KUF-MEM-LAMED (Canaanite, Imperial Aramaic and Arabic), KUF-LAMED-MEM (Targumic Aramaic and Akkadian) and KAF-LAMED-MEM (Talmudic Aramaic) are one word in different forms.
Whether kein ever means "louse". Yeshayahu 51:6, "and its inhabitants will die kein", and Bamidbar 13:33, "and so were we kein in their eyes".
- Targum Yonasan and the classical reading: "likewise", "so".
- At Yeshayahu 51:6 the seventeenth century Dutch Protestant scholar Ludovicus de Dieu first proposed that kein possibly means "louse": the earth's inhabitants will die like lice. Shadal cites it, noting that Rosenmuller and Gesenius followed the same approach, and Malbim cites it too in his commentary there; Avraham Even-Shoshan favors it in his concordance of Biblical Hebrew, as does Rabbi Dovid Tzvi Hoffmann (to Shemos 8:12).
- At Bamidbar 13:33 it is Malbim who, in light of all that, suggests reading kein as "louse": the meraglim felt themselves grasshoppers in their own eyes and as insignificant as lice in the giants'.
Also discussed in
Radak on these roots
Sefer HaShorashim
כ-נ-םhe files it under כן
כִּנִּים, lice, in Shemos 8: the single one is כִּנָּה, in the words of Chazal, and הַכִּנָּם takes in the whole kind. The word כֵן, so, he files under כּוּן.
Filed elsewhere
וַיַּעֲשׂוּ־כֵן הַחַרְטֻמִּים (Shemos 8:3), and the magicians did so: that word he has set down under the root כּוּן, and there too וְכַנָּה אֲשֶׁר־נָטְעָה יְמִינֶךָ (Tehillim 80:16), and the kanah that Your right hand planted.
One and many
וְהָיָה לְכִנִּם (Shemos 8:12), and it shall become lice, and הָיָה כִנִּים (Shemos 8:13), it became lice, are the many. The single one is found in the words of Chazal, with the feminine heh (Shabbos 12a): ההורג כִּנָּה בשבת, one who kills a louse on Shabbos. But וַתְּהִי הַכִּנָּם (Shemos 8:14), and the lice came, takes in the whole kind.
וַיַּֽעֲשׂוּ־כֵן הַֽחַרְטֻמִּים (שמות ח, ג), המלה הזאת זכרתיה בשרש כּוּן. וכן כתבתי שם וְכַנָּה אֲשֶׁר־נָטְעָה יְמִינֶךָ (תהלים פ, טז). וְהָיָה לְכִנִּם (שמות ח, יב), הָיָה כִנִּים (שמות ח, יג). והנפרד מצאנוהו בדברי רבותינו ז"ל בה"א הנקבה (שבת יב, ע"א) ההורג כִּנָּה בשבת. אבל וַתְּהִי הַכִּנָּם (שבת ח, יד) הוא כולל על המין.
פ-ר-ע-ש
פַּרְעֹשׁ, the flea, a known word; before the king the one speaking calls himself a dog and a flea, for his lowliness and weakness. It is also a man's name.
A flea, and why he calls himself one
אַֽחֲרֵי פַּרְעֹשׁ אֶחָֽד (Shmuel I 24:15), after a single flea: the word is known. For his lowliness and his weakness against the king, the one speaking called himself a dog and a flea. Yonasan renders בָּתַר חֲלַשׁ חָד בָּתַר הֶדְיוֹט חָד, after one weak man, after one commoner; and at לְבַקֵּשׁ אֶת־ פַּרְעֹשׁ אֶחָד (Shmuel I 26:20), to seek a single flea, he renders יַת חֲלָשׁ חַד, the one weak man. It is also a man's name (Ezra 2:3).
אַֽחֲרֵי פַּרְעֹשׁ אֶחָֽד (שמואל א' כד, טו), ידוע. ולגריעותו ולחולשתו כנגד המלך כנה עצמו ככלב ופרעוש. ויונתן תרגום בָּתַר חֲלַשׁ חָד בָּתַר הֶדְיוֹט חָד. ותרגם לְבַקֵּשׁ אֶת־פַּרְעֹשׁ אֶחָד (שמואל א' כו, כ), יַת חֲלָשׁ חַד. ועוד הוא שם אדם (עזרא ב, ג).
Radak, Sefer HaShorashim, Berlin 1847. Public domain, digitised by Sefaria from the National Library of Israel.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "VaEra: Lice Ain't Nice," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 25 January 2025.
Cited in the essay: Shemos 8:12 to 14 with Rashbam, Ibn Ezra, and Rav Hirsch; Tehillim 105:31; Bamidbar 13:33 with Malbim; Yeshayahu 51:6 with Targum Yonasan and Malbim, and 19:6, 33:9; Shmuel I 24:15 with Metzudas Tzion, and 26:20; Bereishis 25:6 with Rav Hirsch; Ezra 2:3, 8:3, 10:25; Nechemiah 3:25, 7:8, 10:15; Parah 9:2; Shabbos 12a with Tosafos and Tosafos HaRosh, 12b, 107b; Berachos 51b with Rashi; Niddah 20b; Chullin 105b; Eruvin 65a; Chagigah 5a; Bava Metzia 107b; Zevachim 19a; Sefer HeAruch s.v. ס-ר-ק and כ-ל-ם; Kohut, Aruch HaShalem; Pappenheim, Cheshek Shlomo; the 2022 Canaanite ivory comb inscription reported by Dr. Daniel Vainstub; the Sefire treaty inscriptions, with Prof. Chaim Tawil; Ludovicus de Dieu; Shadal, with Rosenmuller and Gesenius; Avraham Even-Shoshan's concordance.