nature
lice
כנים · כנם · כנה · כן · קלמתא · כלמי
Bottom line
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 not a louse at all but a flea. The trap is treating kein in Yeshayahu 51:6 and Bamidbar 13:33 as "louse" without saying so; the standard reading there is "so, likewise", and the louse reading is a minority one, first proposed at Yeshayahu 51:6 by the seventeenth century Dutch Protestant scholar Ludovicus de Dieu and taken up by others, Malbim among them.
At a glance
| Hebrew | translit | English | what sets it apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| כנים | kinnim | lice | plural, many individual lice (Ibn Janach, Rashbam, Ibn Ezra) |
| כנם | kinam | the lice | the species as a whole, not a count (the same lexicographers) |
| כנה | kinah | a louse | the singular, Mishnaic and Talmudic only; at Parah 9:2, a grain pest |
| קלמתא | kalmta | lice (Aramaic) | the Targum's rendering; the Gemara's kalmei is the same word (Rashi to Berachos 51b); Akkadian kalmatu, Canaanite and Arabic qml |
| פרעש | parosh | flea | jumps and is black (Metzudas Tziyon); a distinct creature |
Where the authorities disagree
Where kinnim comes from. Both readings run through Pappenheim's biliteral כ-נ, 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 plainer reading and needs no assumption about naming taboos.
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-נ, kinnim is the plural, kinam the species. Ibn Saruk and Radak likewise trace the word to כ-נ. Against them stands the column's own thesis, stated at its head: that kinnim and the two Aramaic words are not synonyms at all but three forms of one word. Its 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-LAMMED-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. The column reports that after framing this it consulted Rabbi Dr. Yitzchak (Jared) Greenblatt and Rabbi Shaul Goldman, who agreed the supposition is tenable, and that it later found Dr. Alexander Kohut in He'Aruch HaShaleim citing the maskilic scholar Peretz Smolenskin that Talmudic Aramaic KAF-LAMMED-MEM is cognate with Biblical Hebrew KAF-NUN-MEM. The column puts its own conclusion conditionally: if the supposition is correct, then KAF-NUN-MEM (Biblical Hebrew), KUF-MEM-LAMMED (Canaanite, Imperial Aramaic and Arabic), KUF-LAMMED-MEM (Targumic Aramaic and Akkadian) and KAF-LAMMED-MEM (Talmudic Aramaic) are one word in different forms. For rendering, the classical view is the one to follow; the column's suggestion is worth knowing where a passage turns on why the Torah alternates the two 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 louse reading was first proposed, the column says, by the seventeenth century Dutch Protestant scholar Ludovicus de Dieu: 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'. The louse reading is a minority one; keep "likewise" in the text and the reading in a note.
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, a usage worth remembering before rendering the word.
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 stands 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-LAMMED rather than KUF-LAMMED-MEM. Being Canaanite, the text is almost certainly older than the Targumim, so the column takes KUF-MEM-LAMMED as the original Semitic spelling and KUF-LAMMED-MEM as 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-LAMMED, 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). The column adds that Biblical Hebrew has a triliteral ק-מ-ל meaning rotting, molding or withering (Yeshayahu 19:6, 33:9), and that the Sefire word may quite possibly be 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 24:14, 26:20). Metzudas Tziyon (to 24:14): 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 how a parosh differs from a kinah, see Tosafos and Tosafos HaRosh to Shabbos 12a.
Rendering guidance
- The makkah is "lice". Where the Torah writes kinam, "the lice" or "the vermin" reads better than "a louse"; the form is collective, not singular.
- Trap: English "lice" will take in kinnim, kinah, kalmta, and parosh together. Keep "flea" for parosh; when David's line becomes "a single louse" the image of a jumping, uncatchable creature is lost.
- Kein in Bamidbar 13:33 stays "so" or "likewise" in the body. If Malbim's reading is being taught, give it as his and keep it out of the pasuk itself.
- In a Gemara passage, translate kalmei as "lice" and note that it is the Targum's word; do not invent a distinct English creature for it.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "VaEra: Lice Ain't Nice," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 25 Teves 5785 (2025-01-25): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/11666-vaera-lice-aint-nice.md. Primary loci cited: 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 for the separate root meaning withering; Shmuel I 24:14 with Metzudas Tziyon, 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, He'Aruch HaShaleim; Pappenheim, Cheshek Shlomo. The comparative-Semitic and archaeological material the article carries (Akkadian kalmatu, Arabic quml, the 2022 Canaanite ivory comb reported by Dr. Daniel Vainstub, the Sefire treaty inscriptions with Prof. Chaim Tawil's objection) and the scholars the article credits with the "louse" reading of kein (Ludovicus de Dieu first, then Rosenmuller, Gesenius, Shadal, Even-Shoshan) are reported here as the article reports them.