marsh

Distinctions

achu (אחו)

Pharaoh's cows graze ba'achu (Bereishis 41:2, 41:18). Rashi (there): achu means agam, and he proves it from Iyov 8:11, "can the gome shoot up without a bitzah, or the achu grow without water?"; he renders it in Old French maresc, marsh. Ramban (to Bereishis 41:2) objects: achu is not the marsh but a kind of grass or growth that comes up on a riverbank, and he derives the word from ach, brother, for the fellowship of the various plants that grow together along the water. Rav Hirsch says the same. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim gives two turns on the same root: the brotherhood of the animals that gather in that fertile place to feed, or the fact that a stretch of ground lying beside the river looks like the river's brother.

Rabbi Moshe ben Shem Tov Gabbai defends Rashi: achu names the marsh in which Ramban's vegetation grows, and since that growth appears in swampy ground, the word for the plant came to serve for the place, so that in practice achu and agam mean the same. Ibn Janach and Radak (Sefer HaShorashim) had already said achu covers both, the grass (possibly papyrus) and the ground where it grows.

agam (אגם)

The word in the makkos: "over their rivers, over their canals, over their agamim, and over every gathering of their water" (Shemos 7:19, and again at 8:1). Rashi (to Shemos 7:19) defines it as a standing body of water and renders it Old French estanc, a pond, which is not quite a marsh; elsewhere (to Taanis 22a, Yevamos 121a, Sanhedrin 5b) he renders agam and Aramaic agama as maresc, marsh. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim traces agam to the two-letter ג-ם, spongy or absorbent matter: ground soaked and partly flooded, which must be sponge-like to hold that much water and stay wet. From the same root comes gome, the spongy reed of wetlands; Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer turns it around and says a marsh is called agam for the gome that grows in it.

bitzah (ביצה)

Three times in Tanach: Iyov 8:11 and 40:21, Yechezkel 47:11. Muddy, swampy ground, from botz, mud (Yirmiyahu 38:22). Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim takes both from the two-letter ב-צ, matter of a mucus-like consistency, whose commonest derivative is beitzah, an egg, gooey inside (the column notes in passing that the singular beitzah never appears in Tanach, only the plural beitzim, as at Devarim 22:6). Mud fits: not pourable like water, not solid either. He also puts butz here (Esther 1:6, 8:15, Yechezkel 27:16), linen from flax grown in wet ground like a bitzah's. Rashi renders bitzah as maresc (to Yechezkel 47:11, Iyov 8:11, Bava Metzia 74a), and the Talmudic bitzaim / bitzaei mayim, spelled with an ayin, the same way (to Shevuos 16a, Sanhedrin 96a).

suf (סוף)

Rashi (to Shemos 2:3 and 13:18) associates suf with agam. Rabbi Avraham Meir HaKohen Glanzer of Antwerp (Maayanei Agam) reads Rashi precisely: he does not say suf means agam, only that it belongs to the agam; and Rashi's own laaz settles it, since he renders suf as Old French roisel, the common reed. Suf is therefore the reed growing in the marsh, not the marsh. Hence Yam Suf is the Sea of Reeds.

Rendering guidance

• Iyov 8:11, the pasuk that carries three of these words: "Can the gome shoot up without a mire, can the achu grow tall without water?" Render bitzah "mire" and leave achu transliterated or as "marsh-grass," since Rashi and Ramban disagree on whether it is the place or the plant. Do not render bitzah and achu both "marsh"; Rashi's proof depends on their being two words.
• אגם in the makkos: "marshes" (Shemos 7:19). "Ponds" is defensible on Rashi's Old French but sits oddly in a list that already has rivers and canals.
• ביצה: "mire" or "swampy ground," not "swamp" flat, so that agam keeps "marsh." The English pair marsh/swamp is too close to carry the distinction.
• ים סוף: "Sea of Reeds," never "Red Sea." Suf is the reed, and by Rabbi Avraham Meir HaKohen Glanzer's reading of Rashi it is not a word for marsh at all, so "Swamp Sea" is wrong too.
• Trap: Rashi glosses achu, agam and bitzah all three with the same Old French maresc. That is Rashi telling a reader what the word points at, not a claim that Hebrew has three names for one thing. Do not use his laaz to license one English word for all three.
• אחו in Bereishis 41: if the translation follows Ramban, "in the reed grass"; if Rashi, "in the marsh." Say which; the pesukim about Pharaoh's cows read differently under each.
• On "marsh" against "swamp" in English, the column uses the two interchangeably, and closes by noting from Google Books' Ngram Viewer that marsh was the more common word in print from 1800 to 1850, swamp from 1850 to 1970, marsh again from 1970 to 2000, and swamp once more since.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Marshes, Marshes, Marshes," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 3 Shevat 5781 (2021-01-16); raw text at sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/9031-marshes-marshes-marshes.md. Primary loci cited: Bereishis 41:2 and 41:18 with Rashi and Ramban; Shemos 7:19 and 8:1 with Rashi; Shemos 2:3 and 13:18 with Rashi; Iyov 8:11 and 40:21; Yechezkel 47:11 and 27:16; Yirmiyahu 38:22; Esther 1:6 and 8:15; Devarim 22:6; Ibn Janach and Radak, Sefer HaShorashim; Rashi to Taanis 22a, Yevamos 121a, Sanhedrin 5b and 96a, Shevuos 16a, Bava Metzia 74a; Maayanei Agam.

Citation note, ours and not the column's: the article gives Devarim 22:6 and "Yechezkel 30:9" as the biblical occurrences of beitzim in the plural. The consonants בצים do stand at Yechezkel 30:9, but in the sense of ships, not eggs; the entry therefore cites only Devarim 22:6. Other genuine plural occurrences are Yeshayahu 10:14 and 59:5.