middle

Distinctions

emtza (אמצע)

Everywhere in the Mishnah, nowhere in Tanach. Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur (Sefer HaTishbi, his lexicon of rabbinic Hebrew) traces the root to מ-צ-ע. The classical lexicographers (Menachem Ibn Saruk, Ibn Janach, Ibn Parchon in Machberes HeAruch, Radak) hold there is no such root in Biblical Hebrew at all: the one candidate word, matza, a mat (Yeshayahu 28:20), they derive from י-צ-ע, spreading out or laying out bedding. Rabbi Klein suggests that perhaps HaBachur saw the link exactly there, since unfurling a folded or rolled sheet reveals the inside, the "middle," of the material.

Two dissents from the secular lexicographer Avraham Even-Shoshan (1906-1984), both of which the column cites. In his concordance of Biblical Hebrew he does trace matza to מ-צ-ע, against the classical lexicographers, though his etymology of emtza itself is a different one: in his "new dictionary" of Hebrew he argues that post-biblical emtza derives from the Greek mesos, "middle," the same Greek word behind Mesopotamia, the land in the middle of the Euphrates and the Tigris, and behind the scientific meson, a subatomic particle found in the middle of a nucleus. Linguists, the column reports, hold that Greek mesos comes from the Proto-Indo-European medhyo, which also yields Germanic midja and Latin medius, and through them the English middle, medium, mediocre, mediate, midwife, medieval, Mediterranean and meridian.

In Talmudic and Targumic Aramaic the initial aleph drops and the word is metzia or metziyasa (Targum to Bereishis 1:6, 2:9; Shemos 26:28; Shoftim 16:29; Iyov 20:13; Tehillim 45:10, 135:9). Hence Bava Metzia, the Middle Gate, beside Bava Kama and Bava Basra, and not Bava Emtzai.

merkaz (מרכז)

Seemingly from ר-כ-ז, concentrating; modern Hebrew rikuz covers both a juice concentrate and concentrating on one's learning. Neither merkaz nor any cognate occurs in Biblical or Mishnaic Hebrew. It enters in medieval works translated from Judeo-Arabic by the Ibn Tibbon family: Rabbi Shmuel Ibn Tibbon (1150-1230), who translated the Rambam's Moreh Nevuchim, writes in his Peirush HaMilos HaZaros that he borrowed merkaz from Arabic for the point within a circle from which all lines to the circle are congruent, which is a fancy way of saying its middle. The great etymologist Rabbi Dr. Ernest Klein (1899-1983) agrees that Hebrew merkaz comes from the Arabic markaz ("foothold, center, station"), itself borrowed from the Akkadian markasu ("a spot for tying"), which in turn derives from the Akkadian rakasu ("to fasten").

Despite Ibn Tibbon's admission that the word comes from Arabic, the column holds there is still room to see something Hebraic in it. Rabbi Dovid Golumb (1861-1935, Targumna) conjectures that the late root ר-כ-ז actually comes from the earlier ר-כ-ס through the interchange of zayin and samech; Rabbi Ernest Klein, in his A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English, similarly insinuates a connection between the two roots, and Rabbi Yehoshua (Jeremy) Steinberg of the Veromemanu Foundation arrived at the same conclusion independently. ר-כ-ס appears four times in Tanach: twice as a verb, of fastening the choshen to the ephod (Shemos 28:28, 39:21), and twice as a noun, rechasim, a mountain range (Yeshayahu 40:4), and of a man's hardships (Tehillim 31:21). Most commentators take the core sense of the root as something strong or hard, differing only in how each case fits: Ibn Janach (Sefer HaShorashim) and Rav Hirsch (Bereishis 12:5) read the fastening as a strong, unbreakable bond made by tying; Ibn Janach and Ibn Parchon explain the mountain range from the strength and effort its terrain demands; and a man's hardships are strong obstacles standing in the way of life. Rabbi Aharon Marcus (Keses HaSofer there) similarly gives the core sense as gathering and attaching, tying two things together being a way of gathering them into one entity, and a mountain range being mountains attached to each other geographically; on interchanges of letters he derives from the same root rechush and neches/nechasim (property, what a man accrues) and rochel (a merchant, who gathers up commodities to sell, the samech and lamed interchange being attested in various ancient languages, most notably Egyptian). From all of this, the column concludes, it seems the root's principal sense is tying together; the knot is where the connection is strongest and most concentrated, and a thing's middle is generally where the concentration is highest, the extremities being thinner, so the semantic jump from ר-כ-ס to ר-כ-ז is not so far.

Like English "central," merkaz has drifted from the geometric to the important: the tachanah hamerkazis is the main bus station and merkaz ha'ir is where things happen, neither of them necessarily the geometric middle.

lev (לב)

Primarily the life-giving organ that pumps blood, and by extension the middle of anything, since it sits roughly in the middle of the body. So Tanach speaks of the lev of the elah tree (Shmuel II 18:14; the column calls it an elm), the lev of the seas (Shemos 15:8; Yechezkel 27:4, 27:25-27, 28:2, 28:8; Tehillim 46:3), and the lev of the heavens (Devarim 4:11; the article prints 4:10), though trees, waters and heavens have no literal hearts. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim (1740-1814): the biliteral ל-ב means heart, and in the borrowed sense lev is whatever sits at the center or plays a central part in a process. He puts a wide family on this root: lavi (lion, since fear comes of blood massing in the heart and lions apparently have small hearts, so are less prone to fear), levivah (a wafer, in modern Hebrew a latke, called so either because it sustains a man's heart or because it was a heart-shaped delicacy), and by way of lahav/lehavah (flame, which comes from the middle of a fire) a whiteness cluster: leveinah (brick, made by being placed in a kiln fire), lavan (white, the color things put into fire often turn), levanah (the moon, white against the reddish sun), livneh (Populus alba, a white tree), Levanon (the region where the livneh commonly grows) and levonah (frankincense, a whitish resin).

In rabbinic parlance aliba, "according to," also comes from lev, the Aramaic meaning literally "on the heart of." The column adds a discovery of its own, that aliba parallels the etymology of the English according. English heart and its Germanic cognates such as herz are related to Latin cord and Greek kardia, some Indo-European languages using an h where others use c or k (as in cent against hundred, cap against head), so that core, crux, cardinal and cardiology all belong with heart, and the Cardo of the Old City of Jerusalem is named for running through the heart of the city. According comes from French accord, colloquially "agree" but literally "to be of one heart." Both terms, then, tie "according to" to the word for heart in their own language.

tabur (טבור)

In the Mishnah it is the navel (Shabbos 18:3, Sotah 9:4, Bechoros 7:5), and that seems to be the original sense. In Tanach it occurs twice and only twice, both times as tabur ha'aretz, the middle of the land (Shoftim 9:37, Yechezkel 38:12). The same move seems to have happened as with lev, from an organ in the middle of the body to the middle of anything; and just as the lev is essential to life, so the tabur is what sustains a fetus in its mother's womb. The column raises, on its own and without a source, whether tabur might also extend to the essential or chief point within a discussion the way lev does, and says plainly that it has not yet seen an example. (It also points the reader to its own earlier essay on the name Tiberias and tabur.)

what is not "middle"

The prefix beis, and besoch/tichon, bekerev/kerev, and gav/go, can all be read as middle, but their more accurate sense is inside; the two are easy to confuse, since the middle is just the innermost point of a circle or regular polygon. Even where Targum and Rashi render besoch (Bereishis 2:9) with emtza, besoch does not typically mean the exact middle but simply somewhere not necessarily along the edge; see Ramban there and Shu"t Maharit vol. 2, Even HaEzer 8. The column leaves these words themselves for a future essay.

Rendering guidance

• Period-match before you translate. A pasuk gets midst or heart (lev) and navel or center of the land (tabur); a Mishnah gets middle (emtza); merkaz belongs to later Hebrew and to modern usage.
• Shemos 15:8, belev yam: "in the heart of the sea." Devarim 4:11, ad lev hashamayim: "to the heart of heaven." "Middle of the sea" is flat and "center" is anachronistic.
• Shoftim 9:37, tabur ha'aretz: "the center of the land," or keep tabur and gloss where the drashah wants the navel image.
• Trap: English "center" will absorb emtza, merkaz, lev and tabur at once, and it will also absorb "main, principal," which only merkaz carries. When a source contrasts geometric middle with chief importance, use "middle" for the one and "main" or "principal" for the other, and never "central" for both.
• Trap: besoch is inside, not middle. Do not render "in the middle of the garden" for besoch hagan unless you follow the Targum's emtza and say so; Ramban reads it as simply within.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "In the Middle," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 17 Tammuz 5782 (2022-07-16): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/9785-in-the-middle.md. Primary loci cited: Yeshayahu 28:20, 40:4; Bereishis 1:6, 2:9, 12:5; Shemos 15:8, 26:28, 28:28, 39:21; Devarim 4:11 (the article prints 4:10); Shoftim 9:37, 16:29; Shmuel II 18:14; Yechezkel 27:4, 27:25-27, 28:2, 28:8, 38:12; Tehillim 31:21, 45:10, 46:3, 135:9; Iyov 20:13; Shabbos 18:3; Sotah 9:4; Bechoros 7:5; Ramban to Bereishis 2:9; Shu"t Maharit vol. 2, Even HaEzer 8. Two renderings of the article's are corrected rather than repeated: it prints Deut. 4:10 for ad lev hashamayim, which is 4:11, and it calls the tree of Shmuel II 18:14 an elm where the pasuk has an elah.