negation

בל is a noun, a verb and a particle, all of one sense. Its first sense is the loss of a thing's form (צורה) only, and not of the whole of it. The loss of the whole thing is כליון, destruction; a change from one form to another is השתנות, change; the loss that happens in the form itself is בל or בלה. A thing loses its form in two ways: from itself, when what upholds its form gives out and it falls to ruin; or from outside, when something comes upon it from without that spoils and confounds its form. The name בל covers both. Of the loss from within is בלה, wearing out and rot; of the loss from without, the verb בלל, mixing. Both are the loss and undoing of the thing's form, whether by its rotting or by its being mixed with other things.

בליה, wearing out, is the start of רקבון, rot: the power that upholds the thing (כח המעמיד) begins to fail, but it is not yet wholly lost, and the thing is still fit for some use. רקבון is the end of the loss of form: the upholding power is wholly gone, the form undone altogether, and the thing good for nothing; a moist thing such as meat or fruit goes soft and turns to liquid. כרקב יבלה (Iyov 13:28), it wears away like rot, does not make the two the same. They share a cause, the failing of the upholding power, and rot takes in wearing out, since what rots was first worn; but it would not be fine speech to use one word twice, כרקב ירקב, rotting like rot, or כבלוי יבלה, wearing like wear, so the pasuk says כרקב יבלה: it begins to wear, and the rot comes at the end.

עירוב, intermixing, is said of things that keep their form after they are mixed and lose nothing of it, like wheat mixed with legumes, where each stays as it was and is only joined to what is not its kind. בלילה, blending, is said of things that lose their form through the mixing, like wine in water, where the wine and the water each lose their form. בלל is used mostly of a mixture with something moist in it, moist with moist or moist with dry, since wherever there is moisture the mixing also spoils form: בלולות בשמן (Shemos 29:2), mixed with oil, and בלותי בשמן רענן (Tehillim 92:11), I am mixed with fresh oil.

אפרים בעמים הוא יתבולל (Hoshea 7:8), Efraim blends himself among the nations, does not speak of Efraim's disgrace and the ruin of its traits, but of its misfortune: it was blended among the nations and lost its form as a nation. Not so ויתערבו בגוים וילמדו מעשיהם (Tehillim 106:35), they mingled among the nations and learned their deeds, which speaks of the disgrace of individuals. בלילה and loss of form would not be right of them, since a man who mixes with other men does not lose his form by it; so the pasuk says תערובת, mingling, the mingling of traits and opinions and their coming together into one relation.

The verb מלח is not mixing but stirring (הגסה): ממולח טהור קדש (Shemos 30:35), well stirred, pure, holy, means that it is stirred thoroughly, so that the bottom comes up and the top goes down. So וייראו המלחים (Yonah 1:5), the sailors were afraid: the מלחים are those who stir the water with oars, as one stirs a pot. It is not mixing, since mixing applies only to a kind with what is not its kind, and not to a kind with its own kind, like water, which is all one even body. Of such things one says stirring, the movement of their parts from place to place.

אחרי בלותי היתה לי עדנה (Bereishis 18:12), after I have worn out, shall I have smoothness: בלותי is an infinitive of the light form, like אחרי ראותי את פניך (Bereishis 46:30), after my seeing your face, and it means after the power that upholds a woman's form for bearing children has gone from me. Of this sense is יבלו בטוב ימיהם (Iyov 21:13), they wear out their days in good: their days of ease run on in good. Likewise נבול תבול (Shemos 18:18), you will surely wither away; ועלהו לא יבול (Tehillim 1:3), and its leaf does not wither; נבלה הארץ (Yeshayahu 24:4), the earth withers; נובלת עליה (Yeshayahu 1:30), whose leaf withers; וציץ נובל (Yeshayahu 28:1), and the withering bloom.

שמלתך לא בלתה (Devarim 8:4), your garment did not wear out; שקים בלים, worn sacks, and ונעלות בלות, worn shoes (Yehoshua 9:4-5); בלויי סחבות (Yirmiyahu 38:11), worn-out rags; לבול עץ אסגוד (Yeshayahu 44:19), shall I bow down to a worn-out piece of wood, that is, לעץ בלוי, to wood that is worn, like בגדול זרועך (Shemos 15:16), by the greatness of Your arm; and בול is on the pattern of עול in עול ימים (Yeshayahu 65:20), an infant of days.

The month of Cheshvan is called בול, בירח בול (Melachim I 6:38), in the month of Bul, because in it the plants in the ground wear out and the leaves wither (נובלים) off the trees.

From the same sense a dead creature is called נבלה, for the loss of its living form: a man, as לא תלין נבלתו על העץ (Devarim 21:23), his body shall not remain overnight on the tree; and other creatures, as בנבלת חיה טמאה או בנבלת בהמה טמאה או בנבלת שרץ טמא (Vayikra 5:2), the carcass of an unclean beast, or the carcass of unclean cattle, or the carcass of an unclean creeping thing. In the sense the language was coined with, every creature that has lost its living form is נבלה. The Lawgiver calls נבלה, for the prohibition of eating, clean cattle, beasts and fowl that died by themselves or were made unfit in their slaughter; and for the tumah of touching and carrying, unclean creatures, whether slaughtered or dead of themselves, and clean ones that died of themselves or were made unfit in slaughter. Clean creatures slaughtered properly do not make tamei as נבלה, even if they are found treifah.

From נבלה a leather vessel for liquids is called נבל: נבל יין (Shmuel I 1:24), a skin of wine, and ושנים נבלי יין (Shmuel I 25:18), and two skins of wine. It is named for being made from the hide of a נבלה; and once it is filled it also has the shape of the carcass's body. It is no wonder so ugly a name was lent to a vessel for drink, since in the sense the language was coined with נבלה carries no ugliness: to the one who set the language, even a kosher animal properly slaughtered for eating is נבלה once it is not alive. Had the word held any disgrace, the body of a prophet who died would not be called by it, as it is: והאריה עומד אצל הנבלה (Melachim I 13:24), and the lion standing beside the body, and נבלת איש האלהים, the body of the man of Hashem. There are also נבלים of a potter's making, named for being made in the likeness of a leather נבל; these are never called plain נבל, only נבל יוצרים (Yeshayahu 30:14), a potters' jar, and נחשבו לנבלי חרש (Eichah 4:2), they are counted as earthen jars. Plain נבל is the one made of leather.

A musical instrument too is called נבל, בנבל וכנור (Tehillim 150:3), with lyre and harp: either because it was made of leather like a נבל, as an instrument of leather still found today is pressed to bring out a sound; or because it was shaped like a נבל, though made of wood or some other stuff, with strings upon it.

ונבלי שמים מי ישכיב (Iyov 38:37), and the flasks of heaven, who lays them down: a name for rain clouds that empty out their water. ישכיב is as in השכב אותם ארצה (Shmuel II 8:2), laying them on the ground, and the clouds are called נבלים because they are full of water as skins are full of drink. Or ישכיב is ordering: who arranges the rain clouds to pour rain over a given stretch of the earth. Or נבלי שמים are clouds full of wind, like a leather נבל, and מי ישכיב is a stilling, so that they do not let the wind out all at once and lay waste the earth and all that fills it.

As נבלה is said of the loss of the power that upholds the bodily form, so נבלה and נבל are said of the loss of the spiritual form: deeds that ruin the form of a man's glory. Either a man ruins his own honour by his deeds: עם נבל ולא חכם (Devarim 32:6), a base people and unwise; ונבל כי ישבע לחם (Mishlei 30:22), and a base man when he is sated with bread; לא יקרא לנבל נדיב (Yeshayahu 32:5), the base man shall not be called generous; על הנביאים הנבלים (Yechezkel 13:3), concerning the base prophets. Or by his deeds he blemishes and debases the honour and worth of others, and then the word comes in the heavy form: וינבל צור ישועתו (Devarim 32:15), he disgraced the Rock of his salvation, their deeds ruining the form of His honour; אל תנבל כסא כבודך (Yirmiyahu 14:21), do not disgrace the throne of Your glory, do nothing by which its glory would be blemished; בן מנבל אב (Michah 7:6), a son disgraces a father, debasing his father's honour by his deeds. The noun is נבלה, כי נבלה עשה בישראל (Bereishis 34:7), for he had done a vile thing in Yisrael. Whoever ruins his own worth or that of others is called נבל.

A blemish in man and beast is called יבלת, או חרוץ או יבלת (Vayikra 22:22), or cut, or with a wart: a growth of worn flesh on the skin. It is not the שומא the Talmud speaks of, which is also a wart growing on the skin: the flesh of a שומא is not worn but healthy like the rest of the flesh, and it counts as a blemish only in women and kohanim, if hair grows on it, while the יבלת of the pasuk is worn flesh and disqualifies an animal too, as a blemish for a korban. Or יבלת is named for its end, that it will wear away and drop from the skin, as in כנבול עלה מגפן (Yeshayahu 34:4), as a leaf drops from the vine. It is a passing blemish that may be cut off, as it is said, חותכין יבלת במקדש (Eruvin 103a), a wart may be cut off in the Mikdash; but as long as it is on the skin it is a blemish.

The lower world is called תבל, תבל ומלואה (Tehillim 50:12), the world and all that fills it, and תבל ויושבי בה (Tehillim 24:1), the world and those who dwell in it, for its wearing out and decay: nothing in the lower world endures, unlike the heavenly bodies, which stand enduring as individuals (קיימים עומדים באיש) and have not lost their form from the six days of creation until today. The globe of the earth itself does endure as an individual, without loss of form, as it says אף תכון תבל בל תמוט (Tehillim 93:1), the world stands firm, it shall not falter; yet it is called תבל for what is upon it, which wears away and is consumed. Everything on the earth comes to be and passes away, and nothing in the host of heaven is like it.

For the same reason what the earth puts forth of plants and fruit is called יבול or בול: ונתנה הארץ יבולה (Vayikra 26:4), and the earth will give its produce; ואין יבול בגפנים (Chavakuk 3:17), and there is no produce on the vines; כי בול הרים ישאו לו (Iyov 40:20), for the mountains bring him produce. They are named for wearing out and rot because plants are more prone to them than the rest of what the earth yields, metals and stones, which endure for generation after generation.

In the sense of mixing: ונבלה שם שפתם (Bereishis 11:7), and confound their language there, a confounding such that their tongue keeps no form of speech and language. בלותי בשמן רענן (Tehillim 92:11), I am mixed with fresh oil, is a past verb of the heavy form. The doubled form shows the strength of the mixing: סלת בלולה בשמן (Vayikra 2:5), fine flour mixed with oil, and בלול, as in בעמים הוא יתבולל (Hoshea 7:8), he blends himself among the nations.

Fodder for animals is called בליל, from mixing: בליל חמיץ יאכלו (Yeshayahu 30:24), they shall eat seasoned fodder; אם יגעה שור על בלילו (Iyov 6:5), does an ox low over its fodder; ויבל לחמורים (Shoftim 19:21), and he gave fodder to the donkeys. It is flour or bran mixed with water.

A blemish in a man is called תבלול, או תבלל בעינו (Vayikra 21:20), or a blending in his eye: the white fluid of the eye blended with the black.

So too the noun תבל: תבל הוא (Vayikra 18:23), it is a confounding; תבל עשו דמיהם בם (Vayikra 20:12), they have done a confounding, their blood is upon them; and ואפי על תבליתם (Yeshayahu 10:25), and My anger upon their confounding: all from blending and jumbling. In lying with an animal there is a mixing of a kind with what is not its kind; in lying with a daughter-in-law, a confounding of the father's seed with the son's. The word is not used of lying with a father's wife, because with the daughter-in-law the mixing is more common, since she is somewhat subject to her father-in-law and heeds him whenever he wishes.

In the language of the Chachamim the sharp seasonings put into dough and into cooked food, onions, garlic and other pungent spices, are called תבלין, from blending: their sharpness makes the taste of the dish come out and blend thoroughly.

A kind of tract of land is called אבל: אבל השטים (Bamidbar 33:49), the tract of Shittim; אבל מחולה (Shoftim 7:22), the tract of Mecholah; ועד אבל כרמים (Shoftim 11:33), and as far as the tract of vineyards; ועד אבל הגדולה (Shmuel I 6:18), and as far as the great tract. To all appearance it is a tract with its borders confused, belonging to many people, where one man's border runs into and mixes with his neighbour's. Or it is a waste and desolate tract that grows no plants, in the sense of אבלה הארץ (Yirmiyahu 23:10), the land mourns, and כי אבלה אדמה (Yoel 1:10), for the ground mourns.

בל is said also of confusion of the spirit and of thought, and with an alef added it is אבל, mourning. אבל is not grief and lament, as it is commonly explained, but confusion and derangement of mind: the mourner's mind is unsettled and he does not know what to do, much as in מבוכה, perplexity. But in perplexity a man wants to get out of it and finds no way out, as explained earlier, while in mourning he does not try to leave his state, since the deed is done and cannot be undone; only his thoughts are confused and lack their proper order. Because wherever there is mourning there is grief, and the reverse, אבל sometimes stands for grief: נהפך לאבל מחולנו (Eichah 5:15), our dancing is turned to mourning; ומאבל ליום טוב (Esther 9:22), and from mourning to a festive day; והפכתי אבלם לששון (Yirmiyahu 31:12 in his edition), I will turn their mourning to joy. In essence תוגה, grief, and אבל are apart: grief is the work of the heart, mourning the work of thought.

Hence אבל comes mostly in the reflexive: ויתאבל על בנו (Bereishis 37:34), he mourned for his son; וישמע העם את הדבר הרע הזה ויתאבלו (Shemos 33:4), the people heard this evil word and they mourned; ויתאבלו העם מאד (Bamidbar 14:39), the people mourned greatly. The mourner brings this confusion on himself, picturing what befell him again and again and confusing his thoughts by it; were he not to keep recalling it, his mind would settle and his images return to their order. Sometimes he cannot help recalling it, the evil that has come on him being so heavy that all his hope is lost and he sees no cure for his breach, and then it comes in the light form: אבלו הכהנים (Yoel 1:9), the kohanim mourn; ואבלו נאות הרועים (Amos 1:2), the shepherds' pastures mourn; ואבל כל יושב בה (Amos 8:8), and all who dwell in it mourn. Since what they live and are fed by is lost to them, mourning comes upon them against their will, and they must mourn.

This kind of mourning falls on animals too, when they sense their food is gone and see nothing to live on: their senses are confounded and they go about witless, as in ואבל כבנות יענה (Michah 1:8), and mourning like the ostriches. From the mourning of animals the word is lent to things with no breath of life: when a thing stops yielding the benefit and pleasantness it was made for, it is said to mourn, as though it were confounded and did not know what to do, no longer yielding what it is fit for. So אבלה נבלה הארץ (Yeshayahu 24:4), the earth mourns, it withers: it is confounded from doing its work, and it also withers, תבול, loses its form from within, as explained above. And דרכי ציון אבלות (Eichah 1:4), the roads of Tzion mourn: they no longer give road and passage to those coming to the festivals, which is what they were made for.

That is why אבל is mostly joined with ואומלל, cut off, or יבש, dry, which are close to it in sense: אבלות is the confounding of a thing's makeup, אמילות its being cut off, and יבש is as it sounds, drying up. What they share is that the thing stops yielding what it has to yield: אבל תירוש אומללה גפן (Yeshayahu 24:7), the new wine mourns, the vine is cut off; אבל אומללה ארץ (Yeshayahu 33:9), the land mourns, it is cut off; עד מתי תאבל הארץ, ועשב כל השדה ייבש (Yirmiyahu 12:4), how long will the land mourn and the grass of every field dry up; אבלה הארץ יבשו נאות מדבר (Yirmiyahu 23:10), the land mourns, the pastures of the wilderness are dried up; ויאבל חל וחומה יחדיו אומללו (Eichah 2:8), rampart and wall mourn, together they are cut off.

From בל as confusion comes בלהה, in the sense of alarm: לעת ערב והנה בלהה (Yeshayahu 17:14), at evening, and behold, terror; ספו תמו מן בלהות (Tehillim 73:19), they are swept away and finished by terrors; בעתוהו בלהות (Iyov 18:11), terrors frighten him. It is what meets a man suddenly, a thing jumbled of differing matters, so that he cannot make of it a proper and ordered picture. At first sight he is startled by such a perception when it comes on him suddenly; and when it stays with him and keeps on before him, there is no anguish greater, and it brings madness, derangement of mind and other evil illnesses, may we be spared.

ותצעידהו למלך בלהות (Iyov 18:14), and it marches him to the king of terrors: a name for the king of the demons, who, as the common people have it, busies himself wholly with jumbled and tangled things to trouble men. Just before, the pasuk says יאכל בדיו בכור מות (Iyov 18:13), the firstborn of death devours his limbs, a name for the prince of death, as in אף אני בכור אתנהו (Tehillim 89:28), I too will make him a firstborn; or he is called firstborn relative to those put to death by him, being of necessity first and before them in time.

It may be that בהל, which also means alarm, is from blending and confusion too, and the two are one in sense, as with כבש and כשב, a lamb, and שמלה and שלמה, a garment. Or they are two senses, and to set it apart from בלהה the heh stands in the middle of the word as an added letter, like the heh of צהל, a ringing cry, from צלצול, ringing, and of רהב, pride, from רב, much, and the other hehs added in the middle of a word, explained in their places; so in the language of the Talmud, נולד כשהוא מהול (Shabbos 135a), born circumcised, from מילה, circumcision; and ולא כהלין כתבא למקרא (Daniel 5:8), and they could not read the writing, from יכול, able.

בלהה is confusion in the thing perceived, which comes as a jumble; בהלה is confusion in the one who receives it, whose thought is confounded when the thing comes on him suddenly. In בהלה the thing itself is not jumbled, but one who meets it suddenly and unprepared is at first sight thrown in his thinking, and then he settles at once. ומבלהים אותם (Ezra 4:4), and they were confounding them, is from בלהה: they fed them mixed-up reports from which they could form no true picture nor get to the substance, to keep them from the building. Against it, ויקראו בקול גדול ליראם ולבהלם (Divrei HaYamim II 32:18), they called out with a loud voice to frighten them and to alarm them, is from בהלה: the call itself was plain and ordered, but it was enough to alarm those who heard it suddenly and keep their minds from settling on whether there was anything in their words, and meanwhile they would hand over the city.

ויבהל את תמרוקיה ואת מנותיה (Esther 2:9), and he hastened her cosmetics and her portions: he ordered her gifts given suddenly, when she was not prepared for them, so that they would bring her the greater joy, as a happy thing that comes unlooked for does. נבהל להון איש רע עין (Mishlei 28:22), the man of grudging eye rushes after wealth: besides his grudging eye he has the bad trait of rushing after wealth, and that brings him to want and loss without his sensing it. One who rushes to profit until his mind is confused, how will he gain quickly? And with his eye grudging toward what is others', he is easily drawn into bad dealings that cost him money, for brokers and merchants rush him, saying there is great profit in it and he must not delay lest another get there first, and so he falls unawares into the snare of ruin.

From blending comes יובל. The Jubilee year is called יובל for the blending and mixing of men's ranks, so that no one is left with an advantage over another, in wealth or in land: the man who yesterday was poor in property is rich today, his fields returning to him free in the Yovel, and the man who yesterday was a slave is today his own master.

The horn of the shofar blown to proclaim that the Yovel has come is called יובל after it, since it announces the Yovel: במשוך היובל המה יעלו בהר (Shemos 19:13), when the horn sounds long, they may go up the mountain. It is also called קרן היובל, the horn of the Yovel, as במשוך בקרן היובל (Yehoshua 6:5), when they sound long on the horn of the Yovel; or שופר היובל, the shofar of the Yovel, as שופרות היובלים (Yehoshua 6:13), the shofars of the yovelim, where the plural of יובלים goes back to the shofars, each one a shofar of Yovel.

As יובל is given to the Jubilee year for the mixing of ranks, so it is given to bringing: יובל שי לה׳ צבאות (Yeshayahu 18:7), a gift shall be brought to Hashem of hosts; לך יובילו מלכים שי (Tehillim 68:30), kings shall bring You a gift; לרקמות תובל למלך (Tehillim 45:15), in embroidered garments she is brought to the king. This too is from mixing, the mixing of domains and borders: when one of two things in two domains is brought to the other, its border mixes with the other's and they become one border, as explained under אתא. The difference between בא and אתא, both coming, is the very difference between הבאה, bringing, and הובלה, conveying. הבאה applies also to a bringing not yet complete, as ולמה ה׳ מביא אותנו (Bamidbar 14:3), and why is Hashem bringing us, that is, in the course of bringing, and as והנה עשו בא (Bereishis 33:1), and behold, Esav was coming, in the course of coming. מוביל, conveying, applies only to a bringing already complete, when the thing conveyed has actually reached the border it was going to and the two borders have mixed and become one, like the word אתא, which also means a completed coming.

יבול may also be from הובלה, conveying: what the earth conveys, as in ונתנה הארץ יבולה (Vayikra 26:4), and the earth will give its produce, and ואין יבול בגפנים (Chavakuk 3:17), and there is no produce on the vines, just as תבואה, produce, is from הבאה, bringing, what the earth brings. The difference between them: יבול takes in all that the earth grows, grain and greens and grasses alike, as it says ותאכל ארץ ויבולה (Devarim 32:22), and it consumes the earth and its produce, that is, all that it yields. תבואה, said plainly, means specifically the five kinds of grain; but joined to שדה, field, as in וכל תבואת שדה (Divrei HaYamim II 31:5), and all the produce of the field, it takes in also the other plants sown for people to eat, as Chazal say (Nedarim 55a).

יבל also means a river: ועל יובל ישלח שרשיו (Yirmiyahu 17:8), and by a stream it sends out its roots; פלגים יבלי מים (Yeshayahu 30:25), brooks, streams of water; כערבים על יבלי מים (Yeshayahu 44:4), like willows by streams of water; על אובל אולי (Daniel 8:2), by the stream of Ulai. This too is from confusion: a river that rushes hard, its waters chasing along in a jumble, one part overtaking another; the opposite of מי השלוח ההולכים לאט (Yeshayahu 8:6), the waters of the Shiloach that go gently, whose water flows in its order.

From all these senses of בל comes מבול: הנני מביא את המבול (Bereishis 6:17), behold, I am bringing the Flood. It is called מבול from wearing out and rot, for it wore everything out; from blending, for it confounded everything; from יובל, for it carried everything off; and from נבלי שמים (Iyov 38:37), the flasks of heaven, and from יבלי מים (Yeshayahu 44:4), streams of water, as the aggadah expounds.