negation

Distinctions

lo (לא)

The Torah's standard negation, and the marker of a negative commandment: lo sirtzach, lo sinaf, lo signov, lo saaneh, lo sachmod. Rabbi Ber Oppenheimer: lo negates both past fact and future command, so it covers "you shall not eat" and "you did not eat" alike. Rabbi Aharon Maggid, as the column reads him (it says "if I understood him properly"): lo is addressed concretely to a second person, "you shall not."

al (אל)

Rabbi Ber Oppenheimer: al is always a negative imperative, always about something one might yet do, and never about a past act (he allows one exception, Shmuel I 27:10). It is "do not," never "did not."

bal (בל)

Rashi (to Yeshayahu 26:10) states plainly that the bal of Tanach means what lo means, and Machberes Menachem places it in the first category of words from the two-letter root ב-ל. But in Tanach it is confined to Yeshayahu, Tehillim, Mishlei and Hoshea (with single instances at Iyov 41:15 and Divrei HaYamim I 16:30), and there it almost always states a fact rather than issuing a command: the world "shall not (bal) falter" (Tehillim 93:1, 96:10), the tzaddik "shall not (bal) be moved" (Mishlei 10:30, 12:3). Chazal turn it into the standard way of naming a prohibition: lo sashchis (Devarim 20:19) becomes bal tashchis (Bikkurim 4:2, Kiddushin 1:7), lo sosif (Devarim 13:1) becomes bal tosif (Zevachim 8:10), lo seshaktzu (Vayikra 20:25) becomes bal teshaktzu (Shabbos 90b, Makkos 16b, Meilah 17a), lo yeira'eh (Shemos 13:7) and lo yimatzei (Shemos 12:19) become bal yeira'eh and bal yimatzei (Pesachim 3:3, 9:3). Chazal even read a factual bal prescriptively: Tehillim 147:19-20 records that Hashem did not (bal) make His laws known to the nations, and Chagigah 13a derives from it that we do not transmit Torah to a gentile.

Why Chazal traded lo for bal

The question is old and unsettled, and the column gathers the answers rather than choosing among them, noting that several of them are arcane and little discussed and offering them in the hope that one will resonate. Rabbi Yishaya Pick-Berlin raised it in the introduction to his unpublished glosses to Sefer HaTishbi; Rabbi Chizkiyah Medini of Chevron was asked it by a talmid, agreed it was worth asking, and knew of no earlier source until he later saw Rabbi Pick. Rabbi Betzalel Ashkenazi (Shitah Mekubetzes to Temurah 6b) cites Rabbi Meir HaMeili (Sefer HaMeoros), who says only, and cryptically, that bal is apparently somehow easier to pronounce and conveys a clearer meaning. The column suggests that this last point may be an allusion to the answer of Rabbi Reuven Margolios: to keep the negative lo from being heard as the homonym lo, "to him." Rabbi Ber Oppenheimer: bal states an ongoing fact rather than a command, so bal tigzol points at the man who stole and still holds the goods, and so with the other bal prohibitions, which point at a man who has not yet done teshuvah. Rabbi Aharon Maggid, again as the column reads him: bal names the prohibition in the abstract, without fixing on whom it binds. Rabbi Eliyahu Gutmacher, who expressly admits his suggestion is entirely novel and says he would have to run it through the whole Talmud to see whether it holds up, takes bal to mark the Rabbinic extension beyond the Biblical core (bal tashchis reaching every non-constructive destruction of property, where the pasuk speaks of a fruit tree); the column's own verdict is that it does not pan out. Rabbi Avraham Eliezer Hirshawitz (Otzar Kol Minhagei Yeshurun), similarly: lo is an absolute, unconditional no, bal a general and more flexible one, fitting Chazal's work of defining when a prohibition applies and when it does not. Some scholars have suggested that bal is not a Chazalic expression at all but a later copyists' abbreviation of b'lo, a theory the column says has not gained much traction. Rabbi Yisroel Rubin (Chabad of Albany) proposes, but ultimately rejects, that Chazal changed the wording to avoid quoting pesukim by heart (Gittin 60b); Rabbi Eli Silberstein (Chabad of Ithaca) takes bal as short for bli/bilti, and Rabbi Rubin himself preferred to relate it to bilui, wearing out. The columnist's own suggestion, which he calls his pet theory and puts as "we may argue," rests on the Chasam Sofer (Toras Moshe to Vayikra 10:1), that lo is one of the names of the Angel of Death, hinted at in the eish zarah asher lo tzivah osam: Chazal avoided the word so as not to invoke that name and draw accusation against Klal Yisrael, who may sometimes have failed to keep those very commandments.

The root ב-ל

Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim gives the two-letter root ב-ל two core senses, negation and loss of form: bli, hevel, aval, bilui, neveilah, neivel, naval, teiveil, yevul. A second family from the same root turns on mixing: balal, tavlul, tevel, tavlin, aveil, behalah, yovel, mabul.

Rendering guidance

• Lo + imperfect in a pasuk: you shall not. Al + jussive: do not. Keeping the two registers apart matters where a pasuk has both.
• Bal in Tanach: shall not, factual, not prohibitive. Tehillim 93:1 is "it shall not falter," not "let it not falter."
• Bal in Chazal: leave it transliterated and name it as a prohibition, the issur of bal tashchis, bal yeira'eh uval yimatzei. Do not render it as a command in English; that turns a citation into a fresh instruction.
• Trap: English "not" flattens all three, and "do not destroy" will do for both lo sashchis and bal tashchis, which is exactly the distinction Chazal built by changing the word. When a passage quotes the pasuk and then the Rabbinic label in one breath, translate the first and transliterate the second.
• Second trap: lo in a pasuk may be the prepositional lo, "to him." Rabbi Margolios's answer to the whole question turns on that ambiguity, so read the vowels before rendering.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Naso/Shavuos: Just Say No," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 7 Sivan 5783 (2023-05-27): https://articles.ohr.edu/articles/nasoshavuos-just-say-no, raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/10949-nasoshavuos-just-say-no.md. Primary loci cited: Devarim 20:19, 13:1; Vayikra 20:25, 10:1; Shemos 13:7, 12:19; Mishnah Bikkurim 4:2, Kiddushin 1:7, Zevachim 8:10, Pesachim 3:3 and 9:3; Shabbos 90b; Makkos 16b; Meilah 17a; Chagigah 13a; Gittin 60b; Rashi to Yeshayahu 26:10; Machberes Menachem s.v. בל; Shitah Mekubetzes to Temurah 6b citing Sefer HaMeoros; Tehillim 93:1, 96:10, 147:19-20; Mishlei 10:30, 12:3; Iyov 41:15; Divrei HaYamim I 16:30; Shmuel I 27:10; Toras Moshe to Vayikra 10:1.

Two notes on the loci. The article cites the Chagigah 13a derashah to Tehillim 147:19, but the word bal it turns on stands in 147:20 (u'mishpatim bal yeda'um); the entry gives 147:19-20. The article's transliterations are Sephardic (lo tashchit, bal tossif); the entry gives them in the house Ashkenazic form.