nothing
At a glance
In short
All of these are Hebrew words for "nothing," separated by nuances. Hevel and rik, which Aleinu pairs as what the other nations serve, denote the impotence and powerlessness of their imagined deities. Rabbi Avraham Bedersi makes hevel the less intense of the two, something that does exist but has no purpose, and rik something that does not even exist. For Shadal hevel is what appears valuable on the surface and is ultimately shown to be worthless, a futility, and rik is toiling for a result that yields nothing, labor for naught. Malbim takes the exact opposite approach: hevel is total "nothingness," and rik is what has some value on the surface until one digs deeper. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim traces each to its two-letter root: rik (ר-ק, emptying) is what is completely lacking in import, as though emptied of its very substance, and hevel (ב-ל, negation) is what is futile, somewhat substantial but still mostly useless. Efes, the "nothing" of Aleinu's "nothing exists besides Him," means "nothing" or "non-existent" in Tanach and also "but, however." Menachem Ibn Saruk treats that last sense as distinct, while Radak implies that all its meanings are interrelated. Tohu and bohu, both commonly translated "nothingness," describe the state of the world before the Six Days of Creation. The commentators read them in many ways and divide, among other things, over which is matter and which is form: Ramban takes tohu as matter and bohu as form, and Ralbag the exact opposite. Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein holds that blimah, meumah and klum are etymologically related, all going back to mah, "what." Meumah means "nothing" and can also mean "anything," because Hebrew allows double negatives; klum, its Rabbinic counterpart, also means "nothing."
Distinctions
Aleinu contrasts the Jews, who worship the "King, King of Kings, the Holy One, blessed be He," with the other nations, who serve hevel and rik. Those two terms denote the impotence and powerlessness of the imagined deities the gentiles worship, and amount to saying that those nations worship "nothing." Later in the same prayer a third word for "nothing" appears, efes. Though the Mishnah (Chagigah 2:1) writes that asking what came before the Creation of the world and what will be after its expiration is not a worthwhile course of study, the Torah itself (Bereishis 1:2) teaches that before the Six Days of Creation the world consisted of tohu and bohu. Both words are commonly translated "nothingness"; Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein holds that understanding their nuances will help one better understand what the Torah means to teach about the state of the world before Creation.
Hevel (הבל)
The 13th-century Provencal scholar Rabbi Avraham Bedersi (Chosam Tochnis) differentiates synonyms by the order in which they appear in Tanach when they occur near each other. He postulates that when several terms for the same idea appear in tandem, Tanach uses them in ascending order, from the least intense to the most intense. The one time hevel and rik appear side by side (Yeshayahu 30:7; cf. 49:4) they come in precisely that order, hevel first, just as in Aleinu. So hevel is the less intense "nothingness": something that does exist (yesh) but has no purpose (to'eles), while rik is something that does not even exist.
Shadal (Rabbi Shmuel David Luzzatto) offers a comprehensive study of these apparent synonyms. Hevel is specifically what appears on the surface to be advantageous or otherwise valuable but will ultimately be shown to be worthless; so beauty, which on the surface has some import, is hevel (Mishlei 31:30). In line with this he explains the name Hevel that Adam gave his son (Bereishis 4:2): at first Adam thought Hevel had the potential to be one of the righteous progenitors of mankind, but Hevel was killed before he could produce any offspring, proving his futility. Expanding on this, Shadal surmises that Hevel received the name only after he died, in retrospect of his unfruitful life, which is why Tanach does not explicitly report that Chavah named him, as it does for his brothers Kayin (4:1) and Sheis (4:25).
Malbim takes the exact opposite approach: hevel is that which is total "nothingness" and has no absolute value, while rik is something that has some value on the surface, but only when one digs deeper does one realize its folly.
Another approach to differentiating synonyms traces each word back to its etymological forebear, and its champion, Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim of Breslau, traces hevel and rik to their core two-letter roots. He lists hevel under the biliteral root ב-ל, defined as "negation" and "loss of form," and derives a whole family of words from it: bli, "without," a negation; aval, "but," the negation of a previous clause; bilui, "worn out," by which something loses its form; teivel, "the physical world," because all physical entities are subject to wear and tear; neveilah, an animal carcass, a decomposing dead creature; neivel, a leather flask made from the skin of a neveilah; naval, an uncouth person, one who has lost his human form; and yevul, "produce," because it can easily rot and decompose if not properly preserved, or because it comes from seeds that decompose to give way to what grows from them. Along the same lines he explains hevel as something "futile," which has almost no value and is thus negated: something somewhat substantial, but still mostly useless and pointless. The 18th-century grammarian and dayan Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh of Carpentras similarly writes in Ohalei Yehudah that hevel is a portmanteau of hei, "this," and balah, "is worn out, useless, depleted."
In the Gemara hevel refers to highly intangible things, like vapors: the hevel, the breathy utterances, of the mouths of children (Shabbos 119b); the hevel, the bad air, inside a pit, by which it mainly causes damage, as opposed to the blunt impact of falling into it (Bava Kamma 53a); and insulating foods in certain materials that create heat, which are said to "add hevel" to them (Shabbos 34a). As Radak explains in Sefer HaShorashim, verbal utterances are hevel because they dissipate into the air very quickly and have no staying power; Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein adds that the same is true of bad air and hot air.
Rabbi Avraham Dovid Kobernick compares ה-ב-ל to its metathesized counterparts ב-ל-ה (bilui, "wearing out") and ל-ה-ב (lahav, "flame"), explaining that all three are expressions of destruction and nothingness: hevel is something that is right now "nothing," bilui something on its way to becoming "nothing," and lahav that which consumes things and turns them into "nothing." He contrasts these with their polar opposite, ל-ב (lev, "heart"), the mechanism that keeps things alive and running.
Returning to the name Hevel, Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein holds that Adam and Chavah's son was likely given it because he lived only a short time before Kayin killed him, so that his life was essentially useless and totally unimportant in the grand scheme of things; and Christian writers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin have variously translated the name as "vanity," "unprofitable," "useless," "worthless" or "a soon vanishing-vapor." The Ran (Rabbeinu Nissim of Gerona, to Bereishis 4:1) and Ralbag (to Bereishis 4:2), however, speculate that perhaps he was called Hevel because he was physically smaller than Kayin, so that his existence was less substantial and closer to "nothing" than his brother's. Alternatively, they suggest, perhaps Adam and Chavah prophesied that he was destined to die young, and so named him Hevel to allude to his futile life.
Rik (ריק)
Shadal continues that rik refers specifically to toiling and working hard to achieve something that instead yields "nothing," as in the curse the Torah presents to those who fail to keep it, "and you will sow your seed for naught (larik), as your enemies will eat it" (Vayikra 26:16). In many instances rik appears alongside yegiah, toiling (Yeshayahu 49:4, 65:23; Iyov 39:16), and in Uva LeTzion we ask Hashem to open our heart to His Torah and put love and fear of Him in our hearts, "so that we do not toil for rik." For Bedersi rik is the more intense word, what does not even exist (above).
For Malbim rik is what has some value on the surface (above), and he compares it to the similar word reik, "empty," drawing an analogy to the shell or husk of something that has no interior and is thus "empty." The shell itself may have some value, even though the item as a whole is still "empty," and so essentially amounts to "nothing."
Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim traces rik to the biliteral root ר-ק, "emptying" or "depleting": rik means "nothing" or "vanity" in that it denotes something completely lacking in import, as though emptied or depleted of its very substance. The related reikam, "naught," with the added final mem, likewise describes an act or utterance performed "for no reason." He lists many other words from this root: reik, "empty," of something that is supposed to be full but is now devoid of content; rak, "but, only," of what is exceptional or lies outside the norm, as though emptied or separated from the rest; merikah, "rinsing, washing," which empties something of all dirty particles; tamrukin, "cosmetics," treatments that rinse the body of all impurities to leave it clean and pristine; marak, "soup, broth," a liquid whose substance was distilled from the essence of a solid food; rok, "spittle," a liquid excretion emptied from the body; rakos, "slender, skinny," the body emptied of flesh and fat; rekes, "temple," the area above the cheeks between the eyes and the side of the head, typically described as not fleshy or fatty; rakik, "wafer," a thin, brittle flatbread or cake not fried in oil, and so lean rather than fatty; and more (yerek, yarok, yerakrak, rikmah and rokem).
Targum Onkelos renders bohu of Bereishis 1:2 as reikanya, an Aramaicization of reik, a cognate of rik.
Hevel and rik in Aleinu
It may be because of the etymological association between rik and rok, "spittle," Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein suggests, that an old Ashkenazi custom developed of spitting after saying varik, the word in Aleinu describing the object of pagan worship; it is still practiced in some circles, especially among Chabad Chassidim.
A medieval Ashkenazi tradition sees hevel and rik in Aleinu as allusions to Jesus, because hevel in gematria equals zol, "cheap, disgraced," and varik equals Yeshu, the rabbinic name for him (his Hebrew name was Yeshua). Tanach itself already uses hevel of idolatry (Devarim 32:21; Melachim II 17:15), because that mode of worship is worthless and produces nothing of significance. This wording in Aleinu made much trouble for Jews in Christian Europe throughout history, and because of the damning implications of this tradition, the line containing hevel varik has often been excised by censors.
Although Aleinu as we have it reads "the seat of His honor (yikaro) is in the Heavens above," some sources claim an old custom, found in Seder Rav Amram Gaon, of refraining from saying yikaro, an inflection of the Aramaic yakar, "honor," because it is an anagram of varik, and of saying its Hebrew synonym kevodo instead.
Efes (אפס)
Later in Aleinu: "Our King is True, nothing (efes) exists besides Him." In using efes to say that there is no other potent power in the world besides Hashem, Aleinu mirrors a prophecy of Yeshayahu, who uses the word the same way (Yeshayahu 45:14). According to Even-Shoshan's concordance, efes in Tanach means "nothing" or "non-existent" (or the "edge" of existence) some thirty-six times, and in another five a verb form, afes, denotes destroying or emptying something in a way that renders it useless or impotent; so efes too is a term of negation.
In seven more places efes means "but, however," broadly synonymous with aval, rak and ach. Menachem Ibn Saruk (Machberes Menachem) sees this meaning as distinct from the others, while Radak (Sefer HaShorashim) implies that all these meanings are interrelated. On that view, as Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein explains it, efes is a conjunction that qualifies, minimizes or outright negates what was said before, as though one recanted or partially recanted one's previous statement, which is like turning that statement into "nothing," or at least "emptying" it of its previous meaning. In Modern Hebrew efes takes on a numeric sense, "zero."
Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim traces efes to the biliteral root פ-ס, taking the initial aleph as extraneous to the core root, and defines the root's principal meaning as the "edge" or "end" of something: the kesones passim Yaakov gave Yosef (Bereishis 37:3) is a pleated garment, which has many "edges" (passim). Efes, then, is something that has reached its proverbial end and is therefore non-existent, or close to it. He connects to the same root pesiyah, "expansion," which moves the edges of something by spreading outward, and tefisah, "holding, grabbing," a way of spreading one's domain by grabbing more than before.
Rabbi Yitzchak Zeldin (eighteenth-century Germany) writes in Shoresh Yesha that efes and its metathesized counterpart osef, "gathering," are both related to the root ס-ף, sof, "end, edge": osef is a contraction of ein sof, "there is no end," because it consciously tests the limits of the "end" by gathering more, while efes denotes something whose beginning and end meet, because it is non-existent or close to it.
Tohu (תהו)
Tohu occurs exactly twenty times in Tanach. Besides Bereishis 1:2, its only other appearance in the Torah is Devarim 32:10, where, as Rashi explains it, Moshe praises the Jews' devotion: their trust in Hashem can be found even in a place of tohu, like the wilderness, into which they entered relying wholly on Him. Eleven of the twenty are in Yeshayahu, who teaches that Hashem did not create the world for tohu but so that it will be populated (45:18), and who uses tohu to describe idolatry as "nothing, worthless, impotent" (41:29, 44:9, 59:4).
Targum pseudo-Yonasan and Targum Neofiti (to Bereishis 1:2) render tohu and bohu as tahiya and bahiya, simply Aramaicizations of the Hebrew. Rashi (there) and Sefer HaBahir (§2) explain tohu as astonishment and wonderment: one who saw the sheer nothingness of the pre-Creation world would wonder and be astonished. The same usage is found in toheh al harishonos (Kiddushin 40b), of one who regretted his good deeds and was "astonished" at what he had nobly done, and in tahi bah, the Talmud's phrase introducing a question of bewilderment (Berachos 38b, Eruvin 66a, Kesubos 107b, Kiddushin 55b, Bava Kamma 76b and 112b, Bava Basra 39b, Zevachim 13b, Bechoros 42b).
The Gemara (Yoma 54b) records a dispute over whether Hashem created the world starting from the middle and expanding outward, or from the edges, filling in until He reached the middle. The 14th-century Provencal scholar Rabbi Nissim of Marseilles (to Bereishis 1:2) seemingly follows the first approach: both words allude to the moment before Creation, when the entire world was concentrated in the middle, from which everything was to expand outward (Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein compares how scientists nowadays understand the Big Bang; Rabbi Alexander Hool argues, in The Six Days of Creation, that whereas modern science believes the universe is still expanding, Judaism understands that it has actually stopped expanding). Rabbi Nissim likens tohu to a person stuck "wondering" (toheh/tamah), who stays immobile in place, moving neither right nor left because of his indecision: tohu is that moment before Hashem catalyzed the world to expand outward.
Ramban (to Bereishis 1:1) famously takes a more philosophical approach: tohu and bohu are the notions of matter (chomer) and form (tzurah). Tohu is what the Greek natural philosophers called hyle (hiyuli), a primordial first matter that was shaped and formed to fashion everything in Creation. A name can apply only to something that has both matter and form, and anything missing either one is effectively "nothing." So Ramban, like Rashi, connects tohu to toheh: since tohu is matter without form, it eludes naming, and one who encountered it could only wonder what it should be called. His explanation echoes the Zohar (Bereishis 16a) and his predecessor Rabbi Avraham bar Chiyya HaNasi, who wrote the same thing in Higayon HaNefesh. Ralbag (to Bereishis 1:2) takes the exact opposite position, tohu as form and bohu as matter, and Abarbanel (there) rejects Ralbag's explanation.
Rabbi Moshe Botarel cites an otherwise unknown scholar, Rabbi Levi ben Shlomo of Lunel, as likewise explaining tohu as matter that has no shape but is destined to receive one later, and bohu as the concept of shape. Rabbi Levi is also cited as explaining that existence hinges on polar opposites, so that tohu is "absence" and bohu "presence"; somehow Hashem's tempering the balance between these two poles brings the world into existence. Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein adds that the world is a place where opposites, concrete and abstract, are expected to coexist, and Hashem is the One who makes peace between them; he also cautions that Botarel has been known to fabricate sources, so his citation might not be the most reliable.
Shadal: tohu is something pointless that brings no benefit (for his bohu, see below).
Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim sees the hei and vav of tohu and bohu as letters added to the core root. Tohu derives from the monoliteral tav and denotes an outline or silhouette that shapes something's outer contours but whose core inner essence has not yet been filled in. Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein notes that this fits an esoteric passage in the Gemara (Chagigah 12a) that explains, on Yeshayahu 34:11, tohu as "a green line that circumscribes the entire world" (something that establishes the boundaries of the physical universe) and bohu as "the wet stones embedded in the mantle from which water goes out" (the external source of water, the essential ingredient of all life).
As an aside, Rabbi Avraham bar Chiyya HaNasi writes that tehom, "depths of the sea," whose inflections appear thirty-six times in Tanach, derives from tohu, because it denotes an unordered area that has no shape. The final mem of tehom, he explains, is like the final mem of chinam, "free," and reikam, "empty," which are declensions of chein, "granting, gracious," and reik, "vacant, empty."
Bohu (בהו)
Bohu appears only twice more in Tanach beyond Bereishis 1:2 (Yeshayahu 34:11; Yirmiyahu 4:23).
- Targum Onkelos renders it reikanya, and Rashi likewise relates it to reik, in the sense of "emptiness".
- Sefer HaBahir (§2) explains bohu as something that has some minimal amount of tangibility and is not completely abstract.
- Rabbi Nissim of Marseilles reads it as a contraction of bo, "inside," and hu, "it is": the entire world was still "in the inside," at the middle, and had not yet begun to spread out.
- For Ramban bohu is form, for Ralbag matter, and for Rabbi Levi ben Shlomo of Lunel shape and "presence" (all above).
Shadal: bohu is something actually bad, beyond having no advantage. Elsewhere Sefer HaBahir (§11-12) connects tohu with evil and bohu with peace, and later (§135, §163) elaborates by connecting tohu's association with evil to its causing people to wonder and second-guess themselves, which leads them to sin.
Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim takes the root of bohu to be the monoliteral beis, "inside": bohu is something's external structure whose interior still needs to be filled in (for the Gemara's bohu, Chagigah 12a, see above). Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein adds a point Rabbi Pappenheim does not make: the name of the letter beis itself relates to bayis, "house," a place into which a person might enter.
Blimah (בלימה)
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein holds that blimah and klum, like meumah, relate back to mah. Blimah appears only once in Tanach: Iyov describes Hashem as the One who "hangs the land on blimah" (Iyov 26:7). On a simple level this means that Hashem actively suspends the earth in space ("nothing") without its needing to lean on any other cosmic body. Following this understanding, Rabbi Saadia Gaon, Ibn Ezra, Rabbi Moshe Kimchi (to Iyov there) and Radak (Sefer HaShorashim) all explain blimah as a portmanteau of bli, "without, there is not," and mah, "anything," literally "what." Bli also relates to the concept of "nothingness" (Rabbi Pappenheim's ב-ל family, under hevel above), and blimah is sometimes written as two words. In this spirit Rabbi Avraham bar Chiyya HaNasi (Higayon HaNefesh) writes that blimah is synonymous with tohu.
On an exegetical plane, Chazal (Chullin 89a) explain blimah as a single word from the root ב-ל-ם, "withhold, hold back," a cognate of which appears only once in Tanach (Tehillim 32:9), so that the word is otherwise a hapax legomenon. When Iyov says that Hashem hangs the world on blimah, the world's continued existence hinges on the merit of those who respond to personal insults by "holding back" and not retorting (see Rabbeinu Bachya to Devarim 33:27).
Sefer Yetzirah calls the ten sefiros blimah, meaning either that the sefiros are not independent realities existing outside Hashem but are "nothing" on their own, or that one ought to "hold back" from speaking of esoteric matters and sharing them with the uninitiated (see Ramban to Sefer Yetzirah). Rabbi Shabsai Donnolo, in his commentary to Sefer Yetzirah, explains blimah as a portmanteau of bli and meumah: unlike other artisans and craftspeople, Hashem was able to create the world without any tools or materials.
Biblical blimah has nothing to do with the Yiddish girls' name Blima, also pronounced Blume (responsa Maharsham vol. 4 §50, vol. 8 §242), which derives from Germanic cognates of the English bloom, blossom and blow (and the German and Yiddish blatt). According to linguists, those Germanic words derive from the Proto-Indo-European root bhel, "thriving, blossoming." In Greek and Latin the first consonant of that root became an f-sound (just as beis and peh can interchange in Hebrew), yielding the etymological ancestors of the English flower, flour, foliage, folio, flora, flourish and more; it is also the basis of the name of the Roman goddess Flora (Fluusai in the ancient Oscan culture). None of this has anything to do with the British English interjection blimey.
Meumah (מאומה) and klum (כלום)
Meumah is a tricky term: it means "nothing," but it can also mean "anything, something, whatever, whatsoever." The same word bears these seemingly opposite meanings because Hebrew allows double negatives: in Hebrew a person can say he has nothing by saying "I do not have nothing," while in English saying the same thing is an awkward way of implying that one does have something. According to Even-Shoshan's concordance meumah appears thirty-two times in Tanach, plus twice more without the final hei as meum (Iyov 31:7, Daniel 1:4).
The most popular etymology traces meumah to the biliteral root מ-ה, whence mah, "what." Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh of Carpentras adopts it in Ohalei Yehudah, where meumah is a contraction of mah u'mah, "what and what." The German philologist Wilhelm Gesenius also offers this etymology in his lexicon of Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic, and compares its construction to that of the Latin quidquid, which means basically the same thing. Rabbi Dr. Ernest Klein cites this explanation but rejects it on technical grounds. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim traces meumah to the two-letter root מ-ם, which denotes "the smallest amount," so that meumah meaning "nothing" really means "not even something" (for example, Bereishis 30:31, 39:23; Melachim I 10:21). For him Biblical meumah is on par with the Rabbinic mah shehu, from mah, "what," and shehu, "that it is," meaning "whatever amount that it is," and kol shehu, from kol, "all, any," and shehu, meaning "any amount that it is." Rav Hirsch similarly explains meumah as the smallest possible smidgen of existence, a "something" only a bit bigger than "nothing," and gives its root as א-ם, which means "mother" (the source of all life and existence) and "if" (the precondition necessary for anything to exist).
Klum, a Rabbinic word, appears countless times in the Mishnah and also means "nothing"; like its Biblical counterpart meumah, it usually appears in the context of a double negative. Rabbi Binyamin Mussafia (Musaf He'Aruch) writes that klum is a contraction of kol meum, "nothing at all," a phrase in the Hebrew part of Daniel (1:4), and Rabbi Dr. Ernest Klein cites this etymology approvingly. Rabbi Yair Chaim Bachrach, author of the responsa Chavos Yair, writes in Mar Kashisha that he disagrees with Rabbi Mussafia's explanation but does not offer an alternative etymology. Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein adds that before he studied the etymologies of klum he used to think it related to kol, "all, every," and kulam, "all of them," through the well-documented phenomenon that a Hebrew root can sometimes refer to an idea and its polar opposite, as the noun shoresh means "root" and its verb form misharesh "to uproot"; so it made sense to him that "everything" and "nothing" would be related words.
Also discussed in
- Blemishמאומה / meumah
- Unmarried manריק / reik, rik (ר-י-ק)
- Vegetable and greenריק / ירק (ר-ק)
Radak on these roots
Sefer HaShorashim
א-פ-ס
To come to an end; the noun is the want of a thing, and it stands for 'except'; אַפְסֵי אָרֶץ, the ends of the earth. All are close to one sense, ending and what is not.
The verb: it is spent
אָפֵס הַמֵּץ (Yeshayahu 16:4), the oppressor is at an end, and כִּי אָפֵס כָּסֶף (Bereishis 47:15), for the money is at an end, are a past verb, on the pattern of חָפֵץ; so too הֶאָפֵס לָנֶצַח חַסְדּוֹ (Tehillim 77:9), has His kindness come to an end forever. Their sense, Radak says, is known: כלה המץ, the oppressor is finished, כלה הכסף, the money is finished, and so all of them.
The noun: none of it, without it
בְּאֶפֶס עֵצִים תִּכְבֶּה־אֵשׁ (Mishlei 26:20) is, without wood the fire goes out; הַאֶפֶס עוֹד אִישׁ (Shmuel II 9:3) is הלא עוד איש, is there not still a man; עַד אֶפֶס מָקוֹם (Yeshayahu 5:8) is עד לא מקום, until there is no room; and בְּאֶפֶס עֲשָׁקוֹ, oppressed him for nothing, is בחנם בלא משפט, for nothing, without justice.
Standing in for 'except'
It comes in place of בלתי, except, only: אֶפֶס כִּי־נִאֵץ נִאַצְתָּ (Shmuel II 12:14), only that you have greatly blasphemed; אֶפֶס כי עז העם (Bamidbar 13:28), only that the people is strong; and אֲנִי וְאַפְסִי עוֹד (Tzefaniah 2:15), which he glosses אני ואין בלתי עוד, I am, and there is none besides me.
All close to one sense
אַפְסֵי אָרֶץ (Shmuel I 2:10) is קצות הארץ, the ends of the earth. Radak says they are all close to one sense, כליון ודבר שאינו, an ending and a thing that is not, only that each is explained by the sense nearest to it.
מֵי אָפְסָיִם, three readings
Radak reads מֵי אָפְסָיִם (Yechezkel 47:3) as מי כליון, waters of ending, with only a little in them. Rabbi Yonah explained it as מי פסים with an added alef, waters of the palms, since in Aramaic the palm of the hand is called פס ידא; that is, the waters covered only the soles of his feet. Our Rabbis explained it (in Shekalim, chapter 6, halachah 3) as water a man crosses up to his ankles, and so Targum Yonasan renders מֵי קַרְסוּלִין, ankle water.
אָפֵס הַמֵּץ (ישעיה טז, ד), כִּי אָפֵס כָּֽסֶף (בראשית מז, טו), פועל עבר בשקל חָפֵץ בְּבַֽת־יַֽעֲקֹב (בראשית לד, יט), וכן הֶאָפֵס לָנֶצַח חַסְדּוֹ (תהלים עז, ט), ענינם ידוע, כלה המץ, כלה הכסף וכן כלם. והשׁם בְּאֶפֶס עֵצִים תִּכְבֶּה־אֵשׁ (משלי כו, כ), בשש נקדות בלא עצים, הַאֶפֶס עוֹד אִישׁ (שמואל ב' ט, ג), הלא עוד איש, עַד אֶפֶס מָקוֹם (ישעיה ה, ח), עד לא מקום, בְּאֶפֶס עֲשָׁקֽוֹ (ישעיה גב, ד), בחנם בלא משפט. ויבא במקום בלתי אֶפֶס כִּֽי־נִאֵץ נִאַצְתָּ (שמואל ב' יב, יד), אֶפֶס מֵֽאוֹתִי (ישעיה נד, טו), וְאֶפֶס אֶת־הַדָּבָר אֲשֶׁר־אֲדַבֵּר אֵלֶיךָ (במדבר כב, לה), אֶפֶס כי עז העם (במדבר יג, כט), וְאֵין עוֹד אֶפֶס אֱלֹהִֽים (ישעיה מה, יד), אֲנִי וְאַפְסִי עוֹד (צפניה ב, טו), אני ואין בלתי עוד. אַפְסֵי־אָרֶץ (שמואל א' ב, י), קצות הארץ, וכלם קרובים לענין אחד שהוא ענין כליון ודבר שאינו, אלא שכל אחד יתפרש לפי ענינו הקרוב לו. מֵי אָפְסָֽיִם (יחזקאל מז, ג), מי כליון שאין בהם אלא מעט. ורבי יונה פירשו מי פסים והאל"ף נוסף, פירוש מי כפים כי הכ"ף בלשון ארמית נקרא פס ידא ורצונו לומר כי המים לא היו מכסים כי אם כפות רגליו. ורבותינו פירשוהו (שקלים פרק ו, הלכה ג), שאדם עובר בהם עד קרסוליו, וכן תרגם יונתן מֵי קַרְסוּלִין.
ב-ל-ם
To muzzle, לחסום; Chazal read בְּלִימָה of one who muzzles himself in strife, and by the plain sense it is two words, the earth hung on nothing.
Muzzling, and holding one's peace
עֶדְיוֹ לִבְלוֹם (Tehillim 32:9), his trappings, to muzzle him, is לחסום, to muzzle. Chazal say (Chullin 89a) on תֹּלֶה אֶרֶץ עַל־ בְּלִימָֽה (Iyov 26:7), He hangs the earth upon בלימה, that the world endures only in the merit of one who muzzles himself, בולם עצמו, in a time of strife. That is, Radak explains, he closes his mouth and is silent, hears himself reviled and does not answer.
The plain sense: hung on nothing
By the plain sense בלימה is two words: the earth is תלויה על לא דבר, hung upon no thing, since it hangs in the middle of the spheres at a great distance from them on every side.
עֶדְיוֹ לִבְלוֹם (תהלים לב, ט), לחסום, ובדברי רבותינו ז"ל (חולין פט, ע"א) תֹּלֶה אֶרֶץ עַל־בְּלִימָֽה (איוב כו, ז), אין העולם מתקיים אלא בזכות מי שבולם עצמו בשעת מריבה, כלומר שסותם פיו ושותק ושׁומע חרפתו ואיננו משיב. ועל דרך הפשוט הוא בענין שתי מלות שהארץ תלויה על לא דבר לפי שהיא תלויה באמצע הגלגלים במרחק גדול מן הגלגלים מכל צד.
ה-ב-ל
A thing that is nothing at all; the verb, to become empty or to make others so; and in Chazal, the breath of the mouth, a thing soon gone.
Nothing at all
הֶבֶל הֵמָּה (Yirmiyahu 10:15), they are nothing, and הֲבֵל הֲבָלִים (Koheles 1:2), emptiness of emptinesses: Radak glosses hevel as a thing that is nothing at all.
Going after it
וַיֵּלְכוּ אַֽחֲרֵי הַהֶבֶל וַיֶּהְבָּלוּ (Yirmiyahu 2:5), they went after emptiness and became empty themselves, and מַהְבִּלִים הֵמָּה אֶתְכֶם (Yirmiyahu 23:16), they are making you empty.
The breath of the mouth
So too Chazal call the vapour that leaves the mouth by this word, בהבל פיו (Shabbos 88b), with the breath of his mouth, and הבל תינוקות (Shabbos 119b), the breath of children, it being a thing that ceases and is soon gone.
וַיֵּלְכוּ אַֽחֲרֵי הַהֶבֶל וַיֶּהְבָּלוּ (ירמיה ב, ה) והפעל הנוסף [פֻּעַל] מַהְבִּלִים הֵמָּה אֶתְכֶם (ירמיה כג, טז). והשם אַֽחֲרֵי הַהֶבֶל (ירמיה ב, ה), הֶבֶל הֵמָּה (ירמיה י, טו), בשש נקדות. ומשקל אחר הֲבֵל הֲבָלִים (קהלת א, ב). והוא דבר שאינו כלום. וכן קראו רבותינו (שבת פח, ע"ב) לאיד היוצא מהפה בהבל פיו הבל תינוקות (שבת קיט, ע"ב) כי הוא דבר המתבטל ותכלה במהרה.
ר-י-ק
To empty out, said of the vessel and of what comes out of it alike; empty, and for nothing; and, another sense, arming for war, said of sword and spear and of men.
Emptying, and what it is not
הֵם מְרִיקִים שַׂקֵּיהֶם (Bereishis 42:35), they were emptying their sacks, and עַל־הָאָרֶץ יָרִיקוּ (Koheles 11:3), they empty themselves upon the earth. This word is used both of the vessel and of what comes out of it, and in that it differs from הצקה, pouring, which is said only of what comes out of the vessel.
Poured out
וְלֹא־הוּרַק מִכְּלִי אֶל־כֶּלִי (Yirmiyahu 48:11), he was not emptied from vessel to vessel. Of שֶׁמֶן תּוּרַק שְׁמֶךָ (Shir HaShirim 1:3), your name is oil poured out, he says the word may be a descriptive form with an added tav, and though its vowel is a patach we find others like it: יִסַּד בְּצִיּוֹן (Yeshayahu 28:16), laying in Tzion, and לֵב הוּתַל (Yeshayahu 44:20), a deceived heart.
Empty, and for nothing
כֵּלִים רֵקִים (Melachim II 4:3), empty vessels, and הַשִּׁבֳּלִים הָרֵקוֹת (Bereishis 41:27), the empty ears of grain. As a noun, וְתַם לָרִיק כֹּחֲכֶם (Vayikra 26:20), your strength spent for nothing, and וּלְאֻמִּים יֶהְגוּ־רִיק (Tehillim 2:1), peoples murmuring emptiness. With an added mem, רֵיקָם שִׁלַּחְתָּנִי (Bereishis 31:42), you would have sent me away empty handed, one form serving male and female alike.
Arming for war
וְחֶרֶב אָרִיק אַחֲרֵיהֶם (Yechezkel 5:2), I will draw out a sword after them, וְהָרֵק חֲנִית (Tehillim 35:3), draw out the spear, and וַיָּרֶק אֶת־חֲנִיכָיו (Bereishis 14:14), he armed his trained men, are another sense, arming for war. It can be read as near the first sense, since taking a sword out of its sheath is like emptying a vessel, and perhaps some spears too are made with a sheath; on that reading וַיָּרֶק אֶת־חֲנִיכָיו is said because the men empty out the swords.
Like the mire of the streets
On אֲרִיקֵם in כְּטִיט חוּצוֹת אֲרִיקֵם (Tehillim 18:43), like the mire of the streets, his own view is that the quiescent letter stands in place of a dagesh the word should have had, and that it is of the sense of רקק in the words of Chazal (Chullin 27b), where a bird created מן הרקק, from the mire, is made fit by one sign; and the רקק is soft mud. Or the word may belong with וְרַקּוֹת בָּשָׂר (Bereishis 41:19), lean of flesh, and וּרְקִיקֵי מַצּוֹת (Shemos 29:2), thin matzah wafers, which is a sense of poorness.
הֵם מְרִיקִים שַׂקֵּיהֶם (בראשית מב, לה), עַל־הָאָרֶץ יָרִיקוּ (קהלת יא, ג), הַֽמְרִיקִים מֵֽעֲלֵיהֶם הַזָּהָֽב (זכריה ר, יב). ושלא נזכר פעלו ממנו [הָפְעַל] וְלֹֽא־הוּרַק מִכְּלִי אֶל־כֶּלִי (ירמיה מח, יא). שֶׁמֶן תּוּרַק שְׁמֶךָ (שיר השירים א, ג), ואפשר שהוא תאר בתוספת תי"ו ואף על פי שהוא פתוח מצאנו כמוהו. יִסַּד בְּצִיּוֹן (ישעיה כח, טז), לֵב הוּתַל (ישעיה מד, כ), ולשון זה נופל על הכלי ועל היוצא ממנו ולא כן לשון הצקה שאינו נופל אלא על היוצא מהכלי. והתאר נָעוּר וָרֵק (נחמיה ה, יג), כֵּלִים רֵקִים (מלכים ב' ד, ג), וְהֵקִיץ וְרֵיקָה נַפְשׁוֹ (ישעיה כט, ה), הַֽשִּׁבֳּלִים הָֽרֵקוֹת (בראשית מא, כז). והשם הִצִּיגַנִו [הִצִּיגַנִי] כְּלִי רִיק (ירמיה נא, לד), וְתַם לָרִיק כֹּֽחֲכֶם (ויקרא כו, כ), וּלְאֻמִּים יֶהְגוּ־רִֽיק (תהלים ב, א). ובתוספת מ"ם רֵיקָם שִׁלַּחְתָּנִי (בראשית לא, מב), והוא שם שזה לזכר ולנקבה. וענין אחר וַֽהֲרִֽיקֹתִי אַֽחֲרֵיכֶם חָרֶב (ויקרא כו, לג), וְחֶרֶב אָרִיק אַֽחֲרֵיהֶֽם (יחזקאל ה, ב), וְהָרֵק חֲנִית (תהלים לה, ג), וַיָּרֶק אֶת־חֲנִיכָיו (בראשית יד, יד), הַעַל כֵּן יָרִיק חֶרְמוֹ (חבקוק א, יז) ענין חליצה למלחמה. ויש לפרש זה הענין קרוב לענין הראשון, כי הוצאת החרב מתערה כמו הרקת הכלי. ואולי יש חנית שיעשו לו גם כן תער. וענין וַיָּרֶק אֶת־חֲנִיכָיו לפי שהם מריקים החרבות. כְּטִיט חוּצוֹת אֲרִיקֵֽם (תהלים יח, מג), לפי דעתי שהנח תמורת הדגש כי היה ראוי להדגש והוא מענין רקק בדברי רבותינו ז"ל (הולין כו, ע"ב) עוף שנברא מן הרקק הכשרו בסימן אחד. והרקק הוא הטיט הנרוק. ואפשר להיות אריקם מענין וְרַקּוֹת בָּשָׂר (בראשית מא, יט), וּרְקִיקֵי מַצּוֹת (שמות כט, ב), שהוא ענין הדלות.
ת-ה-ה
Desolation: הָֽיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ (Bereishis 1:2), it was tohu and vohu; he has explained it already at the root בָּהָה.
הָֽיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ (בראשית א, ב), ענין שממה. וכבר פירשנוהו בשרש בָּהָה.
Radak, Sefer HaShorashim, Berlin 1847. Public domain, digitised by Sefaria from the National Library of Israel.
Rav Pappenheim on this root
Cheshek Shlomo
ב-ל
In English, our account of his entry
The loss of a thing's form, not of the thing itself: from within, as it wears out and rots (בלה), or from without, as it is mixed into other things (בלל).
Form lost, not the thing
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 and רקבון: wearing and rot
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.
בלילה against עירוב
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.
Efraim blended among the nations
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.
מלח is stirring, not mixing
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.
Wearing out and withering
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.
Worn things
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.
בול, the month of Cheshvan
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.
נבלה, a carcass
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.
נבל, a skin for drink
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.
נבל, the instrument
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.
The flasks of heaven
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.
נבל, the base man
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.
יבלת, a wart, against שומא
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.
תבל, the lower world
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.
יבול and בול, produce
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.
Confounding: בלל
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.
בליל, fodder
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.
תבלל, the eye blemish
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.
תבל, a forbidden blending
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.
תבלין, spices
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.
אבל, a tract of land
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.
אבל, mourning, is confusion
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.
Why mourning is mostly reflexive
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.
Mourning of beasts and of the land
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.
אבל beside אומלל and יבש
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.
בלהה, terror
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.
King of terrors, firstborn of death
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.
Is בהל from the same root?
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 against בהלה
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.
Haste: בהלה in Esther and Mishlei
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.
יובל, the Jubilee year
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.
יובל, the ram's horn
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.
הובלה, conveying, against הבאה
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, produce, against תבואה
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, a stream
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.
מבול, the Flood
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.
Rav Shlomo Pappenheim, Cheshek Shlomo (Shorashim), first printed from his manuscript by Moshe Tzuriel, Bnei Brak 5777. The English is our account of his entry.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "An Article About Nothing (Part 1 of 2)," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 9 September 2023.
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "An Article About Nothing (Part 2 of 2)," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 16 September 2023.
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "A Perfect Sacrifice," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 20 March 2021.
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Blemished Imperfections," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 9 May 2020.
Cited in the essay: Aleinu; Uva LeTzion; Seder Rav Amram Gaon; Mishnah Chagigah 2:1; Bereishis 1:2, 4:1, 4:2, 4:25, 30:31, 37:3, 39:23; Vayikra 26:16; Devarim 32:10 (with Rashi), 32:21; Melachim I 10:21; Melachim II 17:15; Yeshayahu 30:7, 34:11, 41:29, 44:9, 45:14, 45:18, 49:4, 59:4, 65:23; Yirmiyahu 4:23; Tehillim 32:9; Mishlei 31:30; Iyov 26:7, 31:7, 39:16; Daniel 1:4; Berachos 38b; Shabbos 34a, 119b; Eruvin 66a; Yoma 54b; Chagigah 12a; Kesubos 107b; Kiddushin 40b, 55b; Bava Kamma 53a, 76b, 112b; Bava Basra 39b; Zevachim 13b; Chullin 89a; Bechoros 42b; Targum Onkelos, Targum pseudo-Yonasan and Targum Neofiti to Bereishis 1:2; Rashi to Bereishis 1:2; Sefer HaBahir §2, §11-12, §135, §163; Ramban to Bereishis 1:1; Zohar Bereishis 16a; Ralbag and Abarbanel to Bereishis 1:2; the Ran to Bereishis 4:1; Ralbag to Bereishis 4:2; Rabbi Nissim of Marseilles to Bereishis 1:2; Rabbi Alexander Hool, The Six Days of Creation: The Garden of Eden, Dinosaurs, and the Missing Billions (Mosaica Press, 2022); Rabbi Moshe Botarel, citing Rabbi Levi ben Shlomo of Lunel; Rabbi Avraham Bedersi, Chosam Tochnis; Shadal; Malbim, Sefer HaCarmel s.v. הבל וריק; Rabbi Avraham bar Chiyya HaNasi, Higayon HaNefesh; Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim, Cheshek Shlomo s.v. בל, בהו, מם, פג; Rabbi Avraham Dovid Kobernick; Menachem Ibn Saruk, Machberes Menachem; Rabbi Yitzchak Zeldin, Shoresh Yesha; Rabbi Saadia Gaon, Ibn Ezra and Rabbi Moshe Kimchi to Iyov 26:7; Radak, Sefer HaShorashim; Rabbeinu Bachya to Devarim 33:27; Sefer Yetzirah, with Ramban and Rabbi Shabsai Donnolo there; responsa Maharsham vol. 4 §50, vol. 8 §242; Even-Shoshan's concordance; Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh of Carpentras, Ohalei Yehudah; Wilhelm Gesenius, lexicon of Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic; Rabbi Dr. Ernest Klein; Rabbi Binyamin Mussafia, Musaf He'Aruch; Rabbi Yair Chaim Bachrach, Mar Kashisha; Rav Hirsch; Martin Luther; John Calvin.