palace

Distinctions

zvul (זבול)

Named at Leah's naming of Zevulun, "this time my husband will dwell with me (yizbeleini)" (Bereishis 30:20). Two further names in Tanach seem to the column to be related: Zevul, the city official in Shechem who stayed loyal to Avimelech (Shoftim 9), and Izevel, the Tyrian princess who married Achav and pushed him toward avodah zarah. Rav Hirsch (there): zvul is not a mere dwelling but a home that fully answers every purpose of the one it is meant for. Hence its use for the Beis HaMikdash (the column's example is Rosh Hashanah 17a; and see Melachim I 8:13, Divrei HaYamim II 6:2, Yeshayahu 63:15): the fitting place for the Shechinah to rest. He connects the Mishnaic zevel (fertilizer), which likewise readies the ground to be a fitting dwelling for seed so that it may flourish there. When Chavakuk, looking back at Yehoshua stopping the sun and moon (Yehoshua 10:13), says that the sun and moon stood in their zvul (3:11), Targum and Radak explain it as the place where they dwell, that is, they stood still in their tracks. The Gemara (Chagigah 12b) gives Zevul as the name of one of the seven heavens.

In Ugaritic, Akkadian and other Semitic languages, cognates of zvul (zabalu) mean to lift or to elevate. On that basis Rabbi Dovid Tzvi Hoffmann suggests that the biblical zvul means specifically a lofty abode set in a high place: the Beis HaMikdash on its mountain, the luminaries in the sky. He notes too an Arabic cognate that means butter or grease, oily food rising to the top when mixed with water.

armon (ארמון)

The most common word, 32 times in Tanach. Ibn Janach and Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim put the root at ר-ו-ם, height, palaces being tall buildings. Radak cites that and then concludes that armon has a root of its own, א-ר-מ; Menachem Ibn Saruk assigns it the four-letter root א-ר-מ-נ. Ibn Janach, invoking the interchange of lamed and reish, holds that almon (Yechezkel 19:7, Yeshayahu 13:22) is the same word.

What settles its rendering is usage: armon appears both for a king's residence (Melachim II 16:18, Melachim I 15:25, Yirmiyahu 49:27) and for a fortified stronghold (Mishlei 18:19, Eichah 2:5, Michah 5:4). It therefore straddles both English words.

apadna (אפדנא)

Once in Tanach (Daniel 11:45), where the meforshim explain it as a palace. In the Gemara it is often not a whole palace but a grand or kingly room: Rashi (Bava Metzia 35a, Bava Basra 6b, Shabbos 77b) defines apadna as a royal triclinium, a fine dining room. It appears in Rava's dream that his apadna and Abaye's had fallen (Berachos 56a), in the debtor who owned two of them (Kesubos 91b), and in the cases where Rav Nachman let creditors seize a man's apadna (Bava Kamma 21a, Bava Metzia 35a, Kesubos 50b).

Its origin is disputed among the scholars the column cites. Rabbi Ernest Klein takes apadna from Old Persian, a language of the Indo-European family. Dr. Chaim Tawil traces it instead to the Akkadian appadanu, which he understands as a colonnaded audience hall, and holds the word to be of Semitic origin and not Indo-European; an Arabic cognate, fadan, means palace or high tower.

Rabbi Pappenheim traces apadna to the biliteral פ-ד, redemption or freedom (as in pidyon, pedus). From that root he takes eifod, the vestment worn by those who were free and unindentured (Shmuel I 2:18, Shmuel II 6:14); an apadna is accordingly the luxurious home of a free man. He extends this to padan, a region with its own sovereignty or exempt from imperial tax, so that Padan Aram (Bereishis 31:18, 35:26, 46:15) is the free state of Aram. The classical readings of padan are "field, plain," or the twin cities of Aram Naharayim and Aram Tzova.

tirah (טירה)

Seven times in Tanach (Bereishis 25:16, Bamidbar 31:10, Yechezkel 25:4, 46:23, Shir HaShirim 8:9, Tehillim 69:26, Divrei HaYamim I 6:39), apparently an enclosed fort or fortified village. Ibn Ezra (to Bereishis 25:16) says it means the same as armon.

Rabbi Pappenheim puts its root at ט-ר, a straight line, which yields tur (row), matarah (target, shot at straight), and matar (rain, falling straight down); a tirah is built by arranging rows of boards. Radak likewise derives tirah from tur, adding that such structures are built of rows of hewn stone. Rabbi Pappenheim offers a second route from the same root, through netirah (guarding, keeping watch), since watching over something requires keeping one's thoughts straight on it without deviating; related are tahor (pure, a state kept only by watching) and iter (shut, so closely guarded that it is locked up entirely). On this second reading a tirah is an impenetrable fortress that none can enter or leave. Rabbi David Chaim Chelouche writes similarly that tirah is from ט-ר in the sense of guarding, a fort built to protect a king's subjects, generally walled about, and so akin to atarah (crown), the ornament that goes around a royal head, which he derives from a combination of the roots ע-ט, cover, and ט-ר, guard. Rabbi Chelouche, the late Chief Rabbi of Netanya, also claims that the English tower comes from tirah; the column notes that linguists derive tower from the Latin turris.

paltin / paltrin (פלטין)

The late Hebrew word (Sanhedrin 2:3, 10:5), the cognate of the English palace. English palace, palatium, in the sense of a vast and luxurious residence belonging to an important person, comes ultimately from the proper name Palatium, one of the hills of ancient Rome on which the imperial palaces were built. A renowned language scholar, the column reports, derives the late Hebrew paltrin rather from the Latin praetorium, the official residence of a Roman governor or general, apparently through the interchange of lamed and reish.

English castle, by contrast, related to the French château and ultimately from the Latin castellum, originally meant an encampment or a village, and only later came to mean a building or group of buildings put up for defense, that is, a fortress or stronghold. The two often converge in one building, but palace names a royal residence and the opulence that goes with wealth, while castle names a fortified structure whatever its lavishness.

Rendering guidance

• Default armon to palace in a royal context and stronghold or fortress in a military one; the word carries both, so let the pasuk decide. Mishlei 18:19 and Eichah 2:5 are the fortress cases.
• Tirah: fortress, citadel, or "fortified encampment." Do not render it "palace," even though Ibn Ezra equates it with armon, unless you are translating Ibn Ezra.
• Apadna: palace in Daniel; in the Gemara often grand hall or mansion, and where Rashi's triclinium is meant, "banquet room."
• Zvul: in a pasuk about the Mikdash, abode or "lofty abode," and in Chavakuk 3:11 "their dwelling place." Not "palace," which loses Rav Hirsch's point that the word means a fitting dwelling and not a grand one. The column does not place zvul against the other four, so do not build a contrast between them into a translation.
• Trap: English "palace" will absorb armon, apadna, paltin, and even zvul. Where two of them stand in one passage, keep "palace" for the luxury word and move armon to "stronghold" or tirah to "fortress", and hold the assignment for the rest of the passage.
• The English pair itself is worth keeping straight: a palace is a royal residence and the wealth that goes with it, a castle is a fortified structure however plain. Apadna lines up with the first, tirah with the second, and armon with both.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Castle in the Sky," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach (2020-11-28): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/8941-castle-in-the-sky.md. Primary loci: Bereishis 30:20, 25:16, 31:18, 35:26, 46:15; Melachim I 8:13, 15:25; Melachim II 16:18; Divrei HaYamim II 6:2; Yeshayahu 63:15, 13:22; Chavakuk 3:11; Yechezkel 19:7, 25:4, 46:23; Mishlei 18:19; Eichah 2:5; Michah 5:4; Yirmiyahu 49:27; Daniel 11:45; Shir HaShirim 8:9; Tehillim 69:26; Divrei HaYamim I 6:39; Chagigah 12b; Rashi to Bava Metzia 35a, Bava Basra 6b, Shabbos 77b; Berachos 56a, Kesubos 91b, 50b, Bava Kamma 21a; Mishnah Sanhedrin 2:3, 10:5; Rav Hirsch to Bereishis 30:20; Ibn Ezra to Bereishis 25:16; Bamidbar 31:10; Shoftim 9; Yehoshua 10:13; Rosh Hashanah 17a.

The Ugaritic, Akkadian, Arabic and Old Persian derivations had been dropped from an earlier version of this entry under a mistaken sources rule; they are restored above. Two of them were load-bearing: the Semitic zabalu, "to lift," is the whole basis of Rabbi Dovid Tzvi Hoffmann's reading, which the entry kept without it, and the Old Persian against Akkadian question is a live disagreement between Rabbi Ernest Klein and Dr. Chaim Tawil that the entry did not report at all.

The article's own conclusion leaves zvul unplaced: "the term zvul somehow fits in to all of this, I'm just not sure exactly how." An earlier version of this entry closed that question by ruling zvul out of the set; the Bottom line now reports the article's admission instead.

One citation not run down: the column gives Rosh Hashanah 17a for zvul as the Beis HaMikdash, and that locus is repeated here as the column has it, not verified against the daf. Chagigah 12b, which the entry also cites, is the seven-heavens passage; the detail that Zevul is the heaven holding Yerushalayim and the Mikdash was in an earlier version of this entry but is not in the article, and has been cut.

The entry has no words: block, and so no pointed forms for זבול, ארמון or טירה. That is left for whoever maintains that block; the entry stays draft on account of it, not on account of its content.