path

Distinctions

The first article sets out from Elul and the uptick in mussar it brings, and from the road words in the titles of the mussar sefarim themselves: Orchos Tzaddikim, "Ways of the Righteous"; Mesillas Yesharim, "Paths of the Just"; Derech Hashem, "Way of God"; Nesivos Shalom, which it renders "The Lanes of Peace."

derech (דרך)

Root ד-ר-ך, from dorech, to tread, which also means to tread the winepress (Yeshayahu 63:2); Rashi (Devarim 33:29): to tread on one's enemies, to subdue them underfoot. Vilna Gaon: a derech is wide and open to the public. Malbim: both words are public, but the derech runs from major city to major city, province to province. The Zohar (Vayakhel 215a, Kedoshim 88a): the road to which everyone has access. Pappenheim: the same road as the orach, viewed for its great length. Rabbi Moshe Shapiro, from Rashi's treading: the derech is the path of life, strewn with trials that a man is expected to tread down and overcome; only so does he go forward on it.

orach (אורח)

Root א-ר-ח; Pappenheim derives it from the two letters ר-ח, width (revach, rachav). Vilna Gaon: short, narrow, not commonly used. Malbim: the road that reaches the outlying towns and villages. Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer, after Malbim: because an orach breaks off the main road to lead more directly to a less-traveled destination, the tzaddik is said to guard the orach (Mishlei 2:20), being exact in the details and not only the general route. The Zohar: an orach is a brand new road no one has trodden, which is why the righteous are tied to it: they bring novel Torah into the world and reveal Hashem's presence where it had not yet been revealed. Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Shlez on Dan (Bereishis 49:17), reading Yaakov as foreseeing the two idols destined to be set up at the city of Dan: Michah's idol was the snake on the derech, a passive discouragement from the pilgrimage to Shiloh and Yerushalayim, whereas Yeravam's calf, which barred the pilgrimage by decree, made the way a narrow orach with a serpent on it. Radak: oreach, a guest, arrives by the road he traveled; Pappenheim adds aruchah, the banquet given for a guest.

rechov (רחוב)

The street of a settled place. The second article gives this as one view among several, in the words "some explain," and names nobody for it: a derech is specifically an intercity road and a rechov specifically an intracity one. The line between them is therefore where the road runs, inside the town or between towns, and not its width or its surface.

netiv (נתיב)

Two distinctions, both drawn against derech. First, "others explain" (again no name) that a derech denotes the longer and/or wider road and a netiv the shorter and/or narrower one. Second, an approach the article locates in the Zohar: a derech is open to the public, while a netiv is for private use and is open only to select individuals. That second reading sits close to what the Vilna Gaon and Malbim say of orach, but the article sets netiv only against derech and does not sort netiv against orach; neither do we.

mesilah (מסילה)

A paved road. Recorded only as what a mesilah "is said to refer specifically to a paved path," without naming who says it. What marks a mesilah off from its neighbors is thus the making of it, the labor that laid its surface, and not its length, its width, or who walks it.

mishol (משעול)

A pedestrian footpath, and the article gives no more than that and no authority for it. Where the other words in the cluster are sorted by width, by public access, or by surface, this one is sorted by who travels it: a man on foot. (The article cites no pasuk; the familiar locus, mishol hakeramim of Bamidbar 22:24, is ours, not the article's.)

maagal (מעגל)

A circular path, derived from igul, a circle. The derivation is the whole of the distinction the article draws, and it names no one for it.

shvil (שביל)

Related to the word shafel, low, and so a path that has a steep incline, one that goes downwards. Here too the derivation and the sense come together, and no authority is named.

Rendering guidance

• The pair (Bereishis 49:17, "a snake on the derech, a serpent on the orach"): "a snake on the road, a viper on the path." Two different nouns.
• Derech in the moral sense (the way of Hashem, his ways, derech eretz): "way." "Road" is for the literal sense; "path" belongs to orach and to netiv.
• Where derech and rechov stand together, keep the scale visible: "road" for what runs between towns, "street" for what runs inside one. That is the only distinction the article draws between the two.
• Mesilah, mishol, maagal and shvil each carry one added fact and should not be flattened to "path": "paved road," "footpath," "circular path," and, where the derashah from shafel is in play, "the path that goes down." Plain "path" for any of them loses the very thing that named it.
• Orchos in a plural of conduct (orchos tzaddikim): "paths." The received English titles ("Ways of the Righteous," "Paths of the Just") are titles and stay as they are; the article uses them so.
• Trap: "path" absorbs both words in English, and "way" drifts to "manner" and loses the road altogether. When a pasuk or a derashah sets the two side by side (Dan; Mishlei's derech and orach parallels), the English must keep the broad word and the narrow word apart.
• Where a derashah reads derech from dorech (Rabbi Moshe Shapiro), keep "tread" visible: "the way one treads."

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Roads and Paths, Ways and Means," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 14 Elul 5778 (2018-08-25): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/7893-roads-and-paths-ways-and-means.md. Primary loci the article cites: Bereishis 49:16-18 (the pasuk itself is 49:17) with Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Shlez; Mishlei 2:20 with Wertheimer; Zohar Vayakhel 215a and Kedoshim 88a; Yeshayahu 63:2 and Rashi to Devarim 33:29 on dorech; Radak on oreach; Rabbi Moshe Shapiro on dorech as the treading down of trials. That article treats derech and orach alone, and is explicitly the first installment of a series: it opens by promising to study "these different words and more" over the following weeks and closes "To be continued." Any later installment on the remaining six words has not been consulted here.

The remaining six words come from a second piece by the same author: Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Learning to differentiate between apparent synonyms," Babel: The Language Magazine 31 (May 2020), pages 30 to 33; local text in sources/klein-babel-2020/synonyms-in-language.txt. It names eight Hebrew words for street or path, derech, orach, rechov, netiv, mesilah, maagal, mishol and shvil, and supplies the distinctions recorded above for rechov, netiv, mesilah, mishol, maagal and shvil. It cites the Zohar for the public derech against the private netiv, and gives every other one of those distinctions unattributed, as "some explain," "others explain," "is said to refer" or "is explained as." No further authority should be read into them. The eight words are introduced there by an anecdote: as a boy in Los Angeles the author knew Hollywood Boulevard, Avenue of the Stars, Melrose Place, Rodeo Drive, Valley Circle and the Third Street where his yeshivah stood, and was bothered by who decided which thoroughfare got which name.