paths

Distinctions

For derech and orach, see path-derech-orach.md; this entry covers the rest of the field. The column sets the whole set against English street names, where "boulevard," "avenue," "way" and "drive" are, as it puts it, entirely arbitrary and carry no real meaning; in Hebrew the exact opposite is true.

rechov (רחוב)

Rabbi Meshullam (to Shekalim 1:1), on the money spent from the fifteenth of Adar to repair derachim and rechovos: derachim are the roads between cities, rechovos the streets inside them. That is still the Modern Hebrew sense, a city street. In a second use, rechovah shel ir is the open square within a town (Bikkurim 3:2, Taanis 2:1, Megillah 3:1).

netiv (נתיב)

Rabbeinu Bachya (to Shemos 35:35): derech is a wide road, netiv a very narrow one. The Vilna Gaon: a netiv is what one takes to reach a derech, an approach road (the column suggests it may be comparable to an exit or entrance ramp on a freeway). Malbim: shorter than a derech or orach, and not open to the public. The Zohar (Mikeitz 197b, Va'era 31a-b): a derech is open to all, a netiv only to select individuals. Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer (1866-1935) says the same in plainer terms, a private shortcut, and reads it out of Shoftim 5:6, where the alternative to walking a netiv is going the long way around. In Modern Hebrew it is a traffic lane.

mesilah (מסילה)

Malbim: a paved path, and usually the pedestrian walk at a street's edge; the word maslul, a planned route or itinerary, belongs with it. Wertheimer adds that it is generally straight as well as paved, which is why the stars are said to travel in a mesilah (Shoftim 5:20): they appear to travel in a straight, pre-planned course. The word choice in Bamidbar carries weight: Bnei Yisrael first ask Edom for passage on his derech (20:17) and, after the refusal, ask instead for his mesilah (20:19), and are refused again. Why the second wording should have been more acceptable to Edom the column does not know; it offers, with a question mark, that perhaps it would not have affected traffic.

maagal (מעגל)

The Vilna Gaon: from igul, a circle, so a maagal is a roundabout road. Wertheimer: this circular road bears no utilitarian function in getting a man from one place to another. It is the scenic route, where the journey is the destination; the racetrack; the ground for military training.

mishol (משעול)

A hapax legomenon, appearing once in Tanach, in the mishol hakeramim that Bilam's donkey walked (Bamidbar 22:24). The root ש-ע-ל is a step or the bottom of the foot (Melachim I 20:10, Yeshayahu 40:12), so a footpath. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim of Breslau (1740-1814): a road that will carry pedestrians or a mounted rider but not the weight of a caravan or wagon. Rabbi Moshe Shapiro (1935-2017) alternatively ties mishol to shual, a fox, and reads it as the track foxes cut through a vineyard as they partially destroy it (Shir HaShirim 2:15).

shvil (שביל)

Rav Hirsch (1808-1888): related to shafel, lowly, a path on a steep downward incline. Malbim: related to shevel (Yeshayahu 47:2), the leg, the limb that keeps striking the ground as one walks; he and others note that a shvil is narrower than a netiv. Wertheimer: the shortest and narrowest sort of path, wide enough for one ankle at a time, so that a man cannot stand on it with his feet together. Pappenheim gives the same explanations and supports them from a clever observation: eikev means both ankle and "because," and on the strength of that double meaning the Rabbis took shvil, the road of ankles, the same way, giving bishvil, "for the sake of."

Rendering guidance

• Bamidbar 20:17 against 20:19: the two requests must read differently. "Let us pass through your land by the road" (derech), then "we will go up by the highway" (mesilah). Repeating "road" makes the second request look identical to the first and hides why they rephrased it.
• Shoftim 5:6, v'holchei nesivos yelchu orachos akalkalos: "those who walked the paths went by roundabout ways." Wertheimer's reading depends on netiv and the winding alternative standing in contrast, so do not render both "paths."
• Shoftim 5:20, mimesilosam: "from their courses." "Paths" is too weak for the fixed, straight track that is the point.
• Bamidbar 22:24, mishol hakeramim: "the footpath among the vineyards."
• Trap: English "path" will happily cover netiv, mishol and shvil at once, and "way" will cover derech, orach and maagal. Where a passage lists two or more, force the distinction: netiv "path," mishol "footpath," shvil "trail," maagal "roundabout way," mesilah "highway" (or, where Malbim's pedestrian sense is in view, the paved walk at the street's edge).
• Bishvil in Rabbinic Hebrew is simply "for the sake of"; do not let Pappenheim's derivation surface in the translation of a Gemara.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "On the Straight and Narrow," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 21 Elul 5778 (2018-09-01): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/7917-on-the-straight-and-narrow.md. The piece is the sequel to the column's own treatment of derech and orach. Primary loci: Shemos 35:35 (Rabbeinu Bachya); Bamidbar 20:17, 20:19, 22:24; Shoftim 5:6, 5:20; Melachim I 20:10; Yeshayahu 40:12, 47:2; Shir HaShirim 2:15; Shekalim 1:1 with Rabbi Meshullam; Bikkurim 3:2; Taanis 2:1; Megillah 3:1; Zohar, Mikeitz 197b and Va'era 31a-b.