place

Distinctions

makom (מקום)

Rabbi Yonah Ibn Janach and Radak (each in Sefer HaShorashim) derive makom from the triliteral root ק-ו-ם, taking the opening MEM as non-radical; Menachem Ibn Saruk has no entry for the word at all, so his root for it is unknown. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim, working from the biliteral ק-ם, supplies the sense that ties the family together: the core idea is "height," the up-and-down dimension of a thing. From it come komah (physical stature), kamah (standing grain), kumah (standing or rising, and figuratively holding one's stature under pressure), kiyum (established, enduring), and makom, the spot in which a thing has been planted and thereby firmly established, then borrowed outward to mean any location at all. Rabbi Pappenheim adds nekamah (revenge) to the family: the debt owed a wrongdoer is kept "established" until it can be repaid. Makom appears roughly four hundred times in Tanach. For why Hashem is sometimes called HaMakom, literally "the place," in rabbinic literature and liturgy, the column refers the reader to HaKsav VeHaKabbalah to Shemos 33:21.

atar (אתר)

An Aramaic word. Outside the phrase derech ha'atarim (Bamidbar 21:1) it never appears in the Hebrew of Tanach, nor in the Mishnah, but it appears five times in the Aramaic sections (Daniel 2:35; Ezra 5:15, 6:3, 6:5, 6:7). Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur (Meturgaman): atar is the Targumim's standard rendering of makom (so Targum to Bereishis 1:9, 13:4, 20:11; Devarim 12:2; Shoftim 19:13; Shmuel I 7:16; Shmuel II 17:12; Melachim I 13:16; Yirmiyahu 22:3), which settles its Aramaic bona fides. The cognate atra stands in Kaddish D'Rabbanan, also of a place or locale. In Modern Hebrew atar has been reappropriated to parallel the English "site": a tourist site or attraction, a construction site, geo-location, and a website.

On derech ha'atarim itself the commentators split. Most (Eichah Rabbah 1:21, Targum Onkelos, Menachem Ibn Saruk, Rashi, Rashbam, Rabbeinu Yosef Bechor Shor, Ibn Ezra, Radak) treat the ALEPH as extraneous to the core root and read the word from la'tur, "to spy," so the phrase names the route the Ten Spies had taken close to four decades earlier, entering the land from the south. A second group (Rabbi Toviah ben Eliezer in Pesikta Zutrata / Midrash Lekach Tov, Rabbeinu Meyuchas, and Rabbi Menachem Ricanati, all to Bamidbar 21:1) glosses atar with the word makom outright, giving "the way of the sites"; on that reading, as the column puts it with a pun, the king of Arad heard the Jews were taking the scenic route to go site-seeing. Rashi himself glosses atar with makom elsewhere (to Daniel 2:38; Ezra 6:3, 6:8, 8:15; Kesuvos 68a; Bava Metzia 67a; Bava Basra 29a, 103a; Avodah Zarah 7b, 31b). Those same exegetes, the column stresses, make a point of noting that atar is an Aramaic word while makom is Hebrew, so that the two are not quite synonyms even where they mean the same thing.

Rabbi Yaakov Yehudah (Zilberberg) de Kassif (1914-2003) seems, rather, to explain atar as a Hebrew word, connecting by metathesis three roots built of the consonants aleph, tav and reish around the ideas of boundary and clear delineation: ת-א-ר (toar), the aesthetic form a body's contours and curves outline; ת-ר-א (hasraah), the warning that establishes the border of what is acceptable and tells a would-be sinner what awaits him if he crosses it; and א-ת-ר (atar), a place as a geographical unit defined by the borders that mark it off from the rest of the world.

duchta (דוכתא)

The Bavli's usual Aramaic word for "place," with the shortened duch at Berachos 42b. Rashi defines both with the word makom (to Moed Katan 16b, Kesuvos 77a, Sanhedrin 96b). Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur's Meturgaman has no entry for duchta or duch, though, so far as the column knows, duchta does render makom at least once in Targum (Mishlei 27:8), and ducha in Targum to Melachim I 14:28 and Divrei HaYamim II 12:11.

That raises the column's own question: why should Aramaic have two words for the same thing, atar and duchta, when Hebrew has only makom? Two answers are offered. Rabbi Dr. Ernest Klein (1899-1983) and Rabbi Dr. Yitzchak (Jared) Greenblatt see the Aramaic atar as related to verb cognates in Arabic and Ethiopic meaning "tracing" or "tracking" (Modern Hebrew l'ater is used the same way), on the strength of which, the column suggests, the "place" sense of duchta/duch may be an expansion of a word that at core is about finding something's location rather than about the location itself. Alternatively, Rabbi Joseph Perles (1835-1894), in his German Etymologische Studien zur Kunde der rabbinischen Sprache und Alterthümer (pp. 57, 81-82), argues that duchta/duch derives from the Old Persian daqyua and dahi. Dr. Alexander Kohut (1842-1894) cites this approvingly in his Aruch HaShaleim, which the column says does not mean much to it, since Kohut has a general propensity to source rabbinic words in Old Persian; but Rabbi Shaul Goldman clarified that the Avestan or Old Persian word Perles and Kohut meant is dahyu, "country" or "province." On that showing duchta/duch would not be native Aramaic at all but borrowed Old Persian, and Aramaic too would have only one native word for place, namely atar.

If that connection can be established, the column continues, it is not too farfetched to see the Old Persian dahyu as a derivative of the Proto-Indo-European root deuk-, "lead," a territory united under one leadership. Linguists take that same PIE root as the etymon of the Latin dux/ducis, at first a military commander and later the ruler of a region, whose counterpart duchus appears in rabbinic idiom (Berachos 32b, Sanhedrin 39a, Sotah 14a, Avodah Zarah 11a), and behind the Latin stand English duke, duce, duchess, duchy, and ducat, duct, conduce, deduce, induce, produce, seduce and educate. Asked about a link between the Aramaic duchta and the Latin dux, ChatGPT told the columnist the proposal has some merit on shared conceptual grounds (he adds a possible allusion in Bereishis Rabbah 5:3 expounding Tehillim 93:3), but he closes by saying it is difficult to confirm any actual etymological link between the two conclusively.

asher (אשר)

The common Biblical conjunction, appearing thousands of times and meaning "that/which/of/because/so," but in at least two places Targum renders it atar (Targum to Shmuel I 23:13 and Yechezkel 23:40; see Rashi there and to Kiddushin 76b). On a simple level this may be interpretation rather than translation, reading asher in context as "that [place where]"; but there is ample room, the column holds, to see Targum as saying the Hebrew asher is genuinely cognate with the Aramaic atar, since Hebrew shin often turns into tav in Aramaic, and there is an Akkadian word ashru that means "place." Rabbi Aharon Marcus (1843-1916) takes it a step further: the Akkadian and Sumerian ashartu, "temple," literally means "[holy] place" and is cognate with the Hebrew asher and the Aramaic atar.

The column applies that to a find at Kuntillet Ajrud in the northeastern Sinai, where archaeologists uncovered a Hebrew inscription reading "I blessed you to Hashem of Samaria and His Asherah (u'l'asherto)," which on its face makes the writer no pure monotheist but a believer in the Canaanite goddess Asherah alongside Hashem. If asher/atar can mean a temple, shrine or holy site, the inscription may instead be read "and His Temple," which the column says makes better sense; it presents this as a partial solution to the puzzle, not a settled one.

Rendering guidance

• Makom standing alone: "place." Reach for "site," "location," or "spot" only where the English sentence needs the variety; none of them is a different word in the Hebrew.
• Where a Rishon glosses atar or duchta with makom, he is translating. Render both "place" and do not manufacture a distinction the gloss denies.
• Trap: English "place" absorbs all three, so a passage whose point is the difference (an Aramaic word explained by a Hebrew one, a Targum's choice) needs the Hebrew or Aramaic kept in the rendering, at least once.
• Derech ha'atarim (Bamidbar 21:1): follow the majority and render "the way of the spies," noting the minority "the way of the sites" if the passage turns on it. Do not present the minority as the plain sense.
• Atra in Kaddish D'Rabbanan: "place," in the sense of a locale or community.
• The Rabbinic le'alter ("immediately") is plausibly al atar, "on the spot"; render it as an expression of time, not of place.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Chukas: The Right Site," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 28 Sivan 5783 (2023-06-17): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/10994-chukas-the-right-site.md. Primary loci the article cites: Bamidbar 21:1; Eichah Rabbah 1:21; Ibn Janach and Radak, Sefer HaShorashim; Rabbi Pappenheim on ק-ם; Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur, Meturgaman; Daniel 2:35, 2:38; Ezra 5:15, 6:3, 6:5, 6:7, 6:8, 8:15; Mishlei 27:8; Shmuel I 23:13; Yechezkel 23:40; Melachim I 14:28; Divrei HaYamim II 12:11; Berachos 32b and 42b; Sanhedrin 39a; Sotah 14a; Avodah Zarah 11a; Bereishis Rabbah 5:3 on Tehillim 93:3; HaKsav VeHaKabbalah to Shemos 33:21. The column's Akkadian and Sumerian cognates, the Kuntillet Ajrud inscription, the Old Persian, Avestan and Proto-Indo-European derivations for duchta, and its own exchange with an AI chatbot on a supposed link to the Latin dux, are all reported here as the column reports them, with its hedges intact.