nature
plain
מישור · שרון · איל · ככר · אבל · פדן
Bottom line
Mishor is the neutral word: plain, any level stretch, and it may be barren. Sharon is a fertile plain, rich enough to farm (Radak), and in Tanach it is usually the proper name of the coastal plain. Eil / eilonei is contested: plain for Targum Onkelos, the name of a particular plain for Rashi, and wooded land outside a city for Ramban. Kikar is the grassland plain of the Yarden, avel a bare prairie, and padan the Aramaic of sadeh, field. The one thing not to get wrong: mishor also means moral straightness, so a mishor in a mussar passage is uprightness, not geography.
At a glance
| Hebrew | translit | English | what sets it apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| מישור | mishor | plain, level ground | any flat land, possibly arid steppe (Mecklenburg); from yashar, hence also moral straightness (Ibn Janach, Radak) |
| שרון | sharon | fertile plain | soil rich enough to farm (Radak); a plain contrasted with a nearby mountain (Pappenheim); mostly a place-name |
| איל | eil | plain (fertile) | plain (Onkelos) / a plain's name (Rashi) / trees before a city (Ramban); the productive plain (Mecklenburg) |
| ככר | kikar | grassland plain | the Yarden plain; lush pasture watered by rivers spilling in (Ramban) |
| אבל | avel | prairie | empty of buildings and trees, bereft like a mourner (Ramban) |
| פדן | padan | field, plain | Aramaic for sadeh; Hoshea 12:13 calls Padan Aram "Sdeh Aram" (Rashi, Ibn Ezra) |
Where the authorities disagree
What eil and eilonei mean. Three views, and they are not reconcilable.
- A common noun for "plain." Targum Onkelos and Bereishis Rabbah 42:6 render Eil Paran (Bereishis 14:6) as Meishar Paran, which Rashi reads as equating eil with meishar.
- The proper name of a specific plain. Rashi himself, against Onkelos. On his reading each plain has its own name: the Paran plain is Eil, the Mamre plain Eilonei (Bereishis 13:18, 14:13, 18:1), the Yarden plain Kikar (Bereishis 13:10-11), the Shittim plain Avel (Bamidbar 33:49), the Gad plain Baal (Yehoshua 11:17, 12:7, 13:5). Targum flattens all of them to meishar because meishar is the generic word. (Chizkuni to Bamidbar 21:25 and 22:41 supplies further instances of baal for a plain.)
- Wooded land in front of a city. Ramban (to Bereishis 14:6) rejects both, citing the old practice of planting trees at a city's entrance, and ties eil / eilonei to elah (terebinth) and alon (oak). Rabbi Shmuel Masnuth (Bereishis Zuta there) reads eil in Eil Paran as a bridge.
The Bottom line keeps Rashi's reading in narrative and flags Ramban wherever trees are plausible in context.
Whether eil and mishor are synonyms. Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg (HaKsav VeHaKabbalah to Bereishis 18:1) agrees with Onkelos that both mean plain, but denies they are interchangeable: mishor is flatness as such, which may be dry sandy steppe good for neither sowing nor pasture, while eil / eilonei is a plain that matters in its own right, a fertile biome fit for crops or grazing. He grounds this in א-ל as "power," alluded to in the Zohar (Vayera 97b) reading eilonei as tokef; the same root gives ayil (the ram, strongest of an otherwise weak family), alyah (its fatty tail), and elah / alon (trees with thick roots and hard wood). Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim in Cheshek Shlomo develops א-ל at length in the same direction, and Rav Hirsch (to Bereishis 12:6) reads the aleph-(yud)-lamed string as "the power to develop and move forward," extending it to a plain that runs far or cuts a level surface through hill country. Ibn Ezra there reads elon simply as trees or forest, or as field or plain.
Whether sharon is a common noun. Ibn Ezra, Rabbi Yishaya of Trani, Rabbi Yosef Kara, pseudo-Rashbam, and Rambam (commentary to Bava Basra 6:2) gloss sharon in Shir HaShirim 2:1 as mishor, a plain. Rabbi Hai Gaon (to Niddah 2:7) and Sefer HaAruch take it as the flatlands of Eretz Yisrael as against the hills around Yerushalayim (compare Tehillim 125:2), which is a place-name. In at least some occurrences, and possibly all seven, it is the name of the coastal plain.
How sharon differs from mishor. Radak: sharon is a plain saturated with fertile soil, unusually good for agriculture, on the root ש-ר-ה shared with siryon (armor, protecting) and mishras (something soaked). Rabbi Pappenheim in Yerios Shlomo: sharon is a plain near a mountain or hill, so that the contrast makes it conspicuous, while mishor is a plain of any kind. He derives both from ש-ר, "focal point," parent of yashar, the most direct line to a point, and he leaves open whether sharon descends from yashar or from shar / sharir, the navel (Yechezkel 16:4, Mishlei 3:8, Iyov 40:16).
Distinctions
mishor (מישור)
Root י-ש-ר for Ibn Janach and Radak in their Sifrei HaShorashim, who take both its senses from yashar: level ground, as against mountain or crater, and straightness in the moral sense. Its Aramaic cognate meishar is the Targumic workhorse: wherever Rashi says a plain has a name, Targum simply writes meishar.
kikar (ככר) and avel (אבל)
Ramban accepts Targum that kikar is a plain, and specifies lush grassland fed by rivers that spill into it. Avel he defines as an empty plain or prairie with neither buildings nor trees, tying it to its homonym avel, a mourner: the desolate plain is bereft of features as the mourner is bereft of his relative.
padan (פדן)
The place-name Padan Aram occurs eleven times, all in the second half of Bereishis. Rashi and Ibn Ezra (to Bereishis 25:20) gloss padan as sadeh, field or flatland, and Hoshea 12:13, recalling Yaakov's flight, calls the place Sdeh Aram. Rabbi David Tzvi Hoffmann (there) reads Padan Aram as specifically the plain that surrounds Charan, which sits ringed by mountains.
ayalah (אילה)
Chizkuni (to Bereishis 49:21) reads Yaakov's blessing to Naftali, "an ayalah sent forth," not as a doe but as a plain, cognate with eil and eilonei: may your plains be so well seeded that they yield fine fruit, the "good tidings" of the pasuk. Rabbi Mecklenburg endorses this and sees Rashi there hinting at it by invoking the Genussar valley. Rabbi Aharon Marcus (Keses HaSofer to Bereishis 13:18) treats the four words spelled aleph-yud-lamed, ayil (ram), ayal (deer), eil (plain), and eyal (power), as a set that speakers without the Hebrew vowel signs had to disambiguate by other means.
The full inventory
Rabbi Shlomo of Urbino (Ohel Moed, a lexicon of Hebrew synonyms) lists fourteen words in this family: mishor, eil, eilonei, sharon, kikar, kar, avel, emek, bikah, gei, nachal, urim, shdeimah, and cheil. Several are better rendered "valley" than "plain," but all name flat stretches of land.
Rendering guidance
- Trap: English "plain" absorbs mishor, sharon, eil, kikar, and avel at once. Where a commentary is working the difference, mark it: "level ground," "fertile plain," "grassland," "bare prairie."
- Mishor in Tehillim or a mussar sefer is usually moral, not topographical. "Level path" or "straight road" preserves both senses where the pasuk plays on them; "plain" throws the moral sense away.
- Where Rashi calls a word "the name of the plain," treat it as a proper noun and capitalize it, since translating it as a common noun silently adopts Onkelos against Rashi.
- Names built on these words stay names: Alon (Divrei HaYamim I 4:37), Elon (Bereishis 26:34, 46:14, Shoftim 12:11), Elah (Melachim I 16:6, Melachim II 15:30, Divrei HaYamim I 4:15). Sharon is a place-name before it is anything else.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Vayeitzei: Name of the Plain," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 6 Kislev 5785 (2024-12-07): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/11608-vayeitzei-name-of-the-plain.md. Primary loci: Bereishis 12:6, 13:10-11, 13:18, 14:6, 14:13, 18:1, 25:20, 49:21; Bamidbar 33:49; Yehoshua 11:17; Hoshea 12:13; Shir HaShirim 2:1; Tehillim 125:2; Yechezkel 16:4; Mishlei 3:8; Iyov 40:16; Targum Onkelos and Bereishis Rabbah 42:6 to Bereishis 14:6; Zohar Vayera 97b; Rambam to Bava Basra 6:2; Rabbi Hai Gaon to Niddah 2:7; Sefer HaAruch; Sifrei HaShorashim of Ibn Janach and Radak; HaKsav VeHaKabbalah to Bereishis 18:1, 49:21 and Vayikra 1:9; Cheshek Shlomo and Yerios Shlomo; Ohel Moed; Bereishis Zuta to Bereishis 14:6. The article's Akkadian derivation of padan, its Nabatean and Arabic feddan, the Even-Shoshan concordance count, and the reading given in Shadal's name are omitted under house rule 9; Rabbi Hoffmann's geographic identification is kept.