pole

Distinctions

mot (מוט) and zemorah (זמורה)

Four occurrences: the spies' pole (Bamidbar 13:23), the poles for carrying the Mishkan vessels (Bamidbar 4:10, 4:12), and Nachum 1:13. The feminine motah appears a further twelve times, usually the bar of a yoke (Vayikra 26:13, Yeshayahu 58:6, Yechezkel 30:18). On the spies' pasuk, "they cut a branch (zemorah) and a single cluster, and carried it on the pole (mot) by twos," Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg (HaKsav VeHaKabbalah) reads two objects, branch and pole. The Zohar (Shelach 160b) reads one: the definite article on mot points back to something already named, and the same piece of wood is called zemorah while attached to the tree and mot once cut.

Roots: the triliteralists Ibn Janach and Radak, each in his Sefer HaShorashim, מ-ו-ט. The medieval biliteralist Menachem Ibn Saruk (Machberes Menachem), the two-letter מ-ט, which also yields tamut (slipping), mateh (staff), matteh (tribe), mitah (bed) and Aramaic mata (touching), so that for him the middle vav is extraneous. The Enlightenment-era biliteralist Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim takes even the mem as extraneous and works from ט-ה, whose core sense is changing the present situation by inclining or turning: natah, lematah, matah, mitah (one inclines to lie down), mateh (leaned on while walking). In Cheishek Shlomo he offers two readings of mot and says the pesukim cannot decide between them: either a thick pole from the lower part of a tree, hence lematah, or a branch that turns out sideways from the trunk, hence natah. In Yerios Shlomo he simply calls a mot a reinforced mateh.

bad (בד)

Rabbi Shlomo of Urbino (Ohel Moed) makes mot and bad synonyms. Badim are the staves of the Shulchan (Shemos 25:28, 37:14), the golden Mizbeiach (Shemos 30:4, 37:27), the copper Mizbeiach (Shemos 27:7, 38:7) and the Aron (Shemos 25:13-15, 37:5). The root ב-ד-(ד) also yields levad, alone, and boded, singular, and hisbodedus. Pappenheim (Yerios Shlomo) connects them two ways: once a branch of the right quality is chosen for a stave it is the one branch out of all the others, singular among its peers; or a bad is the thick branch that comes off the tree right at the root and so looks like a tree standing alone. That lower branch is thick and hard, which is why it serves for carrying loads, for bars, and for the beam of a scale, and why an olive press is a beis habad (Shabbos 1:9, Nedarim 3:2, Bava Metzia 10:4, Bava Basra 1:6 and 4:4-5, Shevuos 3:8, Keilim 12:3 and 20:3, Taharos 10:1-2 and 10:8, Zavim 4:7).

neis (נס)

A tall pole or flagpole, appearing about twenty times in Tanach on Even Shoshan's concordance. The copper snake was set on a neis so that the bitten could look at it and live (Bamidbar 21:8-9; the article prints 21:89), and we daven to "raise a neis to gather in our exiles." Pappenheim defines it as a tall mot and does not trouble himself over the near synonymy. Roots: Machberes Menachem, נ-ס, which also yields fleeing and miracle; Radak (Sefer HaShorashim), נ-ס-ס, and he links flagpole to fleeing because in ancient battle when the flagbearer fell the whole army lost heart and fled. The nearby triliteral נ-ס-ה is testing or training, as with Avraham (Bereishis 22:1); Machberes Menachem takes even that word back to a one-letter root, samech. Pappenheim (Cheishek Shlomo) traces neis instead to ש-א, whose main derivative is nasa, to lift and carry, with sin and samech interchanging: a neis as miracle is an event lifted out of the ordinary order of nature, and a neis as pole is the branch lifted above the rest of the tree. Mecklenburg (HaKsav VeHaKabbalah to Bereishis 22:1): a nisayon from the All-Knowing cannot be for the tester to learn something, so it is for the tested to reach new levels by prevailing through the travails of a Divine test, another kind of lifting. Rav Hirsch (to Bereishis 17:20 and 22:1) joins neis to nasi, the leader whose task is to raise those under him, and, like Pappenheim, reads neis as lifting in both senses at once, a man's rise in spiritual rank when he passes a test and a tall pole for carrying or raising a banner; elsewhere (to Tehillim 4:7) he reads the flagstaff as a sign that keeps those who see it faithful to their cause, which is also what a miracle does. Midrash Tanchuma (Vayeira 43) links the roots thematically: the merit of the nisayon of the Akeidah is what lets Israel escape (manos) Gehinnom; the Mechilta to Shemos 15:25 reads "there He tested them" at Marah as Hashem lifting them to greatness, which He did by revealing parts of the Torah to them before Sinai.

toren (תורן)

The ship's mast, paired with neis as its sail (Yeshayahu 30:17 and 33:23, Yechezkel 27:5), and again in the Mishnah's ruling that a sold boat includes its toren and its neis (Bava Basra 5:1, with Rambam's commentary there and Rashi to Bava Basra 73a). Menachem Ibn Saruk, Ibn Janach and Radak give the triliteral ת-ר-ן, which yields nothing else. Pappenheim works from ת-ר, furling and unfurling, whose derivative meisar, rope, gives him the mast, since the mast is held fast by ropes.

shapud (שפוד)

Mishnaic only: a wooden pole with a sharpened end, a spit or skewer (Pesachim 7:1-2, Sukkah 1:8, Bava Kamma 8:1, Avodah Zarah 5:12, Zevachim 11:7, Keilim 5:5 and 7:3, Ohalos 1:3). Vocalization is unsettled: the Kaufmann manuscript, the earliest vowelized Mishnah, reads shfud in most places, shfod at Keilim 5:5 and shifud at Keilim 7:3, and shpud, shafud and shafod are all current as well. Modern Hebrew says shipud, and that pronunciation was given official recognition by the Academy of the Hebrew Language in 2019, as reported by Doron Yaakov (Academ vol. 40 pp. 2-3). Rabbi Ernest Klein (no relation to the columnist) argues that shapud is ultimately a loanword from the Greek spodos, charcoal, embers or ashes, which came also to mean a spit for roasting meat, as the Italian spiedo does. The column adds an etymology of its own, flagging that it usually shies away from speculative ones: English spit comes from German spitz, point or sharp end, from the Proto-Indo-European root spei- or spi-, something pointy, which also gives spike and spoke, and it seems fairly clear to the column that spit and its cognates go back to the same Greek word as shapud, on the interchange of the t and d sounds in Germanic under Grimm's Law, the Danish spid for English spit showing that dynamic.

Rabbi Tzvi Matisyahu Abrahams (Root Connections in the Torah, 120-125) draws the senses of neis together homiletically: the nisyonos are the wind in the sail without which the boat, to which life is compared, does not move; only a neis, Divine help rather than human intuition, carries a person through a real test, and Nissan is named as the month of the greatest miracles in Tanach, the birth of Yitzchak, the Exodus, the Splitting of the Sea, Haman's downfall; a banner proclaims its message as a miracle proclaims Hashem's hand; and nisah, fleeing, is sometimes the right answer to a test, as Yosef fled (vayanas) rather than risk the sin (Bereishis 39:12). For that last link he leans on Rashi (to Yeshayahu 30:17), who explains the neis as a military signal to the troops either to rally or to flee.

Rendering guidance

• Bamidbar 13:23: "on the pole" if you follow Mecklenburg, "on the pole [that same branch]" if you follow the Zohar. Do not write "on a pole"; the definite article is what the Zohar's reading rests on.
• Trap: "pole" absorbs mot, bad, neis and toren. Where two stand in one pasuk (neis and toren in Yeshayahu 33:23), you must differentiate: "mast" and "sail," or "mast" and "banner," never "pole" twice.
• Second trap: neis is "miracle" in later Hebrew and "banner" in Tanach. In liturgical prose ("raise a neis") keep "banner"; a reader who hears "miracle" loses the image of the ingathering signal.
• Badim in the Mishkan are "staves," not "poles" and never "rods"; the Torah is careful that they are not removed (Shemos 25:15), and the halachic term of art in English is settled.
• Motah is "yoke-bar" or, in the idiom of Vayikra 26:13, "the bars of your yoke." Do not level it to "yoke," which is ol.
• Shapud: "skewer" for food, "spit" for roasting; both are fine, but pick one per passage, since a mishnah often carries the same shapud across clauses.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Shelach: Message on a Pole," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 23 Sivan 5784 (2024-06-29): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/11433-shelach-message-on-a-pole.md. Primary loci: Bereishis 17:20, 22:1, 39:12; Shemos 15:25, 25:13-15, 25:28, 27:7, 30:4, 37:5, 37:14, 37:27, 38:7; Vayikra 26:13; Bamidbar 4:10, 4:12, 13:23, 21:8-9 (the article prints 21:89); Yeshayahu 30:17, 33:23, 58:6; Yechezkel 27:5, 30:18; Nachum 1:13; Tehillim 4:7; Zohar Shelach 160b; Mechilta to Shemos 15:25; Tanchuma Vayeira 43; Mishnah Bava Basra 5:1 and the mishnayos of beis habad and shapud listed above; Bava Basra 73a; Even Shoshan's concordance for the count of about twenty; Rabbi Ernest Klein on the Greek spodos; Doron Yaakov, Academ vol. 40 pp. 2-3, for the Academy of the Hebrew Language's 2019 ruling on shipud; Rabbi Tzvi Matisyahu Abrahams, Root Connections in the Torah 120-125. The Proto-Indo-European and Grimm's Law derivation of English spit is the column's own speculation and is reported as such. The article prints the copper-snake locus as Num. 21:89, a run-together of Bamidbar 21:8-9. Nothing the article cites is omitted.

The source article is truncated mid-sentence at the source, cutting the close of an aside on a Danish cognate; nothing the entry rests on is affected.