nature
purple
ארגמן · ארגון · סגול · לילך
Bottom line
Classical Hebrew has no word for purple. Argaman is not a color word at all: all commentators agree it is wool dyed a certain color, and the shade the traditional sources describe is a red, whether crimson, orange, or a yellowish red; none of them makes it a mixture of red with blue or green. (One academic reading the article reports, Professor Athalya Brenner-Idan's, does stretch the term as far as violet; see below.) Render it "argaman" and gloss it as red-dyed wool; if a translation demands the conventional "purple," say in a note that the English word once covered any deep red. Segol and lilach are Modern Hebrew flower-names pressed into service as color words, of no use in a Chumash.
At a glance
| Hebrew | translit | English | what sets it apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| ארגמן | argaman | red-dyed wool | dyed wool, not a color (Rambam, Klei HaMikdash 8:13; Bartenura to Kilayim 9:1); for Raavad, cloth of several colors woven together |
| ארגון | argavan | argaman | mem/vav variant (Divrei HaYamim II 2:6); Aramaic argevana (Daniel 5:7, Targum) |
| סגול | segol | purple, violet | coined 1894 from siglei, the violet flower (Rashi to Berachos 43b, Shabbos 50b) |
| לילך | lilach | purple, lilac | the lilac flower's name taken for the color; modern |
Where the authorities disagree
Is argaman one color or many?
- One shade of red. Rambam (Klei HaMikdash 8:13): argaman is wool dyed red. In his commentary to the Mishnah (Kilayim 9:1) he defines it with the Arabic laca, the red resin behind the English shellac and lacquer, and Bartenura (there) uses the same word and states outright that it was wool dyed red. Rabbi Avraham Maimuni (to Shemos 25:4), Rabbi Tanchum HaYerushalmi (to Daniel 5:7), and Toras HaMinchah (Tetzaveh) follow. Rabbi Yechiel Michel Epstein (Aruch HaShulchan HaAsid, Klei HaMikdash 28:12) proves Rambam's view from the Midrash that argaman resembled the gold of the kapores (Shir HaShirim Rabbah 3:16, Bamidbar Rabbah 12:4), which had a reddish cast (Yoma 45a).
- Several colors woven together. Raavad, Rambam's famed interlocutor, disagrees: argaman is something made of two or three colors woven (arug) together. Rabbi Yosef Kurkis and Rabbi Yosef Karo clarify that he read the word as a portmanteau of א-ר-ג, weaving, as in arigah, with min, species, so the word reflects a panoply of colors rather than one. The Zohar (Idra Rabbah 141b, and see Zohar Terumah 139a) seems likewise to take it as a hue of red that includes other shades as well.
The column does not treat these as flatly opposed on the color. Even though Raavad, Rashi and the others do not explicitly identify argaman as red, it does still seem to be their understanding; they seem to hold that argaman takes in multiple shades of red. This guide's rendering follows Rambam, whose approach is echoed by the later authorities the article names, and flags Raavad because it changes what a translator may claim about the shade.
Which red. Radak (Sefer HaShorashim) first writes crimson red, then cites Rasag that tola'as shani is the crimson red, and concludes that argaman must be a different shade of red; after that he mentions those who explain argaman as lac. Several midrashim assert that argaman resembles fire, which points toward orange (Sifrei Zuta, Midrash HaGadol, and Yalkut Midrashei Teiman to Bamidbar 4:13; Midrash Agur ch. 14), and several Yemenite sources (Midrash Chefetz, Meor HaAfeilah to Shemos 25:4) make argaman a yellowish red against the strong red of tola'as shani. So perhaps, the column suggests, Radak would agree that argaman was orange-colored: explaining it as red does not preclude explaining it as orange, orange being essentially a shade of red mixed with yellow. What is clear is that none of these sources sees argaman as a mixture of red with blue or green, and that omission seems to obviate the notion that it is what we call purple.
Where the root sits. The root seems to comprise five letters, א-ר-ג-מ-ן. Ibn Ezra asserts that such four- and five-letter roots are either compound roots fused together or loanwords borrowed from another language. Scholars including Rabbi Dr. Ernest Klein and Dr. Chaim Tawil take the Hebrew argaman as borrowed from the Akkadian argamannu; the American archaeologist William Foxwell Albright argued that it cognates with Hittite and Ugaritic words meaning "tribute" or "offering," which would evoke argaman as an expensive dyed cloth often paid as tribute. Rashi (to Tehillim 68:28), basing himself on Machberes Menachem, seems to explain argaman from the triliteral ר-ג-מ, which usually means gathering, or stoning a person to death, and which is in turn related to ר-ק-ם, embroidery, possibly through the interchangeability of kuf and gimmel. Rashi does not say so himself, but the column observes that the common denominator across those meanings is gathering things together, stones to kill or threads to make needlework, and that this perhaps suggests Rashi follows Raavad's panoply of shades. Ibn Ezra (to Mishlei 26:8) also seems to take argaman from ר-ג-מ, but explains that root as exalted things, so that argaman seemingly names an exalted sort of dyed fabric. Ohalei Yehudah offers a portmanteau of oreg (weaving) and manah (a respectable portion), argaman being an important garment in the ancient world; alternatively, and this he prefers, argavan comprises א-ו-ר (light) with ג-ו-נ (color or appearance), for the bright color it denotes. The columnist adds a proposal of his own, that argavan is a contraction of א-ר-ג with ג-ו-נ, the middle gimmel belonging to both etymons. The Midrash (Bamidbar Rabbah 12:4) reads argaman homiletically as the sun, which prepares, literally weaves (oreg), different forms of sustenance (man), or as Hashem, who weaves the world together so that each thing brings out its own species (min) and one species does not mix with another.
Distinctions
argaman (ארגמן) and argavan (ארגון)
Thirty-eight appearances in Tanach. Argavan in Divrei HaYamim II 2:6 and argavana in Daniel 5:7 are alternate forms of the same word, on the interchangeability of mem and vav, and argavana is also how Targum renders argaman. One point holds across every view: argaman names dyed wool, not a color, so even a translator who insists on "purple" must say purple wool, not the color purple.
Two passages make it fairly clear that argaman is not purple. Rashi (to Shir HaShirim 7:6) implies argaman is a color sometimes found in women's hair; as Professor Athalya Brenner-Idan first pointed out, taking argaman as purple there is dissatisfactory, since no natural hair is purple, and she supposes that in that instance argaman may not name a specific color at all but stand in for anything expensive or rare. And Targum Onkelos with Rashi (to Bereishis 49:11) write that argaman resembles the color of wine, which again seemingly precludes purple.
Brenner-Idan herself, it should be said, reads argaman as a general term taking in shades of red that run from pink all the way to violet or dark purple; she supports this from the Temple Scroll among the Dead Sea Scrolls, which uses the expression argaman adom, "red argaman," implying that argaman on its own can also cover shades not strictly red.
Why the conventional translation says purple at all: the Septuagint consistently renders argaman as the Greek porphyra, the antecedent of the Latin purpura and ultimately of the Old English purpure, from which Modern English purple derives. That English word did not always mean the red-blue combination it means now. In several languages "purple" means red, and what we call purple is "violet"; the same was true in English until relatively recently, the Oxford English Dictionary giving as an alternate definition "Formerly: of any generally red shade; (now) of a deep, rich shade intermediate between crimson and violet." So argaman translated "purple" is not necessarily our purple but a generic sort of red. Bamidbar Rabbah 12:4 calls argaman the most esteemed of the fabrics of the Mishkan and Mikdash because it represents the garments of royalty, and midrashic Hebrew uses purpira for royal clothing, as of Mordechai in Pirkei D'Rabbi Eliezer ch. 50; various Greco-Roman historians likewise record that Tyrian purple was a controlled commodity generally reserved to the royal family. That the Greek word is a cognate of English purple, the column stresses, does not mean the clothes in question were the color we call purple.
segol (סגול)
In 1894 Yechiel Michel Pines introduced segol as a new word for purple; it seems to have been influenced by the English "violet," originally the name of a purple-colored flower and later the word for the color itself. The Gemara (Berachos 43b, Shabbos 50b) mentions a plant called siglei, which Rashi (there) explains as the three-petaled violet. Rabbi Dr. Ernest Klein suggests that siglei derives from the Aramaic sigla, a cluster of grapes, probably because the formation and color of grapes on a cluster resemble those of the violet flower; the columnist would further argue that sigla may itself come from eshkol, shin interchanging with samech and kaf with gimmel, noting that Targum Yerushalmi regularly renders eshkol as sigla. Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur (Meturgaman) notes that sigla also names the vowel segol, three dots in a cluster.
lilach (לילך)
The same move again: the lilac flower's name extended to its color. The Academy of the Hebrew Language recognizes the modern words for lavender and mauve alongside it. All of these are twentieth-century color vocabulary and have no standing in Tanach or Chazal.
Rendering guidance
- In Chumash and in the Mishkan and Mikdash passages, keep argaman transliterated, glossed once per work as red-dyed wool, beside techeiles and tola'as shani.
- Trap: English "purple" will absorb argaman and then argue backwards, so that the Mishkan acquires a color no source gives it. If a project must use "purple," attach the note that the older English sense was a deep red.
- Second trap: argaman and tola'as shani are both reds. Where the pasuk lists them together, the English must not give both the same word; on Rasag's reading tola'as shani holds the crimson, so argaman takes the other shade, which the Yemenite sources make a yellowish red.
- Never use segol or lilach to render anything in Tanach; where a modern Hebrew text uses them, "purple" and "lilac" are correct.
- Where a passage compares argaman to fire, to the gold of the kapores, or to wine, let the comparison stand in English rather than substituting a color name; the comparison is the source's own evidence for the shade.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "The Color Purple," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 11 Adar Alef 5782 (2022-02-12): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/9575-the-color-purple.md; the article credits Kuntres Merkavo Argaman by Rabbi Yisrael Rosenberg of Lakewood for much of its material. Primary loci the article cites: Shemos 25:4; Bamidbar 4:13; Bereishis 49:11; Tehillim 68:28; Mishlei 26:8; Shir HaShirim 7:6; Divrei HaYamim II 2:6; Daniel 5:7; Yoma 45a; Berachos 43b; Shabbos 50b; Mishnah Kilayim 9:1; Shir HaShirim Rabbah 3:16; Bamidbar Rabbah 12:4; Pirkei D'Rabbi Eliezer ch. 50; Sifrei Zuta, Midrash HaGadol, and Yalkut Midrashei Teiman to Bamidbar 4:13; Midrash Agur ch. 14; Midrash Chefetz and Meor HaAfeilah to Shemos 25:4; Zohar Idra Rabbah 141b and Terumah 139a; Rambam, Klei HaMikdash 8:13 and his commentary to Kilayim 9:1; Aruch HaShulchan HaAsid, Klei HaMikdash 28:12; Radak, Sefer HaShorashim; Machberes Menachem; Toras HaMinchah, Tetzaveh; Rambam's commentary to Kilayim 9:1 with Rabbi Yosef Kurkis and Rabbi Yosef Karo on Raavad; Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur, Meturgaman; Ohalei Yehudah; the Oxford English Dictionary s.v. purple. Restored 2026-09-10 from an earlier omission note: the Akkadian argamannu derivation reported in the names of Rabbi Dr. Ernest Klein and Dr. Chaim Tawil, W. F. Albright's Hittite and Ugaritic tribute cognates, the Temple Scroll's argaman adom, and Professor Athalya Brenner-Idan's readings had all been dropped under the Orthodox-sources rule and are now in the body. Two of those cuts had bent the entry: the argument that argaman in Shir HaShirim 7:6 cannot be purple because no natural hair is purple is Brenner-Idan's and had been left standing as the entry's own, and her reading of argaman as reaching to violet contradicted the entry's flat claim that no source makes it a red-blue mixture. That claim is now scoped, as the article scopes it, to the traditional sources. A former line saying Rambam's view is "the majority" has been cut; the article counts no one, saying only that Rambam's approach is echoed by later authorities.