action
pushing
At a glance
In short
Potzer is to press or urge someone until he relents. It concerns a person's will rather than his body, though Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg reads the Sedomites' pressing of Lot (Bereishis 19:9) physically, as pushing him away from the door. Docheh is to push away, to remove a thing from its place, and in halachic Hebrew for one law to override another, a sense with nothing physical in it. Dochef is to hurry, to be pushed into doing something faster than planned. Hadof is to thrust away or dislodge, particularly what is loosely held (Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim, Malbim). Dofek is repeated beating: to knock at a door, to drive animals too hard, and later a pulse.
Distinctions
Potzer (פוצר)
Root פ-צ-ר, seven occurrences in Tanach: Lot with the angels and the Sedomites with Lot (Bereishis 19:3, 19:9), Yaakov pressing Eisav to accept his gift (Bereishis 33:11), and the Concubine of Givah narrative (Shoftim 19:7).
Docheh (דוחה)
Root ד-ח-ה, with the near-identical ד-ו-ח carrying the same sense, mostly in Tehillim: dacho dechisani, "I was surely pushed to falling, and Hashem helped me" (Tehillim 118:13); "extracting my soul from death, my foot from being pushed," dechi (Tehillim 116:8, and see 56:14); also Mishlei 14:32, 26:28, Yirmiyahu 23:12. Inflections of ד-ח-ה appear eleven times in Tanach, as Even-Shoshan lists them, mostly in Tehillim. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim takes ד-ח as the core, meaning "push," and reads most of its family as pushing something out of place: nidach/nidchei (Devarim 22:1, Yeshayahu 11:12, 27:13), a refugee or rejected person, one pushed away from his homeland; hadachah, rinsing, water pushing filth away; dochan, rice or millet, grain-like granules extracted by pushing them out of their husks. Rav Hirsch (to Bereishis 20:13) compares docheh to toeh (becoming lost), on the interchange of dalet with tav and ches with ayin: a man pushed from home and a man who has lost his way are both severed from a secure base. The root ד-ח-ק (dchak) is related, and likewise refers to pushing or pressuring. In Talmudic usage a positive command docheh, "pushes aside," a negative one, and in yeshivishe speech one is docheh an argument.
Dochef (דוחף)
Root ד-ח-ף, five occurrences, usually urgent: Achashverosh's couriers driven out with his decrees (Esther 3:15, 8:14), Haman hurrying home after leading Mordechai through the city (Esther 6:12), Uziyahu (Azariah), king of Yehudah, suddenly struck with tzaraas on his forehead in the Beis HaMikdash and nidchaf to leave the premises as quickly as possible (Divrei HaYamim II 26:20), and Tehillim 140:12. Modern Hebrew uses the adjective dachuf for an urgent, pressing matter.
Hadof (הדף)
Root ה-ד-ף. Hashem pushing out the Canaanite nations (Devarim 6:19, 9:4, Yehoshua 23:5); pushing a man to his death, whether by accident (Bamidbar 35:22) or deliberately (Bamidbar 35:20); Geichazi and the Shunamis woman (Melachim II 4:27).
- Rabbi Pappenheim brings the Mishnaic dofan here, a flimsy wall easily pushed aside (Yoma 2:3, Sukkah 1:1, Zevachim 8:1, Keilim 2:2, and many more); daf is the wooden board such a wall was often built of, which in later medieval Hebrew becomes a page or folio in a book. In most of its Mishnaic occurrences dofan is used in a borrowed sense, of a child born by Cesarean section or otherwise by cutting through a physiological barrier to remove the child from the womb. Pappenheim also brings dofi (Tehillim 50:20), a fault or misdeed.
- Rav Hirsch (to Bamidbar 35:20) groups hadof with ע-ד-ף (adif, extra), ח-ט-ף (chatifah, seizing), ח-ט-ב (chativah, cutting off), and ע-ט-ף (atifah, wrapping or enveloping), on the interchange of hei, ayin and ches and of dalet and tes. The theme uniting all five is something deemed extra or even extraneous: hadof pushes a thing away because it is superfluous, adif is literally extra, chatifah grabs what was extraneous where it stood and belongs elsewhere, chativah cuts off what is extra, and atifah wraps a thing to set it apart from the rest.
Dofek (דפק)
Root ד-פ-ק, three occurrences, each read slightly differently. Yaakov declines to travel with Eisav because driving (defakum) his flocks hard would kill them (Bereishis 33:13); "the voice of my beloved knocks, open for me" (Shir HaShirim 5:2); the men of Givah mitdapkim at the door (Shoftim 19:22). Shadal (to Bereishis 33:13) gives the root as "to knock, bang, beat, push," and cites his student Rabbi Abraham Grego of Verona, who posits that it derives from ד-ף, alongside the roots of dochef and hadof. The persistent sound of a knock on a door resembles the persistent beat of the heart, and Ramban (in his responsa misattributed to Rashba §127) already uses dofek for a heartbeat, a usage that continues into Modern Hebrew and is not far from the original in Shir HaShirim. One of the Wilderness encampments was named Dafkah (Bamidbar 33:12-13), seemingly from the same root.
- Norbert Pearlroth, who served as research director of Ripley's Believe It or Not! for over half a century, wrote in his column on Jewish family names (The Indiana Jewish Post, 29 March 1946, p. 8) that the surname Deifik comes from dofek, "pulse": before 1848 Jews could not attend Polish or Russian medical schools and were limited to para-medical work such as barber-surgeon, and the patriarch of the Deifik family had the habit of feeling his patients' pulse, so the Hebrew word for heartbeat became the family name.
- Pearlroth's successor in that column, David L. Gold, later clarified (The Indiana Jewish Post, 31 October 1990, p. 16) that Deifik in fact derives from a nickname, ostensibly given to that patriarch.
Rabbi Klein adds that Deifik is his wife's maiden name, and that on his own amateur genealogical research it seems that everyone bearing it (originally spelled Dojfig, Deifig or Dojfik) is related to her family, who came from Michalcze, today Mykhal'che in Ukraine, near Horodenka.
Where the authorities disagree
The physical act of pushing must be kept apart from the metaphorical sense of being pushed around or coerced, and some of these words carry both.
Whether potzer is physical.
- Rav Hirsch (to Bereishis 19:3) reads it as primarily poking or stabbing at someone or something until they acquiesce to the desires of the one pushing, an image of persistence and determination, which fits Lot pressing his guests and Yaakov pressing Eisav to take the gift (Bereishis 33:11).
- Shadal (to Bereishis 33:11) enriches this by arguing that פ-צ-ר is itself an offshoot of the biliteral צ-ר, narrow or strait, since pushing a person leaves him with narrow choices until he relents, akin to navigating a narrow passageway; Shadal, Rabbi Klein notes, evidently took the peh as a radical added to the core two-letter root.
- Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg (HaKsav VeHaKabbalah to Bereishis 19:9) interprets the second occurrence, of the Sedomites, in the physical sense: they physically pushed Lot away from the door, preventing him from protecting his guests.
Where dochef comes from.
- Menachem Ibn Saruk, Ibn Janach, and Radak all trace it to the triliteral ד-ח-ף.
- Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim instead reads it as a fusion of two biliteral roots, ד-ח (push) and א-ף (af, face or nose): to push someone's face away, symbolizing the rejection of his presence and the urgency to redirect himself toward another task.
- Separately, Rabbi David Golumb writes that hadof is related to dochef, arguing that hei and ches can be viewed as interchangeable; evidently, Rabbi Klein adds, Golumb also assumes the reordering that moves the guttural into second position.
How hadof differs from docheh.
- Rabbi Pappenheim derives hadof from ד-ף, "pushing away with ease," and illustrates it with Geichazi shoving the Shunamis woman (Melachim II 4:27), which he says was easy because she was on a mountain and the incline made her footing more precarious.
- The Malbim (Yair Ohr) offers a similar explanation from a different angle, insinuating that hadof implies pushing away something less rooted in its original location.
- Targum there uses an Aramaic form of dachah for what Geichazi did.
What dofi means.
- Rabbi Pappenheim traces dofi to this root, and Rabbi David Abudarham of Seville had made the same connection earlier, in his commentary to the vidui, where the penitent admits to having spoken dofi: it is speaking derogatorily about another, by which one has essentially pushed away the victim of his hateful speech for personal gain. That explanation is Abudarham's; Rashi (to Tehillim 50:20) is cited only for the narrower point that he too links dofi with hadof.
- Rabbi Yosef Kimchi, cited by Abudarham, explains dofi instead as a portmanteau of the Greek prefix di-, two or double, and the Hebrew pi, mouth: duplicitous speech, as though one spoke with two different mouths, like the English "speaks with a forked tongue."
What the men of Givah did at the door. Mitdapkim (Shoftim 19:22):
- Targum Yonasan uses a cognate of dchak, the people pushing the door to break it open.
- Metzudas Tzion (there, and to Shir HaShirim 5:2) explains that they were more gently knocking, to convince the host to open up.
Also discussed in
- Pressureדחק / d'chak (ד-ח-ק)
Radak on these roots
Sefer HaShorashim
ד-ח-ה
To push and thrust away: pushed hard, a wall pushed over, the wicked thrust down, the outcasts of Yisrael; and the nouns, a stumbling and a ruin.
Thrusting
"You pushed me hard" (Tehillim 118:13), "who planned to thrust aside my steps" (Tehillim 140:5), "and the angel of Hashem thrusting" (Tehillim 35:5), "a wall pushed over" (Tehillim 62:4).
The one thrust out
The passive: "the wicked man is thrust down" (Mishlei 14:32), "they shall be thrust and fall in it" (Yirmiyahu 23:12), which has a pasach and the stress on the earlier syllable, against the usual, and "He gathers the outcasts of Yisrael" (Tehillim 147:2). He allows that the last might be from the roots that drop a nun and would then have wanted a dagesh, but holds the right view to be that it is a passive of this root.
Thrust down and unable to rise
In the passive whose doer is not named, "they were thrust down and could not rise" (Tehillim 36:13), which he says he found in the precise books with the stress on the last syllable. Rabbi Yehudah wrote it among the roots whose middle letter is silent.
The stumble
The nouns are "my foot from stumbling" (Tehillim 116:8) and, on another pattern with an added mem, "and a smooth mouth works ruin" (Mishlei 26:28).
דָּחֹה דְחִיתַנִי (תהלים קיח, יג), אֲשֶׁר חָשְׁבוּ לִדְחוֹת פְּעָמָֽי (תהלים קמ, ה), וּמַלְאַךְ י"י דּוֹחֶֽה (תהלים לה, ה), גָּדֵר הַדְּחוּיָֽה (תהלים סב, ד). והנפעל יִדָּחֶה רָשָׁע (משלי יד, לב), יִדַּחוּ וְנָפְלוּ בָהּ (ירמיה כג, יב) והוא פתח ומלעיל שלא כמנהג, נִדְחֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל יְכַנֵּֽס (תהלים קמז, ב). ואפשר שיהיה נדחי ישראל מחסרי הנו"ן והיה ראוי להדגש. אבל הנכון שיהיה לשון נפעל מזה השרש. ושלא נזכר פועלו [פֻּעַל] דֹּחוּ וְלֹא־יָכְלוּ קֽוּם (תהלים לו, יג). כן מצאנוהו בספרים מדויקים מלרע. ורבי יהודה כתבו מנחי העי"ן. והשם אֶת־רַגְלִי מִדֶּֽחִי (תהלים קטז, ח). ובמשקל אחר בתוספת מ"ם וּפֶה חָלָק יַֽעֲשֶׂה מִדְחֶֽה (משלי כו, כח).
ד-ח-ף
Pushing, the one sense he gives all its forms: the runners went out pushed on, Haman was pushed, and the noun מַדְחֵפֹת, pushes.
The runners pushed on
הָֽרָצִים יָצְאוּ דְחוּפִים (Esther 3:15), the runners went out pushed on, and in the passive וְהָמָן נִדְחַף (Esther 6:12), and Haman was pushed.
The noun
יְצוּדֶנּוּ לְמַדְחֵפֹֽת (Tehillim 140:12), it shall hunt him down with pushes. The sense of them all is pushing.
הָֽרָצִים יָצְאוּ דְחוּפִים (אסתר ג, טו). והנפעל וְהָמָן נִדְחַף (אסתר ו, יב). והשם יְצוּדֶנּוּ לְמַדְחֵפֹֽת (תהלים קמ, יב), הכל ענין דחיה.
ד-פ-ק
Pushing: flocks pushed on for a single day; and pushing and striking on a door, of men at the door and of the beloved knocking.
Pushing the flock
וּדְפָקוּם יוֹם אֶחָד (Bereishis 33:13), and should they push them a single day: the sense is pushing.
Beating and knocking at a door
מִֽתְדַּפְּקִים עַל־הַדָּלֶת (Shoftim 19:22), pushing and beating at the door, and קוֹל דּוֹדִי דוֹפֵק (Shir HaShirim 5:2), the sound of my beloved knocking: their sense too is pushing and striking on the door.
וּדְפָקוּם יוֹם אֶחָד (בראשית לג, יג), ענין דחיה, [הִתְפָּעֵל] מִֽתְדַּפְּקִים עַל־הַדָּלֶת (שופטים יט, כב), קוֹל דּוֹדִי דוֹפֵק (שיר השירים ה, ב), ענינם גם כן הדחיה והכות על הדלת.
ה-ד-ף
Pushing, the sense he gives for every use: a man pushed without enmity, pushing with side and shoulder, one pushed from his post, enemies pushed out.
Pushing a man, pushing with shoulder
וְאִם־בְּפֶתַע בְּלֹֽא־אֵיבָה הֲדָפוֹ (Bamidbar 35:22), if he pushed him suddenly without enmity, and יַעַן בְּצַד וּבְכָתֵף תֶּהְדֹּפוּ (Yechezkel 34:21), because you push with side and shoulder.
Pushed from a post, enemies pushed
וַֽהֲדַפְתִּיךָ מִמַּצָּבֶךָ (Yeshayahu 22:19), I will push you from your station, and לַֽהֲדֹף אֶת־כָּל־אֹֽיְבֶיךָ (Devarim 6:19), to push away all your enemies. All of them, he says, are the sense of pushing.
A vowel the precise books split on
וְהַוַּת רְשָׁעִים יֶֽהְדֹּֽף (Mishlei 10:3), the craving of the wicked He pushes away. Radak found the yud pointed with segol in some of the precise books and with patach in others.
וְאִם־בְּפֶתַע בְּלֹֽא־אֵיבָה הֲדָפוֹ (במדבר לה, כב), יַעַן בְּצַד וּבְכָתֵף תֶּהְדֹּפוּ (יחזקאל לד, כא), וַֽהֲדַפְתִּיךָ מִמַּצָּבֶךָ (ישעיה כב, יט), וְהַוַּת רְשָׁעִים יֶֽהְדֹּֽף (משלי י, ג), מצאתי במקצת הספרים המדוייקים היו"ד בסגול ובמקצתם בפתח. לַֽהֲדֹף אֶת־כָּל־אֹֽיְבֶיךָ (דברים ו, יט), כלם ענין דחיפה.
פ-צ-ר
To press a man: all of it is the overriding of a man's will, and compulsion.
Pressing hard
וַיִּפְצַר־בָּם מְאֹד (Bereishis 19:3), and he pressed them greatly; וַיִּפְצַר־בּוֹ לָקַחַת וַיְמָאֵֽן (Melachim II 5:15 in his edition), and he pressed him to take it, and he refused; וַיִּפְצַר־בּוֹ חֹתְנוֹ (Shoftim 19:7), and his father-in-law pressed him; וַיִּפְצְרוּ־בוֹ עַד־בֹּשׁ (Melachim II 2:17), and they pressed him until he was ashamed; and וַיִּפְצְרוּ בָאִישׁ בְּלוֹט (Bereishis 19:9), and they pressed hard upon the man, upon Lot.
Overriding a man's will
The infinitive of the heavier form is in וְאָוֶן וּתְרָפִים הַפְצַר (Shmuel I 15:23), and pressing is iniquity and terafim. All of it is the sense of overriding what a man wills, and compulsion.
וַיִּפְצַר־בָּם מְאֹד (בראשית יט, ג), וַיִּפְצַר־בּוֹ לָקַחַת וַיְמָאֵֽן (מלכים ב' ה, טו), וַיִּפְצַר־בּוֹ חֹתְנוֹ (שופטים יט, ז), וַיִּפְצְרוּ־בוֹ עַד־בֹּשׁ (מלכים ב' ב, יז), וַיִּפְצְרוּ בָאִישׁ בְּלוֹט (בראשית יט, ט). והמקור מהפעל הכבד [הִפְעִיל] וְאָוֶן וּתְרָפִים הַפְצַר (שמואל א' טו, כג), הכל ענין העברה על רצון האדם וההכרח. הַפְּצִירָה פִים (שמואל א' יג, כא), פירשרתיו בשרש פה.
Radak, Sefer HaShorashim, Berlin 1847. Public domain, digitised by Sefaria from the National Library of Israel.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Vayera: Getting Pushy," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 4 November 2023.
Cited in the essay: Bereishis 19:3, 19:9, 20:13, 33:11, 33:13; Bamidbar 33:12-13, 35:20, 35:22; Devarim 6:19, 9:4, 22:1; Yehoshua 23:5; Shoftim 19:7, 19:22; Melachim II 4:27 with Targum; Yeshayahu 11:12, 27:13; Yirmiyahu 23:12; Tehillim 50:20, 56:14, 116:8, 118:13, 140:12; Mishlei 14:32, 26:28; Shir HaShirim 5:2; Esther 3:15, 6:12, 8:14; Divrei HaYamim II 26:20; Mishnah Yoma 2:3, Sukkah 1:1, Zevachim 8:1, Keilim 2:2; Rav Hirsch to Bereishis 19:3, 20:13 and Bamidbar 35:20; Shadal to Bereishis 33:11 and 33:13; Rabbi Abraham Grego; Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg, HaKsav VeHaKabbalah to Bereishis 19:9; Menachem Ibn Saruk; Ibn Janach; Radak; Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim; Rabbi David Golumb, Targumna (שמות פרק כג, דף תיט); Malbim, Yair Ohr; Rabbi David Abudarham to the vidui, citing Rabbi Yosef Kimchi; Rashi to Tehillim 50:20; Targum Yonasan and Metzudas Tzion to Shoftim 19:22; Metzudas Tzion to Shir HaShirim 5:2; Ramban's responsa printed under Rashba §127; Even-Shoshan's concordance; Norbert Pearlroth, The Indiana Jewish Post, 29 March 1946, p. 8; David L. Gold, The Indiana Jewish Post, 31 October 1990, p. 16.