resident

Distinctions

The article opens from Modern Hebrew, where ezrach means "citizen," toshav means "resident (without citizenship)," and verb cognates of ger simply mean "dwelling," although ger itself retains a religious connotation.

ger (גר)

Malbim: a ger is one living in a land other than his own homeland, whether far from it (Bereishis 15:13, Shemos 18:3) or near (Shoftim 19:1, 19:16).

Rav Hirsch (to Bereishis 12:14, 23:4) takes the biliteral ג-ר as "detachment from one's roots," and gathers under it ger, gur (a lion cub, newly weaned and detached from its mother), gur (fear, the ground yanked out from under one), and megurah (or megirah, "closet/drawer" in Modern Hebrew), a silo for storing harvested grain already detached from the ground. Ibn Ezra (to Bereishis 15:13, 23:4, Tehillim 37:35) likewise reads ger as an expression of disconnection. Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg (1785-1865) offers two other derivations: from megirah / agurah, gathering, since the ger has now gathered himself into his newfound land and community; and from girui, irritation or instigation, for the ger's knack for instigating a fight against his natural desires and overcoming them.

The temporariness is rabbinic tradition, not only etymology. Yosef's brothers tell Pharaoh they came lagur in Mitzrayim (Bereishis 47:4), and the Haggadah reads that as coming only to escape the famine, never to settle. Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer adds Yaakov's garti for his fourteen years in Lavan's house (Bereishis 32:5), which he never intended and only circumstances imposed.

Targum generally renders ger as dayar (Targum Onkelos to Devarim 10:19 is a notable exception), a word with Aramaic relatives (Daniel 2:11, 4:9, 4:32, 5:21) and cognate to the Mishnaic madur / dirah, a domicile (Eruvin 2:5, 5:1, Kesubos 12:3, Bava Basra 1:5, Avodah Zarah 1:9; see Rashba Meyuchas L'Ramban 257 on whether a ban against establishing a dirah in a place also bars opening a store there).

Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur (1469-1549): ger primarily refers to one who repudiates avodah zarah and accepts upon himself not to engage in that practice. This, the column adds, may be derived from the understanding that a ger is primarily one who has disconnected himself from his homeland; the derivation is the column's suggestion, not HaBachur's stated reasoning. Halachically there are two: a ger toshav, a gentile who rejects avodah zarah and is thereby granted residence in Eretz Yisrael (some require that he also accept the sheva mitzvos, see Avodah Zarah 64b and Ramban to Shemos 20:10), and a ger tzedek, who accepts the whole Torah and joins Klal Yisrael (Yevamos 48b, Gittin 57b, Kiddushin 20a, Bava Kamma 113b, Bava Metzia 71a and 111b, Sanhedrin 96b, Arachin 30b). The term ger toshav itself is not biblical: such a man is sometimes called toshav (Rashi to Shemos 12:45) and sometimes ger (Rashi to Shemos 23:12, Devarim 14:21), and at Vayikra 25:35, ger v'soshav, Mizrachi holds the vav is not the ordinary "and" and the phrase means a ger toshav.

toshav (תושב)

Radak (Sefer HaShorashim) traces it to י-ש-ב, sitting and settling for the long term. Menachem Ibn Saruk takes the root as the biliteral ש-ב, which Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim defines as returning or reverting to a former place or status: a yeshivah is a permanent dwelling that removes any need to return elsewhere, and a toshav is the permanent resident who engages in yeshivah.

Rabbi Yisrael Yaakov Algazi (1680-1757) cites what the article calls a fascinating responsum by Rabbi Shmuel Modiliano, who argues that they divide by ownership: toshav / yeshivah denotes settling in a place where one owns or has rights to the real estate, while gar / dirah denotes living somewhere by right of residence without owning the property his home stands on. Modiliano cites multiple biblical prooftexts to this effect.

When Avraham presented himself before the Hittites to buy a burial place for Sarah, he called himself both, ger v'soshav anochi imachem (Bereishis 23:4). Rabbi Moshe Kimchi (1120-1190), Radak's brother: ger because he emigrated from his homeland, toshav because his family had settled Canaan and made it home, so that his descendants would remain there even after his death.

ezrach (אזרח)

Menachem Ibn Saruk treats all four letters as the root; Ibn Janach and Radak derive it from ז-ר-ח, shining. Radak (to Tehillim 37:35 and in Sefer HaShorashim): as light makes everything visible, an ezrach is one whose identity and family are out in the open, against the ger, whose origins stay unknown. Bava Basra 15a has Avraham writing in Tehillim under the name Eisan HaEzrachi, and Targum (to Tehillim 89:1) explains the title as marking that he came from the east, mizrach, itself from ז-ר-ח because the sun begins to shine there. Rabbi David Chaim Chelouche (1920-2016), the late Chief Rabbi of Netanya, takes this a step further to account for ezrach as "citizen": in ancient times the boundaries of civilization were broadly understood to lie in the east, so a legitimate citizen properly oriented in society is likewise called an easterner, an ezrach, while one who leaves the confines of civilization and sojourns beyond the pale of settlement is branded a stranger or an occidental, in Hebrew a ger or a zar.

Rabbi Chelouche attempts to prove the point by noting that in Arabic maghreb means "west" and ghurayb means "stranger," assuming both are cognates of the Hebrew ger. The column rejects that proof: linguistically the theory does not hold, because the letter representing the gh- sound in Arabic is related to the Hebrew ayin, so that maghreb cognates with the Hebrew maarav, "west," and erev, "evening," rather than with ger. The column rejects only the Arabic proof; it leaves Chelouche's east-and-west explanation itself standing.

To capsulize the discussion, Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer (1866-1935) writes that ger is the opposite of ezrach and the opposite of toshav: a ger denotes a sojourner who is neither a full-fledged citizen of this particular land (ezrach) nor an alien resident (toshav), but is simply living here as one stop in his greater journey.

zar (זר)

The plain stranger. Radak's father Rabbi Yosef Kimchi (in Sefer Zikaron) and Radak himself (to Yechezkel 25:7) note that the letters zayin and gimmel can be interchangeable. They do not cite this example; it is the column that applies their rule to zar and ger to find some affinity between the two, so that just as zar means stranger, so does ger. Its case in point: Rabbi Shmuel David Luzzatto (1800-1865), known as Shadal, named his commentary to the Chumash Ohev Ger, "Lover of Strangers," and similarly named it Philosseno (philo, lover, xeno, stranger or alien, which the column calls Latin), thus also presuming a connection between ger and zar.

Where the Torah pairs ezrach and ger it is to stress that certain mitzvos apply to both alike, both of them living within the established community (Vayikra 16:29, 18:26; Bamidbar 15:29, 15:30). Where it pairs ger and toshav it is of alien residents who ought to be pitied (Bereishis 23:4; Vayikra 25:35, 25:47).

Rendering guidance

• Vayikra 25:35, ger v'soshav: with Mizrachi, "a ger toshav," or "a resident alien," never "a sojourner and a resident," which invents a second person.
• Bereishis 23:4, where Avraham calls himself both: here the two words do describe one man in two respects, so translate both, "a sojourner and a resident among you," and note Rabbi Moshe Kimchi's reading rather than smoothing it to one word.
• Trap: English "stranger" will absorb ger, zar, and nochri at once, and "resident" will absorb toshav and ezrach. Fix "sojourner" for ger, "resident" for toshav, "native" or "citizen" for ezrach, "stranger" for zar, and hold the assignment through a passage.
• Halachic ger (a convert) stays transliterated; do not render it "stranger" or "proselyte." Ger tzedek and ger toshav stay transliterated as units. (The article itself glosses ger tzedek as "proselyte"; the objection to that word in a sefer is ours.)
• Ezrach in a pasuk about mitzvos binding ha'ezrach v'hager is "the native-born," not "the citizen"; "citizen" is the modern Hebrew sense and reads civic rather than familial.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Behar - Bechukotai: Settled Citizens," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 26 Iyar 5781 (2021-05-08): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/9199-behar-bechukotai-settled-citizens.md. Primary loci cited: Bereishis 15:13, 23:4, 32:5, 47:4; Shemos 12:45, 18:3, 20:10 with Ramban, 23:12; Vayikra 16:29, 18:26, 25:35, 25:47; Bamidbar 15:29, 15:30; Devarim 10:19, 14:21; Shoftim 19:1, 19:16; Tehillim 37:35, 89:1 with Targum; Yechezkel 25:7; Avodah Zarah 64b; Yevamos 48b; Gittin 57b; Kiddushin 20a; Bava Kamma 113b; Bava Metzia 71a, 111b; Sanhedrin 96b; Arachin 30b; Bava Basra 15a; Radak, Sefer HaShorashim s.v. ישב and s.v. זרח; Rabbi Yosef Kimchi, Sefer Zikaron; Rav Hirsch to Bereishis 12:14 and 23:4; Rashba Meyuchas L'Ramban 257; and Shadal's Ohev Ger / Philosseno. Two notes on the article's citations: it prints "Gen. 23:4, 25:35, 25:47" for the ger v'toshav loci, where the second and third are Vayikra 25:35 and 25:47; and it lists Tehillim 84:11 among the Biblical Aramaic attestations of dayar, though that verse is Hebrew, so the entry leaves it out of the body and records the slip here. The article's Arabic excursus, in which Rabbi Chelouche tries to prove his east-and-west reading from maghreb and ghurayb and the column rejects the proof on the ground that Arabic gh- answers to Hebrew ayin, had been dropped from this entry and is now restored; so is the article's note that Shadal gave his commentary the second title Philosseno. Two things are ours: the judgment that "proselyte," which the column uses, is wrong for a sefer, and the estimate that ger in Chumash often does not mean a convert, for which the article gives no count.