What’s in a Word?

nature

rock

אבן · סלע · לבנה

Bottom line

Even is the general word: stone, any naturally occurring one, as against leveinah, a man-made brick (Malbim). Sela is a crag, a hard rock still fixed in the ground and often a rocky height, which is why it also became the name of a coin. Rabbi Immanuel Chai Ricci puts the difference in attachment (sela joined to the ground, even loose enough to pick up); Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim puts it in hardness, with even the hypernym that includes sela. The trap: English "rock" and "stone" are near-interchangeable, so a passage that contrasts even and sela (the Mishnah at Zevachim 13:3) needs two clearly different English words.

Distinctions

even (אבן)

Malbim: a stone formed by nature, set against leveinah, the brick a man makes by mixing mortar. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim: even is the umbrella term, the plainest way to say rock, and sela and the rest fall under it; it takes on narrower senses in construct, avnei hasadeh, avnei yakar (precious stones), avnei shayish. He traces the word to the two-letter ב-נ, building, since the ordinary use of stone is to build with. Because stone is hard, even was then extended to anything in a hard, solid state, as in avnei barad, stones of hail, at Yehoshua 10:11. This is the word for every stone in the Yaakov Avinu narratives: the stones he slept on (Bereishis 28:11), the stone he set up and poured oil on (28:18), the stone he rolled off the well (29:10), and the phrase he coined, Even Yisrael (49:24).

sela (סלע)

Rabbi Immanuel Chai Ricci: a sela is attached to the ground and an even is detached, so that one can simply lift it. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim: ordinary rock is sand, earth and minerals compacted, and shatters under a hammer; a sela is the harder kind, whitish, its minerals bound with calcite, and to break it takes real force, so that its fragments fly apart when it goes (see Yirmiyahu 23:29). In most of Tanach a sela is a hard rock jutting out of the ground, or a rocky mountain. Its hardness made it a standard, and by Mishnaic times sela is also the name of a coin. Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg (HaKesav VeHaKabbalah, to Shemos 4:25 and Devarim 9:9) cites Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim here and builds a derashah on it about the Luchos.

Rabbi Aharon Marcus proposes that where a root looks like ס-ל, the samech stands in for the ayin that follows it in the alef-beis, so the root is really ע-ל, the root of al and oleh, what is on top and what rises. On that reading a sela is the rock that comes up out of the ground.

Rendering guidance

  • Zevachim 13:3, Rabbi Shimon holding one liable for offering "on an even or a sela": "on a stone or a crag." Two English words are required; "on a rock or a stone" reads as a distinction without a difference, and the halachah turns on there being two cases.
  • אבן: "stone," in every register, and especially opposite leveinah: "stone and brick" (compare Bereishis 11:3, where the builders had to substitute).
  • סלע: "crag" or "rock" where it protrudes or is a height; "sela" transliterated where it is the coin, never "coin" alone, which loses why the coin has that name.
  • Trap: English "rock" will take even, sela and (in the companion article) tzur and chalamish as well. Fix one English word per Hebrew word across a passage and hold to it, rather than choosing by what sounds well in each line.
  • אבני ברד (Yehoshua 10:11): "hailstones," but if the passage is discussing why hail is called stone, render "stones of hail" so the point survives.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Like a Rock (Part 1)," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 9 Kislev 5779 (2018-11-17); raw text at sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/7990-like-a-rock-part-1.md. Primary loci cited: Bereishis 28:11, 28:18, 29:10, 49:24; Zevachim 13:3; Yehoshua 10:11; Yirmiyahu 23:29; HaKesav VeHaKabbalah to Shemos 4:25 and Devarim 9:9.

This is part 1 of a two-part series; part 2 (wiaw:8000) carries tzur and chalamish and is covered in rock-tzur-chalamish.md.