body
shoulder
שכם · כתף
Bottom line
Both mean shoulder, and no single ruling settles them. The most useful division: katef is the shoulder proper, the whole joint; shechem is the shoulder where it meets the neck and runs into the upper back, so upper back or shoulders (plural) often serves it better. Shechem alone carries the borrowed senses of a parcel carried there and, from that, a portion or allotment. Do not render both with a bare "shoulder" in a pasuk that uses them together.
At a glance
| Hebrew | translit | English | what sets it apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| שכם | shechem | shoulder, upper back | nearest the neck (Radak); the back of the shoulder (Dangoor); both shoulders at once (Munkatcher Rebbe); also parcel, portion |
| כתף | katef | shoulder | the whole shoulder (Ohel Moed); its front (Dangoor); rests on the shechem (Iyov 31:22) |
Where the authorities disagree
Rabbi Shlomo of Urbino (Ohel Moed) records two views at the outset: some hold the two words identical, and some hold that shechem is the portion of the shoulder directly opposite the neck while katef is the whole shoulder.
Radak: shechem is not "shoulder" simply, but the part closest to the neck, that is, the higher part.
Against Radak, the pasuk in Iyov. Iyov swears, "let my katef fall from my shechem, and my arm be broken from its socket" (Iyov 31:22). There the katef sits atop the shechem, which makes katef the upper shoulder and shechem the back beneath it, the reverse of Radak's placement. The commentators note the difficulty and it is not resolved.
Rabbi Ezra Reuven Dangoor: the division is front and back, not high and low. Shechem is the back of the shoulder, katef the front.
The Munkatcher Rebbe, Rabbi Chaim Elazar Shapiro: the division is number. Shechem takes in both shoulders; katef is one.
Ibn Janach and Radak in their respective Sefer HaShorashim: shechem means "corner" or "side" first, and "shoulder" only by borrowing, since the shoulder sits at the body's side. On that reading the word runs side, then shoulder, then parcel or portion, and it gives no account of what separates shechem from katef, which likewise means both side and shoulder.
The Bottom line follows the Ohel Moed's second view, with Radak, because it is the one that keeps a working difference in English while fitting the ordinary usage; Dangoor and the Munkatcher Rebbe are recorded, and Iyov 31:22 is the standing objection to all of them.
Distinctions
shechem (שכם)
Yaakov to Yosef: "va'ani nasati lecha shechem echad al achecha," "and I have given you one shechem over your brothers" (Bereishis 48:22). Targum, Rashi and Ibn Ezra divide: some read the city of Shechem, taken from the Emori and where Yosef's bones were later buried (Yehoshua 24:32); others read an extra allotment, since each son received one portion of the Land and Yosef received two, one for each of his sons. That sense is borrowed from the body part. The literal use is in the blessing to Yissachar: "vayeit shichmo lisbol," "and he bent his shechem to bear the burden" (Bereishis 49:15), the place a donkey carries its yoke. Rabbi Dovid Zvi Hoffmann connects the verb lehashkim, to rise early, whose letters are those of shechem: rising means bringing the shoulder up from horizontal to upright. The column also records an explanation that loading a beast's back was the first business of the morning, so the word for that loading came to mean doing anything early.
katef (כתף)
The shoulder as such, and the piece of the body on which a load actually rides. Its only contrastive appearance with shechem is Iyov 31:21-22, where Iyov, protesting that he never raised his hand against an orphan, accepts a curse that his katef fall from his shechem.
Rendering guidance
- When only one of the two appears, "shoulder" is right for either.
- Bereishis 49:15 (vayeit shichmo): "he bent his shoulder to the burden," or "lowered his shoulder." The image is a beast under a yoke; keep it singular and physical.
- Bereishis 48:22 (shechem echad): decide between "one portion" and "Shechem" and let a note carry the other; do not blend them into "one shoulder."
- Trap: English "shoulder" absorbs both, and Iyov 31:22 is the one pasuk where that is fatal, since the two words stand in a spatial relation to each other. Render there "let my shoulder fall from its blade" or "my shoulder from my upper back," and note that Radak would invert the anatomy.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Shouldering the Burden," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 12 Teves 5778 (2017-12-30): https://articles.ohr.edu/articles/shouldering-the-burden; raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/7562-shouldering-the-burden.md. Primary loci: Bereishis 48:21-22, 49:14-15; Iyov 31:21-22; Yehoshua 24:32; Rabbi Shlomo of Urbino, Ohel Moed; Ibn Janach and Radak, Sefer HaShorashim s.v. שכם.