sickle

Distinctions

chermesh (חרמש)

Twice in Tanach, both in Devarim: the start of the Omer count (16:9) and the prohibition on a hired worker taking the owner's produce with a chermesh (23:26). It never appears in the Mishnah, and only once in Tosefta (Bava Metzia 2:14).

Roots proposed:

• Rav Hirsch (to Bereishis 25:6): Hebrew words with an apparent four-letter root ending in shin are really triliterals with a shin added. Here the root is ח-ר-ם, cherem, destroying or banning, and the added shin makes it the instrument of cutting.
• Rabbi David Chaim Chelouche: a merger of two biliterals, ח-ר (hole) and מ-ש (move), since the tool cuts the grain and lets it be moved from where it grew.
• Rabbi Moshe David Valle: a portmanteau of cherem and aish, placing chermesh on the side of din, with magal on the side of rachamim. Alternatively he reads it as a notarikon for chafetz retzono marbeh sheilaso, the more a man chases what he wants the needier he becomes.
• Rabbi Chaim Vital reads Devarim 16:9 as speaking of a man's lifespan: from twenty, when he becomes liable for his sins, fifty years run to seventy, the archetypal lifespan. His support is that chermesh is 548 in gematria, the same as umalach hamaves, and he holds that the Torah chose chermesh over magal precisely to bring death and punishment into the pasuk.

magal (מגל)

Twice in Tanach, both of the harvest tool (Yirmiyahu 50:16, Yoel 4:13), and repeatedly in Mishnah (Sheviis 5:6, Menachos 10:3, Keilim 13:1 and 15:4).

That it is the Aramaic form is the plain evidence: wherever chermesh appears, the Targumim render it magla, and the Sifrei (to Devarim 23:26) defines chermesh as magal outright. Radak (Sefer HaShorashim) notes the Arabic almunajil, sickle, and the Rambam uses the same Arabic word to define magal in his commentary to Peah 4:4 and Sheviis 4:6; on that showing the form should carry a nun, mangal, dropped as often happens. The Rambam to Sheviis 5:6 glosses magal yad as a small chermesh, which says as plainly as possible that the two words name one thing. Where Mishnaic Hebrew needed to distinguish sizes it did so by a modifier, magal yad for the hand sickle against magal kotzer for the larger tool, not by switching to chermesh.

Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim: the root is ג-ל, round, whence gal (a heap of stones laid in a ring), galgal (wheel) and megillah (a rolled scroll); the magal belongs there for the near-circle of its curved blade. He traces galus and geulah to the same biliteral. The column adds its own suggestion, that the cycle of galus and geulah is what ties them to ג-ל, and that the Rabbis may have preferred magal over chermesh for the Omer ceremony because the word carries the Pesach theme of that passage from galus to geulah. That last is offered as a suggestion, not as a source.

Rendering guidance

• Devarim 16:9: "from when the sickle is first put to the standing grain." Devarim 23:26: "you shall not raise a sickle against your fellow's standing grain." One English word for both, since the Sifrei and the Targumim treat them as one.
• Menachos 10:3: keep magal transliterated inside the ceremony, since the crowd is being asked to identify the very implement by name and the ritual reads flat as "Is this a sickle? Yes." A gloss on first appearance is enough.
• Trap: English "sickle" and "scythe" invite a distinction the Hebrew does not make. If a passage sets chermesh opposite magal it is almost certainly drawing a homiletic contrast (Rabbi Valle's din against rachamim, Rabbi Chaim Vital's malach hamaves), not naming two tools; render both "sickle" and carry the contrast in the transliteration.
• Magal yad is "hand sickle," magal kotzer the larger reaping tool; use the modifiers, not two different nouns.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Pesach: The Sickle and the Exile," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 14 Nissan 5781 (2021-03-27): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/9153-pesach-the-sickle-and-the-exile.md. Primary loci: Devarim 16:9, 23:26; Yirmiyahu 50:16; Yoel 4:13 (the article prints 4:12); Bereishis 25:6 (Rav Hirsch); Peah 4:4; Sheviis 4:6, 5:6; Menachos 10:3; Keilim 13:1, 15:4; Tosefta Bava Metzia 2:14; Sifrei to Devarim 23:26; Radak, Sefer HaShorashim s.v. מגל; Rambam's Mishnah commentary at the loci above. The article's archaeological argument (Shmuel Yeivin on sickle versus scythe and a Stone Age chermesh) and Mandelkorn's concordance are omitted here per house rule 9; Rav Hirsch reaches the cherem derivation independently.