sickle

Why the Mishnah says magal

The Torah begins Sefiras HaOmer "when the sickle (chermesh) commences upon the standing grain" (Devarim 16:9), yet the Mishnah, describing the public affair of cutting the Omer, uses a different word for the implement: the harvester holds up a magal and asks the assembled crowd, "Is this a magal?" and they answer "Yes!", and he asks again and they answer again (Menachos 10:3). So why does the Mishnah call the tool a magal where the Torah calls it a chermesh? Are they synonyms, or is there a difference? Rabbi Klein's answer, in short, is that the evidence suggests they are one tool, chermesh the older Hebrew word and magal the later one taken in from Aramaic.

Distinctions

Chermesh (חרמש)

Twice in Tanach, both in Devarim: the start of the Omer count (16:9) and the prohibition on a hired worker using a chermesh to harvest the owner's produce for his own eating (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) theorizes that Hebrew words with a seemingly four-letter root whose final letter is a shin are really from three-letter roots, the added shin being a radical unrelated to the core root. Here the root is ח-ר-ם, cherem, destroy or ban, and the added shin makes chermesh the tool used for destroying or cutting. Dr. Shlomo Mandelkorn (1846-1902), in his concordance of Biblical Hebrew Heichal HaKodesh, also suggests chermesh derives from cherem.
• Rabbi Eliyahu Benamozegh (Eim LaMikra to Vayikra 27:29) gives cherem itself two senses: what is to be put to death, and what is holy.
• Rabbi David Chaim Chelouche (1920-2016), the late Chief Rabbi of Netanya: the quadriliteral root reflects a merger of two biliterals, ח-ר ("hole") and מ-ש ("move"), since the tool cuts, that is, creates a hole in the grain, and lets it be moved from where it stood.
• Dr. Shmuel Yeivin (1896-1982), the Israeli archaeologist, further suggests that chermesh is related to chalamish, flintstone, given the interchangeability of reish and lamed, and proposes on that basis that perhaps the chermesh was a cruder harvesting tool made of stone, from the earlier Stone Age, while the magal was a more advanced version of the same tool made of metal, from the Bronze or Iron Age.
• Rabbi Moshe David Valle (1697-1777), the Italian mekubal: a portmanteau of cherem and aish, associating chermesh with the realm of din, as against magal, which he takes as alluding to the realm of rachamim. Alternatively he reads chermesh as an acronym for chafetz retzono marbeh sheilaso, that the more a man tries to attain all his wants the needier he ends up.
• Rabbi Chaim Vital (1543-1620) gives an esoteric reading of the cutting of the Omer (Devarim 16:9), interpreting it homiletically of a man's lifespan: once he reaches twenty and becomes liable to Divine punishment for his sins, he remains so for the next fifty years, until seventy, the archetypal lifespan in Tanach. In support he notes that chermesh has a gematria of 548, the same as umalach hamaves, "and the Angel of Death"; Rabbi Klein remarks in passing that this is reminiscent of the popular depictions of the Grim Reaper with his scythe. Rabbi Vital then asserts that the Torah used chermesh here rather than magal precisely to teach that lesson.

Magal (מגל)

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

That it is the Aramaic form is what the evidence suggests: wherever chermesh appears the Targumim render it magla, and the Sifrei (to Devarim 23:26) explains chermesh to mean magal outright. On that showing the two would be synonymous, chermesh Hebrew in origin and magal Aramaic, which accounts for Devarim, written earlier, using the purely Hebrew term while the later nevi'im (Yirmiyahu and Yoel) and the Mishnah, from after Aramaic had spread, use the Aramaic-influenced one. Radak (Sefer HaShorashim) writes that magal is a cognate of 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 reckoning the form should technically be mangal, with a nun in the middle, dropped as often happens. The Rambam to Sheviis 5:6 glosses the Mishnaic magal yad as "a small chermesh," again showing that the two words name one thing.

The sickle-and-scythe proposal, and its rejection. Dr. Shmuel Yeivin reports that some scholars have proposed that chermesh means a sickle while magal means the larger scythe. Yeivin rejects the proposal on three grounds: there is no basis in Tanach for such a distinction; archaeologically it is untenable, there being no evidence that the scythe existed in Biblical times; and in Mishnaic Hebrew magal covered both a sickle and a scythe, the two being told apart by a modifier on magal, the smaller called magal yad and the larger magal kotzer. Yeivin concludes instead that chermesh and magal name the exact same harvesting tool, magal being the later usage, which is why it turns up in the nevi'im, while Devarim uses the more archaic chermesh.

Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim of Breslau (1740-1814): the root is ג-ל, whose primary sense is "round," whence gal (a heap of stones in a circular formation), galgal (wheel) and megillah (a scroll, which is rolled up); the magal belongs there because the sickle's blade is curved and almost forms a circle. He traces galus and geulah to the same two-letter root. Rabbi Klein calls Pappenheim's own way of connecting those two to the core sense of ג-ל a bit complex, suggests instead that the connection lies in the cyclical nature of the exile-redemption-exile pattern that prevails until the final geulah, and further suggests that Chazal preferred magal to chermesh because magal fits etymologically with the Pesach theme of the passage from galus to geulah.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Pesach: The Sickle and the Exile," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 27 March 2021.

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "The Sickle and the Exile," What's in a Word? Synonyms in the Hebrew Language (book manuscript).

Cited in the essay: Bereishis 25:6 with Rav Hirsch; Devarim 16:9 with Rabbi Chaim Vital, and 23:26 with the Sifrei; Yirmiyahu 50:16; Yoel 4:13; Mishnah Peah 4:4 and Sheviis 4:6, 5:6 with the Rambam's commentary, Menachos 10:3, Keilim 13:1, 15:4; Tosefta Bava Metzia 2:14; the Targumim; Radak, Sefer HaShorashim; Rabbi David Chaim Chelouche, Ohr Chadash to Devarim 16:9; Rabbi Moshe David Valle; Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim; Dr. Shmuel Yeivin; Dr. Shlomo Mandelkorn, Heichal HaKodesh; Vayikra 27:29 with Benamozegh.