speech
silence
חרש · שתיקה · דום · חשה · הס
Bottom line
Cheresh is thinking silence: holding one's peace while turning something over, and never merely quiet. Shetikah is the quieting down that follows a commotion. Dom is falling silent, silence as a state that comes over a person, and at root simply stoppage. Chashah is keeping still, an inward stillness or a held-back answer. Hass alone is transitive: to hush others. The trap is that English "be silent" flattens all five; where a passage turns on which one it is (Mordechai's hachareish tacharishi, Esther 4:14), the choice of word is the whole point.
At a glance
| Hebrew | translit | English | what sets it apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| חרש | cheresh | hold one's peace | inward, deliberating silence; the quiet of the craftsman and the wise (Bedersi); prepares speech as plowing prepares a field (Pappenheim) |
| שתיקה | shetikah | quiet down | the calm after a commotion is stilled (Bedersi); the Targum's Aramaic for cheresh |
| דום | dom | fall silent | a state, not an act: struck speechless (Bedersi) or a set refusal to speak (Mecklenburg); root sense is stoppage |
| חשה | chashah | keep still | reflective stillness (Mecklenburg) or withholding an answer one has (Wertheimer) |
| הס | hass | hush | transitive: silencing others so they may listen or show honor (Pappenheim, Mecklenburg) |
Where the authorities disagree
What dom means, and what happened with Aharon. Vayikra 10:3, vayidom Aharon. Rabbi Avraham Bedersi HaPenini: dom is silence that simply settles on a person, and Aharon was so overwhelmed that he could do nothing but stand there, unable even to think. Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg: dom is chosen silence, and Aharon consciously withdrew from the matter by refusing to comment. Others take dom as a general word for stopping, as in shemesh b'Givon dom (Yehoshua 10:12); Chazal expound that as the sun falling silent from its song, but the plain sense is that it stopped moving, and since being quiet is a stopping of the lips the two senses run together. Ramban writes that Aharon first wept and then fell silent; Mecklenburg rejects that on lexical grounds, since the Torah would then have written a form of shetikah. The Bottom line keeps "fell silent", which survives both Bedersi and Mecklenburg, and leaves the chiddush to a note.
What chashah means. Mecklenburg: a reflective, introspective quiet, close to his reading of cheresh. Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer: the silence of a man who has an answer ready and holds it back. Bedersi does not treat the word. Wertheimer's reading is the more useful where someone is being addressed; Mecklenburg's where he is alone.
What cheresh means in Tanach as against Mishnaic usage. In Mishnaic Hebrew cheresh is one who neither hears nor speaks (Niddah 13b). On Shemos 4:11, where ilem and cheiresh stand in one pasuk, some read cheiresh in that Mishnaic sense, deaf and mute together; others as deaf but not mute (Tosafos to Chagigah 2b with Maharsha and Hagahos Rashash; Ibn Ezra to Shemos 4:11). Rabbi Shlomo Algazi holds the reverse, which leaves cheiresh meaning exactly what ilem means and is the weakest of the three.
Distinctions
cheresh (חרש)
Bedersi: the silence in which a man considers ideas without letting them out, the silence of the wise and of experts. So a craftsman is a charash (Shemos 35:35), and Targum calls Pharaoh's chartumim the charshei (to Shemos 7:22), men who work quietly while they concentrate. Pappenheim builds the whole root from charishah, plowing: from breaking ground, to shaping tools of wood, stone, or metal (a smith is a choresh), to weighing one's actions, and finally to being quiet, because this silence readies a man for what he will say next just as plowing readies a field for sowing. Chorshah, a wood (Shmuel I 23:15, Divrei HaYamim II 27:4), belongs here as a place whose foliage makes it still. Rav Hirsch (to Tehillim 28:1): the stillness of a man asked to speak or act who behaves as though he never heard. The word also attaches to the scheming of the wicked (Mishlei 3:29 and Iyov 4:8, with Rashi).
shetikah (שתיקה)
Bedersi: the quiet that comes once a commotion has been quelled. The root appears only four times in Tanach, two of them in Yonah, where throwing Yonah overboard will make the raging sea grow calm (Yonah 1:11 to 12). Outside Tanach its Aramaic cognates are the Targum's standard rendering of cheresh words (Bereishis 24:21; Bamidbar 30:5).
chashah (חשה)
The word of Koheles 3:7, eis lachashos v'eis l'daber. See the dispute above. Mecklenburg also derives nichush, divination, and choshen from this root.
hass (הס)
Not a way of being silent but of making others so, and plausibly an imitation of the sound itself. Pappenheim and Mecklenburg: it is used where one silences a crowd so that they will hear another speaker, or out of honor and awe for him. Mecklenburg reads hasket (Devarim 27:9) as built in part on hass, being quiet in order to hear.
Rendering guidance
- Esther 4:14, hachareish tacharishi: "if you indeed hold your peace," not "if you are silent", which loses the point. Mordechai is telling Esther that this is no moment to sit and think out what to say; on Rav Hirsch's reading, that she must not act deaf to the call. So too Shemos 14:14, v'atem tacharishun, where Yisrael stands by watching how Hashem wages their war.
- Vayikra 10:3, vayidom Aharon: "and Aharon fell silent." Do not write "was quiet"; dom is a stopping, not a mood.
- Trap: "be silent" in English will absorb cheresh, dom, and chashah alike. Reserve "hold one's peace" for cheresh, "fall silent" for dom, and "keep still" for chashah. Hass is never "be silent" but "hush"; it takes an object.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "To Remain Silent," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 11 Adar II 5780 (2020-03-07): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/8634-to-remain-silent.md. Primary loci cited: Esther 4:14 with Esther Rabbah 8:6; Yonah 1:11 to 12; Targum to Bereishis 24:21 and Bamidbar 30:5; Vayikra 10:3 with Ramban; Yehoshua 10:12; Koheles 3:7; Devarim 27:9; Shemos 4:11, 7:22, 14:14, 35:35; Mishlei 3:29 and Iyov 4:8 with Rashi; Shmuel I 23:15; Divrei HaYamim II 27:4; Rav Hirsch to Tehillim 28:1; Niddah 13b; Tosafos to Chagigah 2b with Maharsha and Hagahos Rashash; Ibn Ezra to Shemos 4:11. The article's Akkadian cognate for charash is omitted under house rule 9.