Mount Sinai
At a glance
In short
One mountain carries many names. Sinai is the best known; Tanach also calls it Har HaElokim, the Mountain of God, Har Bashan and Har Gavnunim (Tehillim 68:16), Har Chemed (Tehillim 68:17) and Chorev, Horeb (Shemos 33:6). Various Midrashic sources explain how each name fits the one mountain, most of them by a play on the name: sinah, hatred; cherev, a sword; chemdah, desire; giben, a blemish, or gevinah, cheese. Some versions of the Midrash add Moriah, which raises the question whether Moriah and Sinai are two mountains or one; both answers are given.
Distinctions
Sinai (סיני)
The mountain's best-known name alludes to sinah, hatred, which comes from that place. Opposition to the Jewish people stems from a deep hatred of and resistance to the Torah and its values, an attitude that began as opposition to the role Yisrael took on at Sinai.
Har HaElokim (הר האלהים)
Where Yisrael accepted upon themselves the Godhood of the Creator. Of all the mountains on which Hashem might have revealed His glory, Sinai was the most fitting, since it had never been worshipped by idolaters, as other mountains were. And Elokim, as against the Four-Letter Name, denotes Hashem's attribute of judgment, alluding to His role at Sinai as Judge, revealing the civil laws of the Torah (Shemos 21 onward).
Har Bashan (הר בשן)
- Ba sham, "He came there," the commentaries noting that nun and mem are close enough to interchange: Hashem's arrival at the mountain to give the Torah.
- Bi-shinav, "with his teeth": everything Yisrael enjoys with its teeth, all material success, of which agricultural plenty is the type, comes in the merit of keeping the Torah.
Har Gavnunim (הר גבננים)
- From giben (Vayikra 21:20), the blemish of abnormally long eyebrows that disqualifies a Kohen from service in the Beis HaMikdash: Sinai, clean of idolatry, "disqualified" every other mountain by contrast.
- The Midrash reads the name against gevinah, cheese: at the giving of the Torah every Jew with an ailment or handicap was healed. As cheese is made by separating the purest curds of the milk from their impurities, the whey, so at Sinai Yisrael stood in their purest state, with no physical blemish among them. Some explain the custom of eating dairy on Shavuos by this name and its comparison to cheese.
- Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim reduces ג-ב-ן to the biliteral ג-ב, a bulge or anything that sticks out and is plainly visible: gavnunim are bulging mountains that protrude upwards and are quite conspicuous, and he connects gevinah, cheese, as likewise "mountainous" in its composition.
- Alexander Kohut (Aruch HaShalem) suggests connecting gavnunim with the Arabic jabal, mountain, through the interchange of nun and lamed, so that gavnunim just means mountainous or hilly.
Har Chemed (הר חמד)
Hashem desired (chemdah) to rest His Presence on that mountain in particular (Tehillim 68:17).
Chorev (חורב)
The name alludes to cherev, a sword: the Sanhedrin's authority to carry out capital punishment comes from the Torah received at Sinai.
Moriah (מוריה)
See the question above.
Where the authorities disagree
Is Moriah the same mountain as Sinai? Some versions of the Midrash count Moriah among Sinai's names. That is difficult, since Moriah is understood to be the place on which the Beis HaMikdash was built, in Yerushalayim and not in the Sinai wilderness. Rabbi Yehudah HaLevi (1075 to 1141) implies the same identification. The Zohar explains that Moriah is so called for the abundance of sweet-smelling myrrh there, and in his Yom Shabbaton Rabbi Yehudah HaLevi writes, "He spoke through His holiness on the Mountain of Myrrh / You shall remember and guard the Seventh Day," placing the Shabbos commandments on Moriah.
- The simplest resolution is that two different mountains are both named Moriah.
- Rabbi Berachiah Baruch Shapiro (d. 1663) and Rabbi Naftali Katz (1649 to 1718), among the most prominent Ashkenazi kabbalists: Moriah and Sinai are one mountain. When Hashem gave the Torah in the Sinai wilderness He uprooted the mountain from its place in Yerushalayim, brought it to the wilderness, and afterwards returned it.
Rendering guidance
For translators
- Trap: English "Mount Sinai" will absorb every one of these names. Where a pasuk or a derashah lists them (Tehillim 68:16-17), keep each name as a name and give the word it is read against beside it (sinah, cherev, chemdah, giben, gevinah), or the derashah disappears.
- Har HaElokim: "the Mountain of God," keeping Elokim visible where the point is the attribute of judgment.
- Chorev: "Horeb" or "Chorev," as one mountain with Sinai, never a second place.
- "The Mountain of Myrrh" in Yom Shabbaton is Moriah; rendered only as a description it hides the identification the poem implies.
Also discussed in
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "The Mountain of Many Names," What's in a Word?, 29 May 2017.
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "More Cheese Please," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 4 June 2022.
Cited in the essay: Tehillim 68:16-17; Shemos 21 onward, 33:6; Vayikra 21:20; the Midrash; the Zohar; Rabbi Yehudah HaLevi, Yom Shabbaton; Rabbi Berachiah Baruch Shapiro; Rabbi Naftali Katz; Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim; Alexander Kohut, Aruch HaShalem.