action
slipping off
שמיטה · חליצה · שלף · של · אלץ
Bottom line
Shemittah is releasing: loosening one's grip so that a thing slips out of one's control, which is why the same word covers letting a field lie and letting a debt go. Chalitzah is extracting something from what encloses it. Shalaf is drawing a thing quickly out of a loose holder, most often a sword from its sheath. Shal is a shoe slipped off with no hands at all. The trap: all four become "remove" in English, and then Shoresh Yesha's three-way distinction among the shoe-removal verbs disappears.
At a glance
| Hebrew | translit | English | what sets it apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| שמיטה | shemittah | releasing, letting slip | forsaking, and the falling that follows from it (Ibn Janach; Radak to Melachim II 9:33) |
| חליצה | chalitzah | extracting | drawing out of what envelops it (Pappenheim); the shoe that must be untied first (Shoresh Yesha) |
| שלף | shalaf | drawing, slipping out | quick, from a loose holder: sword from sheath, shoe for a transaction (Pappenheim) |
| של | shal | slipping off | a sandal off the foot without using the hands (Shoresh Yesha) |
| אלץ | alatz | pressing, urging | Delilah on Shimshon; from lachatz (Ramban) or from chalatz (Chazal, Sefer HaShoham) |
Where the authorities disagree
How the three shoe verbs differ. Shoresh Yesha: Tanach has three verbs for taking off a shoe, and they answer to three ways a shoe can be fastened. Shal (Shemos 3:5, Yehoshua 5:15) is slipping a sandal off without using the hands; shalaf is taking a shoe off by hand; chalitzah is removing a shoe that must first be untied. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim draws the line elsewhere: chalitzah is extraction from something that engulfs, while shalaf is used where the two things were only loosely joined and can be parted at once, which is why it fits both the sword a warrior needs instantly and the shoe handed over to close a deal before either party changes his mind. The article itself presses a difficulty against Shoresh Yesha from shlif, the load tied onto an animal (Bava Kamma 3a; Rashi to Bava Kamma 17b, Shabbos 154b, Eruvin 16a, Kiddushin 22b), which Rashi (to Bava Basra 75b) says was tied on: if shalaf really is the untying verb, as against Shoresh Yesha, the word makes sense as what one does at the journey's end. The Bottom line follows Pappenheim, whose reading fits the distribution of shalaf, and keeps Shoresh Yesha's scheme for the shoe cases.
Are chalitzah and shalaf the same act? Targum Yonasan renders the verb of the chalitzah ceremony (Devarim 25:9) with a cognate of shalaf, and Rashi (to Chullin 53a, Gittin 33b) links the two verbs as though they were synonyms. Pappenheim, as above, keeps them apart. Radak (to Yeshayahu 58:11 and in Sefer HaShorashim) evidently had a version of the Midrash below that used shalaf where ours uses a cognate of shemittah, so the two roots were already trading places in the texts.
What alatz means. Delilah "pressed" Shimshon to give up the secret of his strength (Shoftim 16:16). Ramban (to Bereishis 32:25) reads the alef of alatz as interchangeable with the ches of chalatz, and takes that as a metathesis of lachatz, pressure. Chazal (Sotah 9b, Bereishis Rabbah 52:12) explain the pressure concretely, that she would slip away (nishmatah) from under him, which points instead to a direct link with chalatz, slipping. Rabbi Moshe ben HaNessiah Britannico (Sefer HaShoham) and Rabbi Yosef Chaim of Baghdad (Ben Yehoyada to Sotah 9b) say this outright. The Bottom line follows Chazal, but "pressed" remains the rendering either way.
Distinctions
shemittah (שמיטה)
Root ש-מ-ט. Devarim names the Sabbatical year Shemittah five times (15:1-2, 15:9, 31:10), and the same root supplies its verbs in both halves of the mitzvah: the land, "and in the seventh you shall release it (tishmitenah) and abandon it" (Shemos 23:10-11), which Rashi takes as the ban on working it, and the loans a lender lets go (shamot, tashmet, Devarim 15:2-3). The literal sense comes out of the narrative uses. When the oxen shamat the Aron and Uzza put out his hand (Shmuel II 6:6, Divrei HaYamim I 13:9), Rabbi Yonah Ibn Janach (Sefer HaShorashim) explains that the weight was bursting the animals' joints and the Aron would have slipped off had they collapsed. When Yehu had Izevel thrown from the window (Melachim II 9:33), the verb is a cognate, and Radak there with Ibn Ezra (to Devarim 15:1) gloss it as letting something go so that it falls. So the root is leaving a thing to itself and the falling that results, which is exactly what a man does to his field and to his debts in the seventh year.
Two further uses are extensions rather than forsaking. The woodchopper whose hand slips, killing a man, so that he flees to a city of refuge (Devarim 19:5): Rashi uses a cognate, following the Mishnah (Makkos 2:1), and himself links it (to Shmuel II 6:6) to Uzza. And a dislocated shoulder or thigh in an animal, whether it is a tereifah, is shmutas (Chullin 57a), the bone having slipped out of place. Rashi widens the root further to escaping danger or fleeing trouble (Bereishis 19:17, Iyov 1:15), and rabbinic usage has hishmit for skipping a letter in writing a sefer Torah or a pasuk in reading it (Megillah 18b), whence the hashmatos, the omissions, at the back of many sefarim. Note that despite its currency in speech, Shemittah is uncommon in the Bavli outside quotations of these pesukim (Nazir 8b, Sotah 41a, Gittin 36a, Bava Metzia 30b and 48b, Sanhedrin 32a, Shevuos 44b).
chalitzah (חליצה)
Root ח-ל-צ. The Midrash (Vayikra Rabbah 34:15) gives four senses: slipping, as in the yevamah drawing the shoe off her brother-in-law's foot (Devarim 25:9); arming, since the soldiers of Israel are chalutzim (Devarim 3:18); saving, from "chaltzeini from an evil man" (Tehillim 140:2); and letting rest, from the Shabbos tefillah retzei v'hachalitzeinu. Three of these run parallel to senses of shemittah, and the Gemara itself uses a cognate of shemittah for the chalitzah act: the yevamah becomes permitted to others with the shemittah of most of the heel (Yevamos 102a). Pappenheim's unifying sense is extraction from within: the foot out of the shoe, the tzaraas-stricken stones out of the wall (Vayikra 14:40, 14:43), the soldiers drawn out from the nation for the war with Midian (Bamidbar 31:3), who are then the chalutzim (Bamidbar 32:30, Devarim 3:18). Chalatzayim, the loins, appears either of a soldier girding himself (Yeshayahu 5:27, 11:5, 32:11; Iyov 38:3, 40:7) or of birth (Bereishis 35:11; Melachim I 5:19; Divrei HaYamim II 6:9; Yirmiyahu 30:6); Shoresh Yesha takes both from the senses above, the place weapons were worn, or the place a child slips out from. The Aramaic charatz (Daniel 5:6) is the same word with reish for lamed. Aramaic also uses a cognate of chalitzah for stripping off clothing (Targum to Shmuel I 31:8-9, Divrei HaYamim I 10:8), extracting the body from its garments, which may lie behind the modern chultzah, a shirt.
shalaf (שלף) and shal (של)
Shalaf appears twenty-five times, overwhelmingly of drawing a sword (Bamidbar 22:23, 22:31; Yehoshua 5:13; Shoftim 3:22, 8:10, 8:20, 9:54, 20:2 and following; Shmuel I 17:51, 31:4; Shmuel II 24:9; Melachim II 3:26; Divrei HaYamim I 10:4, 21:16, 21:25), and once of slipping off a shoe to seal a transaction, the older form of a handshake (Rus 4:7-8). Pappenheim parses it as ש-ל, removing, with א-פ, face, taking something out confrontationally. Yoktan's son was named Shalaf (Bereishis 10:26), and Targum Yonasan there with Targum Rav Yosef (to Divrei HaYamim I 1:20) say he was the first to draw water off rivers into channels, so his name records the invention. Shal is the verb of "remove your shoes from your feet" at the burning bush and to Yehoshua (Shemos 3:5, Yehoshua 5:15).
Rendering guidance
- Shemittah: keep it transliterated as the name of the year, and render the verb "release" or "let go," not "cancel." "Cancel" is a bookkeeping word and loses the picture of a hand opening.
- Trap: English "remove" will absorb shal, shalaf, and chalitzah at once. Where a passage names the manner of removal, mark it: "slipped off," "drew off," "drew out."
- Second trap: chalitzah has four senses in one Midrash. In Devarim 3:18 the chalutzim are armed men, not extracted ones; in Tehillim 140:2 chaltzeini is "rescue me." Do not carry the shoe ceremony's sense into either.
- The chalitzah ceremony itself stays transliterated; "the removal of the shoe" as a gloss, once.
- Shalaf of a sword is "drew," never "unsheathed" when the pasuk also names the sheath, or the English says the same thing twice.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "The Year of Slipping Away (Part 1 of 2)," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 13 Iyar 5782 (2022-05-14): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/9682-the-year-of-slipping-away-part-1-of-2.md. Part 2, "The Year of Seven," treats sheviis and the words built on sheva; see the entry for that cluster. Primary loci the article cites: Bereishis 10:26, 19:17, 32:25, 35:11; Shemos 3:5, 23:10-11; Vayikra 14:40, 14:43; Bamidbar 22:23, 22:31, 31:3, 32:30; Devarim 3:18, 15:1-3, 15:9, 19:5, 25:9, 31:10; Yehoshua 5:13, 5:15; Shoftim 3:22, 8:10, 8:20, 9:54, 16:16, 20:2-46; Rus 4:7-8; Shmuel I 17:51, 31:4-9; Shmuel II 6:6, 24:9; Melachim I 5:19; Melachim II 3:26, 9:33; Yeshayahu 5:27, 11:5, 32:11, 58:11; Yirmiyahu 30:6; Tehillim 140:2; Iyov 1:15, 38:3, 40:7; Daniel 5:6; Divrei HaYamim I 1:20, 10:4, 10:8, 13:9, 21:16, 21:25; Divrei HaYamim II 6:9; Makkos 2:1; Yevamos 102a; Sotah 9b; Chullin 53a, 57a; Megillah 18b; Bava Kamma 3a, 17b; Bava Basra 75b; Vayikra Rabbah 34:15; Bereishis Rabbah 52:12. The modern coinage history of chultzah the article reports from a twentieth-century scholar is omitted here under the Orthodox-sources rule.