snake

Distinctions

nachash (נחש)

Wertheimer gives two options: an umbrella term taking in many kinds of snake, or, from lachash (a whisper, hence an incantation), the snake whose danger can be turned aside by charming it. Rashi (Yirmiyahu 8:17) supports the second, that a nachash after seventy years becomes a tzefa and can no longer be charmed. Rabbi Aharon Marcus reads it from ח-ש, slow movement (as in rocheish, creeping) and stealth (as in lachash). The Rokeach (cited by Rabbi Yechiel Heilpern from Sefer HaChochmah): a nachash is a yellowish-green snake, the color of saffron, whose bite kills, and it is long.

saraph (שרף)

Rabbi Shlomo Ibn Parchon: venomous because its poison burns (soref) like fire. Rabbi Yonah ibn Janach: its fiery breath burns whatever it touches, nearly a dragon. Rashi (Yeshayahu 30:6) is explicit that the "flying saraph" has no wings; it is a fire-breathing snake that can jump great distances. Rabbi Yosef Bechor Shor: its bite burns a man as though he had fallen into a furnace and turns him at once to ash, and this was the snake sent against Klal Yisrael for complaining about the man (Bamidbar 21:5 through 21:9).

tanin (תנין)

The Vilna Gaon: nachash is to the land what tanin is to the sea, so a sea serpent, perhaps an eel. Rashi (Bereishis 1:21 and Niddah 22b) takes it simply as a large fish. Akalason is not a snake at all but a description, "coiled"; Yeshayahu 27:1 has the coiled snake and the straight snake (nachash bariach), which Bava Basra 74b reads as the female and male Leviasan.

tzefa / tzifoni (צפע, צפעוני) and efeh (אפעה)

Malbim: a tzefa is so venomous that even its excrement is poison (modern Hebrew "viper"). Rashi (Yeshayahu 59:5): tzifoni is an evil snake and efeh a thoroughly evil one that portends nothing good; Radak, there, holds tzifoni and efeh are two names for one creature.

On the efeh (Yeshayahu 30:6, 59:5; Iyov 20:16), Rashi and Mahari Kara: only two exist in the world, a male and a female, and they breed once in seventy years. Ibn Parchon: the efeh is the female saraph-nachash, shorter and thicker than the male and more potent in its venom. The kabbalists split: Rabbi Natan Nata Shapiro (Megaleh Amukos) has efeh as the female force of evil and nachash as the male, in line with Ibn Parchon; Rabbi Shalom Buzaglo (Hadras Melech) reverses it. The Midrash calls the efeh an eches, said to kill a bird in flight by looking at its shadow (modern Hebrew: adder or rattlesnake). Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim: the letters פ-ע in the root always mark consistency of motion or sound, here the rattle. Rabbi Avigdor the Frenchman: this, not the saraph, was the snake sent in the wilderness.

achshuv (עכשוב)

A hapax legomenon, Tehillim 140:4. Some hold it is the snake that spits its venom; others that it is no snake at all but a spider (akavish).

peten (פתן)

Wertheimer, against nachash: where a nachash can be charmed, a peten is immune to charming and stays dangerous (Tehillim 58:6). Two derivations, both his: from miftan, a threshold, since whoever meets a peten has certainly stepped into danger just as whoever enters a house treads on its threshold; or from pitui, coaxing, for the snake's enticement of Chavah. The Rokeach: peten points to a snake's advanced age, efeh to one extremely old and large, and tzefa is a flying saraph with several tails; Wertheimer cites this and holds it to be a recovery of the corrupted passage in Avos d'Rabbi Nassan.

shephiphon (שפיפון)

Once in Tanach, Bereishis 49:17; Yerushalmi Terumos 8:3 describes it as resembling a single hair. Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg: from the two-letter ש-פ, closeness and contact (as in shifshuf, rubbing), since it moves by wriggling with its body always against the ground. Wertheimer: the final nun marks it as small, though a vav-nun ending is not always a diminutive. The Rokeach has it small against the long nachash, but Rabbi Yaakov Yisroel Stahl notes that the same commentary elsewhere makes shephiphon the large one.

Rendering guidance

• Bereishis 49:17, נחש עלי דרך שפיפון עלי ארח: two words, two renderings. "A snake on the road, an adder on the path." Writing "snake" twice erases the pair.
• Yeshayahu 30:6, saraph me'ofef: "flying fiery serpent," and note Rashi that it has no wings but leaps. "Flying dragon" imports Ibn Janach's picture over Rashi's.
• Nachash hanechoshes and the wilderness snakes: keep saraph as "fiery serpent," not "poisonous snake"; the burning is the name.
• Tanin in Bereishis 1:21 is disputed. "Sea serpent" follows the Vilna Gaon, "great fish" follows Rashi. Pick one and footnote the other rather than splitting the difference with "sea monster."
• Trap: "serpent," "snake," "viper" and "adder" read as free variants in English. In a passage listing several (Tehillim 140:4, Iyov 20:16), fix one English word per Hebrew word and hold it.
• Trap: nachash also means divination, and lachash a charm. That overlap is the basis of Wertheimer's distinction, so a passage playing on it needs a note, not one English word carrying both.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Slithering Serpents and Sea Snakes, Part 1," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 7 Tammuz 5777 (2017-07-01), https://articles.ohr.edu/articles/slithering-serpents-and-sea-snakes-part-1, and "Part 2," 21 Tammuz 5777 (2017-07-15), https://articles.ohr.edu/articles/slithering-serpents-and-sea-snakes-part-2; raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/7321-slithering-serpents-and-sea-snakes-part-1.md and sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/7341-slithering-serpents-and-sea-snakes-part-2.md. Primary loci: Avos d'Rabbi Nassan (the seven names); Rashi to Yirmiyahu 8:17, Yeshayahu 30:6 and 59:5, Bereishis 1:21, Niddah 22b; Yeshayahu 27:1 with Bava Basra 74b; Iyov 20:16; Tehillim 140:4 and 58:6; Bamidbar 21:5 through 21:9; Bereishis 49:17; Yerushalmi Terumos 8:3; Megaleh Amukos; Hadras Melech; Sefer HaChochmah and the Torah commentary ascribed to Rabbi Elazar Rokeach of Worms, cited by Rabbi Yechiel Heilpern. The article places the snake's enticement of Chavah at Bereishis 6:1 through 6:6; the locus is Bereishis 3:1 through 3:6. An Akkadian derivation of shephiphon, and an English etymology of "serpent" from a contemporary writer, are omitted here.