spring

Distinctions

Gichon (גיחון)

Root ג-ו-ח. Ibn Janach and Radak (each in his Sefer HaShorashim) take the core sense as "exiting": the same root yields the verb for a baby coming forth from the womb (Iyov 38:8, Michah 4:10, Tehillim 22:10) and for a current leaving its source. Radak (to Bereishis 2:13) therefore explains the river's name from its going forth from its fount and splitting into tributaries that "exit" the parent river. Radak cites his father Rabbi Yosef Kimchi that the Gichon of Bereishis is the Nile, whose waters go out over the banks to water the land; on that reading the Yerushalayim spring earns the same name because its waters likewise go out into channels to irrigate the gardens.

Two rivers or one: Rashi (to Kerisus 5b, Berachos 10b, Melachim I 1:33, Yeshayahu 8:6) insists the Gichon of the coronation and of Chizkiyahu is a small spring near Yerushalayim, not the great Gichon of Eden. Ibn Ezra (to Shemos 2:11), following Rav Saadia Gaon, identifies them; Ramah is cited by HaKosev (to Ein Yaakov, Horayos 12a) the same way. Rabbi Avraham Maimuni sides with Rashi and adds that the spring resembled the great river in some way now lost to us, and so was named for it.

Shiloach (שילוח)

Root ש-ל-ח. The name the Mishnah prefers for the stream near the Beis HaMikdash (Sukkah 4:10; see Rashi to Sukkah 48a), though the Mishnah keeps "Gichon" when it retells Chizkiyahu's blocking of the waters (Pesachim 4:9). In Tanach the phrase Mei HaShiloach occurs once, Yeshayahu 8:6; the Shelach pool of Nechemiah 3:15 is a near relation. Targum (to Melachim I 1:33 and to Yeshayahu 8:6) renders both Gichon and Mei Shiloach as Shilucha, and Rashi adduces exactly that Targum as proof that the two names name one water. The practical upshot is halachic: a get written in Yerushalayim names the Shiloach. Rabbi Moshe Ibn Chaviv (Get Pashut, Even HaEzer 128:37) explains that "Shiloach" is used to forestall confusion with the great Gichon of Eden. Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum of Satmar (Divrei Yoel, Even HaEzer 125) objects that a river with two names requires both in the get (Rama, Even HaEzer 128:3), and answers instead that since no one today calls it Gichon, that name has been halachically uprooted and Shiloach is its only name.

gachon (גחון)

The serpent's belly, in the curse "upon your belly shall you go" (Bereishis 3:14). Rav Hirsch (there) ties gachon to crawling, progress made not in a straight line but by squirming along a twisted path, and suggests that the twisting course of the water is what gave the Gichon its name. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim reaches the same result from the biliteral ג-ח shared by gachon and Gichon. Both connect this to the birth sense of the root: forcing through a narrow opening takes bending and crawling, as a snake crawls.

negichah (נגיחה)

Rabbi Pappenheim derives "goring" from the same biliteral ג-ח: a horned animal cannot gore without bending its body and neck so the horns reach the mark. Rashi (to Bereishis 2:13) had already linked the name Gichon to negichah, the river's flow resembling the outward jab of a goring ox.

Rendering guidance

• Keep both names as proper names. "Spring," "brook," "pool," and "aqueduct" are all glosses, not translations, and each of them has been used to argue that the two names are two places; do not smuggle that claim into a rendering.
• Where a text says Gichon and the context is Shlomo's coronation (Melachim I 1:33, 1:38, 1:45), Chizkiyahu's diversion (Divrei HaYamim II 32:30), or Menashe's wall (Divrei HaYamim II 33:14), add "the Gichon spring by Yerushalayim" on first mention if the reader might otherwise hear Eden.
• Trap: English "Gihon" absorbs both rivers. If the passage turns on Rashi's distinction, or on Ibn Ezra's identification, name the two explicitly (the Gichon of Eden, the Gichon of Yerushalayim) rather than trusting context.
• גחון in Bereishis 3:14 is "belly," never "Gichon." Only where a source is building the wordplay (Rav Hirsch, Rabbi Pappenheim) should the English keep both in view, and then by a note, not by the rendering.
• Talmudic idiom: Kerisus 5b derives from these pesukim that a king is anointed at a spring, so that his kingship should flow on without interruption. Render maayan there as "wellspring"; the point is the continuous current.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Matos Masei: The Shiloach Waters," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 26 Tamuz 5783 (2023-07-15): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/11019-matos-masei-the-shiloach-waters.md. Primary loci cited: Bereishis 2:13 and 3:14; Melachim I 1:33, 1:38, 1:45; Divrei HaYamim II 32:4, 32:30, 33:14; Yeshayahu 8:6; Nechemiah 3:15; Iyov 38:8; Michah 4:10; Tehillim 22:10; Zechariah 14:8; Mishnah Pesachim 4:9 and Sukkah 4:10; Kerisus 5b; Berachos 10b; Rashi to Sukkah 48a; Radak, Sefer HaShorashim s.v. גוח, and to Bereishis 2:13 and Divrei HaYamim II 32:30; Ibn Janach, Sefer HaShorashim; Ibn Ezra to Shemos 2:11; Get Pashut, Even HaEzer 128:37; Divrei Yoel, Even HaEzer 125; Rama, Even HaEzer 128:3.

The article also canvasses the identification of the Eden Gichon with the Ganges, Nile, Amu Darya, or Orontes, and closes with the story of Rabbi Chaim Vital, the Arizal, and the sealed spring. Its philological section citing Gesenius, Even-Shoshan, and a Cambridge academic for the claim that Gichon and Shiloach are two distinct sites is omitted here under house rule 9; the rabbinic view recorded above is that they are one.