stopping

Where the authorities disagree

Chasach: before or during. Rabbi Yosef Grayever: chasach stops a thing from ever starting, against pasak, which cuts one already running. Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer says the opposite: chasach interrupts a process already begun. Potiphar had handed Yosef the run of his house, so keeping back his wife (Bereishis 39:9) was a break in a transfer under way; and "v'lo chasachta es bincha" (Bereishis 22:12) speaks to Avraham, who had long been handing over all he had. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim reframes it: chasach stops what morality or nature says should be stopped, the near-antonym of mana, and he derives it from ח-ס (caring) with ס-כ (protection). Malbim follows him that chasach names an impediment from outside the actor. The Bottom line follows Wertheimer and Malbim, the two pesukim being decisive.

Kala: purpose served, or force applied. Rabbi Yosef Grayever and Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer: it stops because the goal is reached or the cause has lapsed. Malbim: it stops against its own nature, from kele, a prison; rain's nature is to fall, so when it ceased at the Mabul's end Hashem in effect detained it. Both fit Bereishis 8:2 and Shemos 36:6; Malbim's also fits Tehillim 40:12.

Chadal: unable, or unwilling. Rabbi Yosef Grayever grounds it in inability. Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer qualifies: in the future form v'chadal it means a man who plans in advance not to act though he could, which is why it is used of one who deliberately fails to bring the korban Pesach (Bamidbar 9:13) or passes by his enemy's collapsing donkey (Shemos 23:5). Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim holds the word neutral, neither praising nor blaming, and locates the cause in the actor rather than outside him; Malbim agrees on that last point.

How Onkelos handles them. He does not preserve the distinctions: chasach becomes mana (Bereishis 20:6, 22:16, 39:9), while both kala (Shemos 36:6) and chadal (Bereishis 18:11, 41:49; Devarim 15:11) become pasak, literally to cut; elsewhere he leaves kala (Bereishis 8:2) and mana (Bereishis 30:2; Bamidbar 24:11) in Hebrew. Rashi at Bereishis 18:11, on Sarah's cycles having chadal, follows Onkelos and glosses pasak. Rabbi Yaakov Toledano explains that Rashi was troubled: if chadal is a willful stopping, blood cannot will anything, so Rashi supplied pasak, which an insentient thing can do; the plainer reading is that Rashi simply gave Onkelos' word. Rabbi Rafael Binyamin Posen finds a rule instead: chadal of an ongoing process becomes pasak (Sarah), of a one-time event mana, as at the Tower (Bereishis 11:8) and thrice in the Plague of Hail; the consistency holds in Onkelos alone.