What’s in a Word?

cognition

straying and error

תעה · תועה · תועים · טעה · טעות · מטעה

Bottom line

The two are pronounced alike and spelled differently, and the working assumption of the commentators is that תעה (tav) is "stray, be lost" and טעה (tet) is "err, make a mistake"; in Rabbinic Hebrew ta'us always means a mistake. Radak holds outright that they are one word, the tav being the orthography of Tanach and the tet that of Chazal, so do not build an argument on the spelling alone. Where a source does distinguish them, follow Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer: both men are lost on the road, but the to'eh with a tav knows he is lost, while the to'eh with a tet is confident he is on the right road and is not.

Distinctions

taah with a tav (תעה)

Some fifty appearances in Tanach; the daily Uva LeTzion uses it of the nations, shelo samanu k'mishpechos ha'adamah... im hato'im. Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur (in his glosses to Radak's Sefer HaShorashim): the tav word is a man who wandered off the path and ended up lost, a bodily straying, as against the tet word, which is an error of heart or mind. Rabbi Avraham Aharon Broide (Bayis HaGadol to Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer ch. 30) rejects that division: the tav word also means erring, and he brings Tehillim 95:10 (the article prints 98:10), am to'ei leivav heim, a people erring in heart, and Hoshea 4:12, where a spirit of harlotry led them astray. Radak himself, in Sefer HaShorashim s.v. תף, writes that the two spellings are the same word; his father Rabbi Yosef Kimchi had already said so in Sefer Zikaron, as does Kli Yakar to Bamidbar 5:12.

taah with a tet (טעה)

In Tanach the tet spelling occurs exactly once, Yechezkel 13:10, where the false prophets hit'u es ami, and there the sense is genuinely open: they led My people astray, or they led My people into error. In Chazal the tet spelling is the normal one and always means mistake. The Targumim go further: every cognate of the tav word in Tanach is rendered with a tet, as Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur notes in his Meturgaman. Rabbi Yaakov Zev Lev (Me'as Tzari) reconciles the dispute this way: Hebrew has two words, Aramaic has only one, spelled with a tet and carrying both senses.

The Targum on Hagar

Bereishis 21:14 says Hagar left va'teisa, strayed (tav), in the wilderness of Be'er Sheva, and Onkelos renders it with a tet. Rabbi Broide's answer, given at a gathering where no one else offered one: the Targumim render idolatrous deities ta'avasa (tet), on the understanding that avodah zarah began as mankind's mistake (Rambam, Hilchos Avodah Zarah ch. 1); so Onkelos hints at the tradition of Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer that Hagar returned to the idolatry of her youth. She did not only lose her way, she erred.

Rendering guidance

  • תעה: stray, wander, be lost. In Uva LeTzion, hato'im is those who go astray.
  • טעה / טעות: err, a mistake. In a sugya, ta'us is an error, never "a straying."
  • Causative forms are mislead, lead astray for either spelling; that is where the two come closest.
  • Trap: English "astray" and "err" each cover both Hebrew words, and "went astray" will quietly decide Yechezkel 13:10 for you. Where a source turns on the spelling (a derashah, a Targum comparison), name the letter: "ta'ah with a tav."
  • Second trap: do not translate the tav word as "mistaken" in a passage that is arguing Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur's distinction, and do not translate it as merely "lost" in a passage arguing Rabbi Broide's. The rendering has to follow whichever view the passage is working with.
  • Wertheimer's reading gives the useful middle: lost and knows it (tav) against lost and sure he is not (tet).

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Lost or Mistaken," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 3 Tammuz 5778 (2018-06-16): https://articles.ohr.edu/articles/lost-or-mistaken, raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/7804-lost-or-mistaken.md. Primary loci cited: Bereishis 21:14 with Targum Onkelos; Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer ch. 30 with Bayis HaGadol; Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur's glosses to Radak, Sefer HaShorashim, and his Meturgaman; Radak, Sefer HaShorashim s.v. תף; Rabbi Yosef Kimchi, Sefer Zikaron; Kli Yakar to Bamidbar 5:12; Rambam, Hilchos Avodah Zarah ch. 1; Tehillim 95:10 (the article prints Tehillim 98:10, which has only nine pesukim); Hoshea 4:12; Yechezkel 13:10. The article closes with a bibliographical note that Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer's comment stands in the first, multi-volume edition of Bi'urei Shemos HaNirdafim and was dropped from the later single-volume printings.