other
sweet
מתוק · ערב · נעים
Bottom line
Matok is sweet to the tongue, the objective taste opposed to bitter. Areiv is pleasing, sweetness as this particular person finds it, and it attaches to a voice or a scent as readily as to food. Na'im is pleasant, the enjoyment itself rather than the property that causes it. The trap is rendering all three "sweet": where the Hebrew moves from matok to areiv it has moved from what everyone tastes to what one soul happens to love, and that move is usually the point of the passage.
At a glance
| Hebrew | translit | English | what sets it apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| מתוק | matok | sweet | gustatory and objective, the opposite of mar (Vilna Gaon; Pappenheim) |
| ערב | areiv | pleasing | subjective and acquired; auditory and olfactory, rarely culinary (Pappenheim) |
| נעים | na'im | pleasant | visual appeal (Vilna Gaon) or the soul's pleasure in a thing (Pappenheim) |
Where the authorities disagree
What na'im names. The Vilna Gaon: na'im and noam are appeal to the eye, as matok is appeal to the palate, so the two words divide the senses between them. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim of Breslau: na'im names no physical property at all; it is the pleasure a person takes in what is sweet, so matok and areiv sit on the object and na'im on the one enjoying it. The Bottom line follows Pappenheim, because his reading accounts for the usages the Gaon's does not (noam of Hashem's ways, of Torah, of brothers dwelling together), while the Gaon's visual sense fits only part of them. Where a passage plainly means something good to look at, the Gaon's reading is the better fit.
The two agree on matok, and Pappenheim alone treats areiv.
Distinctions
matok (מתוק)
Root מ-ת-ק. The Vilna Gaon: matok is gustatory appeal, against na'im/noam as visual appeal. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim: matok is the objective measure of taste, the kind everyone recognizes as sweet, found in honey, figs and dates, and the polar opposite of bitter. From there it was borrowed for anything one would argue is good, desirable, or worthwhile. Pappenheim adds a reading of the waters of Marah (Shemos 15:25): they are called matok not because they became objectively sweet but by contrast, because the bitterness they had was gone.
areiv (ערב)
Root ע-ר-ב. Pappenheim: against matok, areiv is a subjective sweetness, an acquired taste and a matter of personal preference. One with an appetite for bitter food could say "bitter is areiv to me," but never "bitter is matok to me." The distribution in Tanach matches: areiv is used of a voice (Shir HaShirim 2:14, "your voice is areiv"), and, on one view in Berachos 43a, of a scent, in the berachah borei shemen areiv over balsam oil; a culinary areiv is rare (Mishlei 20:17).
The column offers a further reading of its own: every group of words built on ע-ר-ב denotes a joining of things that were apart. An arev is a guarantor, tying lender to borrower; erev joins day to night; taarovet and irbuv are mixtures; the eirev is the woof running through the warp; an eruv makes many domains one; the plague of arov was an assortment of beasts; the erev rav were a mixed multitude. On this reading areiv is sweetness as the thing that draws the beholder toward the object, a bond rather than a quality.
na'im (נעים)
Root נ-ע-ם. Vilna Gaon: visual appeal. Pappenheim: not a physical property but the transcendent pleasure of enjoying something sweet, so that matok and areiv speak of the physical and na'im of the sublime. He notes that the last two letters of the root spell im, "with," since the soul binds itself to what it finds pleasant. Both Pappenheim's na'im and the column's areiv thus turn on joining, which is why the two words often stand close in a pasuk.
Rendering guidance
- מתוק: "sweet," and keep it for the tongue. In a mussar passage where the sense is borrowed ("sweet to him are the words of Torah"), "sweet" still carries; the word itself is a borrowing.
- ערב: "pleasing," or "pleasant to him" where the subject matters. Reserve "sweet" for matok; if areiv has to be "sweet" in a liturgical line (ve'haarev na, "make the words of Your Torah sweet in our mouths"), keep the personal sense visible in the surrounding words.
- נעים: "pleasant." Not "sweet," even where the parallelism tempts it.
- Trap: English "sweet" will absorb matok and areiv without complaint. It should not, because the two prayers that use areiv are chosen deliberately over matok: we ask that the Torah be areiv in our mouths, appealing to us personally, and that our prayers be areiv before Hashem, favored by Him, since a korban has no intrinsic value of its own but only what Hashem's command gives it. Render both with "sweet" and the argument disappears.
- When two of them stand in one phrase, translate for the axis, not the temperature: matok is what it is, areiv is what it is to you, na'im is the pleasure of having it.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Sweet and Pleasant," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 11 Shevat 5778 (2018-01-27): https://articles.ohr.edu/articles/sweet-and-pleasant; raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/7611-sweet-and-pleasant.md. Primary loci cited: Shemos 15:23-25 (Marah, mar and matok); Shir HaShirim 2:14; Mishlei 20:17; Berachos 43a (borei shemen areiv); the ve'haarev na berachah of Birchos HaTorah and the ve'se'erav lefanecha passage before Birkas Kohanim in the Yom Tov Mussaf. A closing paragraph of the article reporting non-traditional etymologists on the origin of areiv is omitted here under house rule 9.