What’s in a Word?

action

throwing

השלכה · זריקה · הזיה · רמה

Bottom line

Hashlachah is careless, disparaging throwing: throw away, cast off, or even drop; it says nothing about force or target. Zerikah is deliberate, forceful throwing at a place: throw, and where the object is fine or liquid, sprinkle. Hazayah is zerikah at a distance (or, per Malbim, by hand rather than by vessel): sprinkle. Ramah is throwing upward in an arc onto its target: hurl, shoot. The trap is treating hashlachah as vigorous; Maharal and Rashbam both read it as the opposite.

Distinctions

hashlachah (השלכה)

Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim of Breslau: hashlachah is throwing in a way that does not show whether one means to hit something or merely to be rid of it, and the word carries a disrespectful attitude toward what is thrown. Because it is the casual form, it usually means throwing downward, the easiest direction. Most of its occurrences are contemptuous: Hagar casting off Yishmael (Bereishis 21:15), Yosef thrown into the pit (Bereishis 37:20, 22, 24), Moshe throwing down the Luchos (Shemos 32:19), Pharaoh's decree against the infants (Shemos 1:22), tereifah meat thrown to the dogs (Shemos 22:30). Pappenheim concedes a purposeful use as well: Aharon throwing his staff (Shemos 7:10) and the gold into the fire (Shemos 32:24), and the cedar, hyssop and crimson thread thrown into the burning of the parah adumah (Bamidbar 19:6).

Ramban (to Bereishis 21:15) offers two readings of vatashlech: Hagar abandoned Yishmael, so hashlachah is a form of forsaking; or she sent him away, proved from Devarim 29:27 and Tehillim 51:13, which effectively lets ש-ל-כ carry the sense of its near-homonym ש-ל-ח.

On the root, Menachem Ibn Saruk, Ibn Janach and Radak take it as the triliteral ש-ל-כ. Pappenheim instead builds it from two biliterals, ש-ל ("throwing out") and ל-כ ("going"). Rabbi Ernest Klein records the shaphel theory, in which an initial shin is a grammatical prefix creating the situation of the root (compare shiabud from עבד, shichrur from חרות), leaving ל-ח, "going." Rabbi Moshe Shapiro applies the same shaphel pattern to shapir, from tiferes/pe'er.

zerikah (זריקה)

Pappenheim: a portmanteau of ז-ר ("spreading, dispersal") and ר-ק ("emptying"). Zerikah is causing something to land in a chosen spot, and it typically involves matter of many small parts (sand, ashes, liquid) that spreads as it falls; hence the zerikas hadam of the korbanos is rendered "sprinkling." Chazal widen it to any throwing, deliberate or not: the Mishnah (Shabbos 11:1) uses zarak for throwing an object from one reshus to another, where the destination is the whole point, and the Gemara (Chagigah 15a) uses zarak for Rabbi Meir discarding the peel of Acher's teaching, where the destination is irrelevant.

Maharal: zerikah implies throwing with force, hashlachah does not. He derives this from Rashi to Shemos 9:8, where Moshe throws the ashes with one hand precisely so as to throw them forcefully. Rabbi Yehoshua Hartman reads Rashbam to Shemos 32:19 the same way: Moshe was too enraged to gather strength to throw the Luchos, so he merely dropped them, and the Torah accordingly says vayashlech.

hazayah (הזיה)

Pappenheim: the same kind of throwing as zerikah, only over a longer distance. Malbim: the difference is instrument, not distance; zerikah is done with a vessel, hazayah by hand.

ramah (רמה)

The root ר-ם means "esteemed" or "high," and in Biblical Hebrew it occasionally means throwing (Shemos 15:1, ramah vayam). Pappenheim: ramah is throwing or shooting something upward on an arc so that it lands exactly on its target. The Targumim render zerikah with the cognate ז-ר-ק but render hashlachah with ר-ם derivatives, so in Aramaic the ר-ם root appears to carry the sense of hashlachah, perhaps the lifting of an object in order to throw it.

Rendering guidance

  • Trap: English "throw" absorbs all four. Reserve plain "throw" for zerikah and force hashlachah into "cast away," "throw down," "fling aside," or "drop," so the contempt in the Hebrew survives.
  • Yosef in the pit (Bereishis 37:24): "they flung him into the pit," not "placed" and not "hurled with all their strength"; the word marks carelessness.
  • Moshe and the Luchos: if the passage is quoting Rashbam or Maharal, "he let the Luchos drop" is the reading the Hebrew supports; "hurled" contradicts it.
  • Zerikas hadam and hazayah in a korbanos context: "throwing" or "dashing" the blood for zerikah, "sprinkling" for hazayah, and keep them apart in a passage that lists both; one English "sprinkle" for both loses the halachic distinction.
  • Modern Hebrew hashlachos, "consequences," has no Biblical or rabbinic standing; do not read it back into a pasuk.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "A Real Toss Up," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 21 December 2019 / 23 Kislev 5780: raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/8528-a-real-toss-up.md. Primary loci cited: Bereishis 21:15, 37:20, 37:22, 37:24; Shemos 1:22, 7:10, 9:8, 15:1, 22:30, 32:19, 32:24; Bamidbar 19:6; Devarim 29:27; Tehillim 51:13; Mishnah Shabbos 11:1; Chagigah 15a; Rashi and Maharal to Shemos 9:8; Rashbam to Shemos 32:19; Ramban to Bereishis 21:15. The article's citation of Even-Shoshan for the shaphel theory is omitted here per house rule 9; the same theory is kept in Rabbi Ernest Klein's name.