Miketz: The Hebrew Hammers (Part 2/2)
SPECIAL NOTE: This Shabbos Chanuka, I am celebrating the Bar Mitzvah of my oldest son, Binyamin Eliezer. In honor of the special occasion, I published a new sefer (in Hebrew) called Lechem M’Merchack. That sefer and some of my other books are available for purchase on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3Bj2dlO
With the holiday of Chanuka upon us, I felt that it would be appropriate to focus our attention on one of the enigmatic terms associated with the holiday — Maccabee. In Part I of this essay, we discussed various ways of understanding that term, although conventional wisdom understands that word as a Latinized form of the Hebrew word makevet (“hammer”). In this installment, we explore various Hebrew words for “hammer” and attempt to determine whether or not those words are truly synonymous.
The term makevet appears five times in the Bible. Arguably, the most famous appearance of this word is in the story told of Jael, the wife of Hever the Kennite, who lured Sisera (the Canaanite general) into her tent and gave him milk to drink. Then, Jael took a makevet ("hammer") and used that to hammer the peg that held up her tent into Sisera’s head, effectively killing him (Jud. 4:21). From this story, we see that makevet refers to a heavier type of hammer, often associated with a “mallet” or “sledgehammer.” The mention of that heavy tool highlights the forceful or dramatic circumstances surrounding the way Jael killed Sisera. [It is always interesting to think about how the story of Jael killing Sisera has a later parallel in the Chanuka story of Yehudit/Judith killing the Greek general Helefornes, but we will leave that discussion for another time.]
In another famous verse, Isaiah implores the Jewish People to look back to their roots and think about the forefathers: “Look to the stone from which you were hewn / and to the chisel-hammer [makevet] of the pit from which you were dug. Look to Abraham, your father / and to Sarah, who gave birth to you” (Isa. 51:1–2). In this case, the word makevet refers to the tool used for boring/piecing such holes (a sort of “hammer/mallet”).
In another instance, the Bible (I Kgs. 6:7) reports that in the construction of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, makavot (plural of makevet) and other metal tools were not heard. The final two times that the word makevet is used in the Bible are in the context of the manufacturing of idols to be used for illicit idol worship (Isa. 44:12, Jer. 10:4).
The word makevet also appears in the Mishnah (Keilim 29:5, 29:7) in the context of discussing how much of that tool’s handle is considered part of the implement as regards the laws of ritual purity and impurity. It again appears when detailing the laws of burning the Red Heifer (Parah 3:11). As mentioned earlier in Part I, an additional place where a cognate of makevet appears in the Mishnah is in the term makavan (Bechorot 7:1) in reference to a sort of blemish or birth defect that disqualifies a Kohen from functioning in the Temple. The Talmud (Bechorot 43b) explains that makavan refers to a person who is hammer-headed (makavan). The Mainz Commentary ascribed to Rabbeinu Gershom (to Bechorot 43b) and Rabbi Nosson of Rome (in Sefer Ha’Aruch) further explain that this refers to a person whose forehead and back-head protrude outwardly, making his head look like a makevet — “hammer.” Rashi (there) takes a slightly different approach, seeing the word makavan as another word for kardum (“hatchet”).
In terms of the etymology of the word makevet, early lexicographers like Ibn Janach, Ibn Parchon, and Radak in their respective books of shorashim list this word under the root NUN-KUF-BET. As Ibn Parchon clarifies, the dagesh in the letter MEM of makevet represents the letter NUN which had been dropped from the word (as though the word should really be menakevet, which is similar to the Modern Hebrew word menakev for “hole-puncher”). Interestingly, Menachem Ibn Saruk in Machberet Menachem totally ignores the word makevet and does not list under any root.
In Part I, we presented an explanation from Rabbi Moshe Tedeschi-Ashkenazi (1821–1989) that accounts for how makevet in the sense of stating something “explicitly” relates back to the core meaning of NUN-KUF-BET as related to “piercing/boring/making a hole.” For our purposes, he further explains that makevet is related to NUN-KUF-BET because it denotes a sort of “hammer” used primarily for helping one wedge a nail into a “hole.“
Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim of Breslau (1740–1814) takes up a similar approach, but instead of seeing a hidden NUN signified by the dagesh in the MEM, he sees the MEM as extraneous to the word’s core root. Therefore, he traces makevet to the biliteral root KUF-BET, defined as the act of “making a hole.” In line with that, Rabbi Pappenheim defines makevet ("hammer") as a tool used for making holes. Other words that he sees as deriving from this same root include nekev ("hole"), nekeivah ("female"), kav (a unit of measurement that is measured by using a hollowed out piece of wood, whose hole becomes a receptacle), yekev (a pit used in wine production), kubah (a chamber made of hewn stone, wherein important people domicile), keivah (“stomach,” an internal organ which has a hole in its entrance for the intake of food and a hole at its exit for the excretion of waste), and nokev (“stating something explicitly/cursing,” which is a way of metaphorically boring a hole or opening into something that is otherwise vague and closed due to its ambiguity).
Moving on to our next synonym for “hammer,” we now discuss the word kurnas (sometimes vocalized as kornas as Kohut prefers, or karnas as HaBachur prefers). This word does not appear in the Bible, neither in the Hebrew parts of the Bible, nor in the Aramaic parts of the Bible. But Rashi (to Jer. 10:4) defines the term makevet discussed above as kurnas. Readers may be familiar with the term kurnas from when Rashi (to Ex. 25:31, Num. 10:2, Menachot 28a) writes that the Menorah in the Tabernacle and Temple was supposed to be fashioned from one hunk of gold that was beaten into shape by a kurnas. The word kurnas also appears several times in the Mishnah (Shabbat 12:1, 17:2, Keilim 13:4, 29:6).
Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur (in his work Meturgaman) defines the Mishnaic Hebrew word kurnas as a “big makevet,” although Rabbi Nosson of Rome in Sefer He’Aruch defines kurnas as a “small makevet” and as a “big patish.” Rashi (to Shabbat 21b) defines patish as a “big kurnas used by blacksmiths.” In this sense, kurnas refers to a blacksmith's hammer or a larger, industrial-style hammer. Elsewhere, Rashi (to Shabbat 73a, Moed Katan 11a) simply equates patish and kurnas. This term is used in Modern Hebrew particularly in technical or mechanical contexts.
The etymology of the word kurnas is subject to dispute. Rabbi Binyamin Mussafia (1606–1675) already writes in Mussaf He’Aruch that this word comes from Greek. In fact, Rabbi Ernest Klein (1899–1983) in his etymological dictionary of Hebrew explains that kurnas derives from the Greek word koryne ("bat/baton/club/mace"), which is apparently related to the Greek words korys ("helmet”), korymbos ("zenith," “corymb,” "cluster of flowers"), and koryphe (“head,” “top/ summit/highest point”). However, Dr. Alexander Kohut (1842–1894) in his Aruch Completum contends that kurnas is a native Aramaic/Syriac word.
I propose a possible etymological connection between the Mishnaic Hebrew word kurnas ("hammer") and the name of the Greek deity Cronus (the Titan father of Zeus), based on their notable phonetic similarity and shared consonantal structure. Some scholars have traced the name of the Greek god Cronus to the Proto-Indo-European root (s)ker-, meaning "to cut," which bears conceptual overlap with the function of a hammer as a tool used for striking and shaping. While numerous mythological figures across various cultures have been depicted wielding hammers or mallets (as discussed in Part I), there is, to my knowledge, no evidence that Cronus himself was represented in this manner. Nevertheless, the convergence of phonetic resemblance and thematic association warrants further exploration of a potential linguistic or symbolic link between these terms.
In Modern Hebrew, the most generic and commonly used word for the standard household “hammer” is patish. That word actually appears thrice in the Bible: Isaiah (41:7) uses the word patish in describing how in fashioning an idol, the artisan will use a hammer to flatten the piece of the metal. In Jeremiah, Hashem says that His words (that is, the Torah) is "like a fire... and like a patish it will smash a stone" (Jer. 23:29). Jeremiah also foretells of the downfall of the Kingdom Babylon, prophesying that people will wonder how “the patish of the world” will have been so thoroughly taken apart and broken (Jer. 50:23). In the first two cases, Targum Aramaicizes the Hebrew word patish into patisha.
To situate the word patish within our discussion, it should be noted that Radak in Sefer HaShorashim defines patish as "a big makevet." Similarly, Rabbi Yitzchak Avineri (1900–1977) writes that makevet refers to a type of patish which has one sharp head. The word patish is traced to the root PEH-TET-(YOD)-SHIN, which yields no other words besides for patish, so it is difficult to pin down its etymological basis further.
Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh of Carpentras (an 18th century grammarian and dayan) in Aholei Yehuda connects patish with the triliteral root PEH-SHIN-TET (“spreading/flattening”), in reference to what a hammer is to adept at doing. Similarly, Rabbi Moshe Tedeschi-Ashkenazi writes that patish derives from either the root TET-VAV-SHIN ("fly," see Job 9:26) or NUN-TET-SHIN ("spread,” see Num. 11:31) in reference to the “hammer” used for smashing stone in such a way that little pieces of rock go flying about and spread everywhere.
When Deborah’s Song poetically retells the story of Jael killing Sisera, it says: "Her [Jael's] hand she sent forth toward the peg / and her right hand to the hammer [halmut] of the toilers / and she broke [halmah] Sisera..." (Jud. 5:26). Using our intertextual deduction, we can cogently conclude that halmut is a poetic word that means the same thing as the prosaic makevet, because in the context of Jael killing Sisera both words are used to describe the selfsame item.
Indeed, Ibn Janach and Radak in their respective Sefer HaShorashim define halmut as makevet. In fact, Targum (to Jud. 4:21) translates makevet in the context of Jael as arzafta, and also translates (to Jud. 5:26) halmut as arzafta. From a lexicographical/etymological perspective, the term halmut derives from the triliteral root HEY-LAMMED-MEM (as explained by Ibn Saruk, Ibn Janach, and Radak), which also yields the verb for “breaking.” In that way, the hammer refers to the very tool used for carrying out the action of “breaking.”
The word arzafta/marzafta for “hammer” is used in Talmudic Aramaic (Brachot 34a, Megillah 25a, Gittin 56b). Rashi (to Brachot 34a, Gittin 56b, Bava Batra 20a) defines arfzafta as kurnas, which brings us full circle (see also Targum Jonathan to Isa. 41:7, who translates holem as kurnas and Targum to Ps. 73:10). There is also an Arabic cognate of this word marzaba, which means "sledgehammer."
Going back to the root of halmut, Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim (in his works Yeriot Shlomo and Cheshek Shlomo) traces the three-letter root HEY-LAMMED-MEM to the more basic biliteral root HEY-LAMMED, thus seeing the final MEM as extraneous to the core root. He explains the general theme of HEY-LAMMED as related to "spreading out," and thus explains a whole bevy of words in that fashion. Some examples: yahel refers to the “diffusion” of light as it spreads outwardly, yahalom refers to a precious gem whose countenance shines and “spreads out,” mahul refers to the dilution of a thick liquid as it “spreads” within a thinner liquid, hallel refers to “spreading” the stories of one's praise and publicizing their virtues, tehillah is the type of song associated with the act of praising, halah refers to an unspecified faraway place, halom refers to an unspecific nearby spot, and ohel refers to a tent whose cover is “spread out” over the pegs that hold it up. Following this rubric, Rabbi Pappenheim explains that the verb halmah (“breaking”) refers to the act of smashing something, which causes its broken-down pieces to “spread about.” Although Rabbi Pappenheim does not explicitly take note of this, the noun halmut as a “hammer” is the instrument used to bring about this end, so it also fits the bill.
Finally, Rabbi Moshe Tedeschi-Ashkenazi writes that halmut derives from CHET-LAMMED-MEM or ALEPH-LAMMED-MEM, both of which refer to something "healthy/strong/powerful." In this case, it refers specifically to the sort of “hammer” that is so big and powerful, that even if an abled, strong person used it to render a blow, it leaves that person tired out.
