Sleepy Words (Part 2/2)
In Part I of this essay, we discussed three different Hebrew words for “sleeping”: sheinah, tardeimah, and tenumah, explaining the difference between them as lying in the different degrees of intensity of one’s sleep. In this essay, we will encounter additional ways of differentiating between those three terms. Plus, we will also explore the words linah and durmitah in the context of “sleep,” and discuss how they relate to the words already treated earlier in this essay.
When King Solomon warns against being lazy and indolent, he exhorts “do not give sheinah to your eyes, nor tenumah to your eyelids” (Prov. 6:4). In his commentary to that verse, Rabbi Eliyahu of Vilna (1720–1797), also known as the Vilna Gaon, explains that sheinah represents a person who is deeply immersed in his sleep, such that he has lost the capacity for thinking; while tenumah represents a person whose eyelids may be physically shut, but whose minds is still nonetheless at work. Elsewhere, the Vilna Gaon (to Brachot 60b) explains that when one engages in sheinah, one's eyes are also at rest, while when one is engaged in tenumah, one's eyes may be physically closed but they are not technically at rest. Although I’m not sure what exactly the Vilna Gaon means, neurologists recognize that there are two modes of sleep, with one mode characterized by “rapid eye movement” (REM). Perhaps the Vilna Gaon meant to somehow allude to this concept.
Rabbi Avraham Bedersi (in his Chotam Tochnit), the earliest scholar to work on Hebrew synonyms, contrasts sheinah — which he connects to “rest/tranquility” — with tenumah, which he associates with “indolence/laziness.” In explaining the meaning of tardeimah, he first defines it as the end of a long sleep (seemingly the deepest portion of one’s sleep cycle?), but then suggests that it is the type of sleep that one falls into when in a state of extreme fright. He offers a Biblical proof-text for this last approach by citing the verse which first describes a tardeimah as falling upon Abraham, and then immediately describes a "dark fear" falling upon him as well (Gen. 14:12). According to this, the difference between the three terms in question lies not in the quality or quantity of sleep, but in the conditions and attitudes related to one’s sleep.
Elsewhere in that work, Rabbi Bedersi compares the term sheinah (whose meaning he asserts is well-known) with the term hozim (in Isa. 56:10), which he sees as referring to an especially long-lasting slumber like a dog who oversleeps. Interestingly, though, Rabbi Bedersi admits that most other commentators explain hozim as “people who say exaggerated or unrealistic statements” in a sort of state of delirium (like the Modern Hebrew hazui). As a synthesis of these two explanation, Rabbi Tedeschi explains that hozim refer to people who say nonsensical things in temporary ecstatic bouts of insanity — including those who talk in their sleep.
Rabbi Moshe Yitzchak Tedeschi-Ashkenazi (1821–1898) writes that when one experiences tardeimah, his sleep overpowers him. Because of this, he relates that word to the root REISH-DALET, which refers to “ruling/lording over” (similar to Rabbi Pappenheim’s approach cited in Part I). He sees the second term, sheinah, as an onomatopoeic expression, whose originally form, yashein, derives from the snoring sound of a sleeping person. Finally, when it comes to tenumah, Rabbi Tedeschi-Ashkenazi writes that this word relates to ne’um (“the word of”), because it denotes a state of sleep whereby one can still coherently talk. [See “Balaam’s Numa” (June 2021) for more on the word ne’um.].
Rabbi Meir Leibush Weiser (1809–1879), better known as the Malbim, writes (to Isa. 5:27) that sheinah refers to the regular, naturally-occurring type of sleep that a person experiences, while tenumah refers specifically to a type of sleep that is caused by extraordinary exhaustion and tiredness. Elsewhere, Malbim (to Ps. 121:4) offers a slight variant on this explanation, writing that sheinah is an umbrella term (hypernym) that includes all different types of sleep, while tenumah is a specific type of sheinah (hyponym) that is induced by extraordinary tiredness.
Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin (1816–1893), also known as the Netziv, in his work HaEmek Davar (to Gen. 2:21) disagrees with Ibn Ezra’s ranking of the words in question (see Part I). Instead, he argues that tardeimah does not denote a deeper form of sleep than sheinah, but rather that tardeimah denotes a lighter form of sleep (like that of one who is just falling asleep). He explains that this is why in the case of Adam, the Torah first reports that he fell into a tardeimah and then that he was in a state of sheinah. (Rabbi Wertheimer entertains possible support for this position from Targum Onkelos to Gen. 2:21, but ultimately rejects that proof).
Similarly, Rabbi Ezra Reuven Dangoor (1848–1930), the Chief Rabbi of Baghdad, explains that tenumah is the first stage of sheinah. In doing so, he does not explicitly write that tenumah denotes a lighter quality of sleep, but rather that tenumah is simply an earlier chronological stage in the sleep cycle. Rabbi Wertheimer infers the same idea from Maimonides’ commentary to the Mishnah (Pesachim 10:8), further arguing that sheinah is a general term for “sleeping,” while tenumah refers specifically to the beginning of the sleeping process, i.e., when one first falls asleep.
Finally, Dr. Alexander Kohut (1842–1894) cites a passage from the hitherto-unpublished work Ikkarei HaTalmud by Rabbi Avraham Zacut (1450–1515). He writes that tenumah implies a lighter form of sleep than sheinah, as it refers to somebody whose suffering prevents him from falling fast asleep (perhaps an insomniac), sheinah refers to the natural sleep that most people engage in nightly, and tardeimah refers to a deep form of sleep thar befalls a person who is subsumed in his suffering such that he has no other recourse but to go to sleep (in the same way that a suicidal person gives up on life and dies).
The Biblical Hebrew term linah and its cognates are often used to denote the verb for “sleeping over.” For example, Abraham's servant asked Rebecca "does your father have space for us la'lin?" (Gen. 24:23), and she responded that there is place for him la’lun (Gen. 24:24). In that story, the servant meant to ask if there is ample room for him to stay the night, and Rebecca answered in the affirmative. Words related to linah are derived from the triliteral roots LAMMED-VAV-NUN and LAMMED-YOD-NUN (or just LAMMED-NUN according to Ibn Saruk), although Shadal (to Gen. 24:23) already clarifies that both of those roots mean the same exact thing (despite having different middle letters).
Nonetheless, it should be made clear that, technically-speaking, the word linah has nothing to do with actually “sleeping.” Rather, it refers to “leaving something overnight,” which generally includes the time that people “sleep” — even though the word itself does not automatically entail “sleeping.”
To illustrate this point, cognates of linah are used when the Torah prohibits leaving sacrificial meats overnight past the time allotted for their consumption (Ex. 23:18, 34:25, Deut. 16:4), leaving a day-worker unpaid overnight (Lev. 19:13), or leaving an executed criminal’s corpse hanging in public overnight (Deut. 21:23). In all of those cases, the subject of the linah is not even a living person and certainly does not “sleep.” It’s just something left overnight. In fact, Rabbi Pappenheim sees the word linah as etymologically-related to the Hebrew word laylah (“night”), tracing both terms to the biliteral LAMMED-LAMMED (see also Ha'Ktav Ve'Ha'Kabbalah to Deut. 21:23).
In Biblical Hebrew, the word malon (Gen. 42:27, Ex. 4:24, Josh. 4:3, Isa. 10:29), which derives from the same root as linah, refers to any place or lodging where one stays overnight, but in Modern Hebrew that term has come to be used specifically to mean “hotel.”
The root LAMMED-VAV-NUN also gives way to words that refer to “complaining,” which is a totally different concept from linah. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (to Ex. 15:24) bridges the gap between these two meanings by explaining that they both broadly refer to the notion of seeking protection and safety. In the case of linah, it refers to a person seeking safe accommodations where one can spend the night, while in the case of “complaining,” it refers to a person seeking solace in his suffering by verbally airing his complaints and grievances with the hopes that somebody will help save him from his plight.
The Midrash (Bereishit Rabbah §17:5, §44:17) teaches that the term tardeimah appears in three contexts in the Bible: Sometimes it refers to a sleeping slumber (like in the case of Adam), sometimes it refers to a prophetic slumber (like in Gen. 15:12, when a tardeimah fell upon Abraham before he received a prophecy), and sometimes it refers to mortima. Some commentators explain mortima as referring to a “death-like slumber.” They understand the word mortima asa loanword borrowed from the Latin mortis — the etymological forebear of the English words mortal, mortuary, mortician, and mortgage. Other commentators see mortima as akin to an animal’s winter hibernation. Radal and Yidei Moshe (to Bereishit Rabbah there) actually suggest emending the Midrash to read durmitah, instead of mortima.
What is durmitah?The Zohar (Vayigash 207b, see also Naso 142b) uses the word durmitah and associates it with mitah (“death”), presumably because of the phonetic similarities between the two words (even though durmitah is spelled with a TET and mitah is spelled with a TAV).
Rabbi Chaim Vital (1543–1620) claims that the word durmitah is the Zoharic Aramaic term for “sleep,” implying that is used by the Targum to translate the Biblical Hebrew word tardeimah. However, as Rabbi Eliyahu David Rabinowitz-Teomim (1843–1905), also known as Aderet, correctly points, the Targumim never use durmitah as a translation of the Biblical tardeimah. Rather, Targum consistently uses an Aramaicized form of the Hebrew sheinah — sheintah (Gen. 3:21, Prov. 19:15, Job 4:13, 33:15) — to render the Hebrew tardeimah. In fact, the Zoharic word durmitah is not at all an Aramaic word, and appears nowhere else in any Aramaic document (including the Talmud or any other Aramaic text).
As far as I can tell, durmitah is actually of Romance etymology. I theorized that durmitah is related to the Latin word dormire ("sleeping"), which an ancestor of the English words dormant (as in French, dormant means "sleeping," just like durmiendo does in Spanish and dorment, in Catalan) and dormitory. Rabbi Dr. Yitzchak (Jared) Greenblatt, a prominent Aramaicist, concurred with my suggesting, adding that when Greek or Latin words are borrowed into Hebrew or Aramaic, the t-sound is typically represented by the letter TET (instead of TAV), and such is this case in the word durmitah (see also Rema to Even HaEzer §129:31).
Truth be told, this Latin etymon dormire is said by linguists to derive from the Proto-Indo-European root drem-. In light of this, perhaps we ought to reconsider the connection between durmitah and tardeimah, seeing as how the root drem- (the apparent etymological basis for durmitah) can be viewed as a metathesized form of tardeimah, because it uses the same three consonants as that Hebrew word, but switches the order of the first two. [By the way, linguists agree that the etymology of the English word dream has nothing to do with any of this.
