Part 1
In the chazzan’s opening supplication of Shacharit Shemoneh Esreih on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, the poetic introduction reads: “I am scared as I open my dialog to extract [words from my mouth] / I have arisen to supplicate the face of the awesome (nora) and fearsome (dachil) One / I am small [i.e. lacking] from [good] deeds; therefore, I trepidate (azchil)… / Power me and strengthen me from weakness and fear (chil).” In these few lines, the Kalonymide poet Rabbi Yekutiel bar Moshe who authored this piyyut uses three different terms that refer to “fear,” and all three of them actually rhyme with each other — dachil, azchil, and chil. In this essay, we will explore the etymologies of these three terminologies and consider whether or not they are truly synonymous.
Let us begin our exploration of these words with the term chil, which is the most common of the three in Biblical Hebrew. The term chil, or chal, refers to “fear” and to “the bodily tremors resulting from fear.” A famous instance of these words in the Pentateuch appears in the Song of the Sea, which reads, “The nations heard and they were trembling [yirgazun] / a fear [chil] had taken hold of the inhabitants of Philistine” (Ex. 14:15). Similarly, in describing how the nations of the world began to fear the Jewish People after they successfully defeated Sichon, king of Cheshbon, the Torah says, “and they will tremble [ragzu] and fear [chalu] from before you” (Deut. 2:25).
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (to Ex. 14:15) explains that chil refers to a specific type of fear, whereby the old guard becomes scared of how they will be affected by a changing paradigm. He explains that this is why chil is a type of fear often associated in the Bible with childbirth (Jer. 6:24, 22:23, 50:43, Mic. 4:9, Ps. 48:7), as the mother is scared of what her place will be in the family after the birth of a new child — or perhaps, she even fears whether she will survive childbirth itself. In the same way, when the Philistines heard about the Jews crossing the Red Sea, they realized that the Jews were set to conquer the Holy Land. This led them to worry about what their situation would be in that new reality and how it would affect them.
The CHET-LAMMED string from chil/chal is sometimes doubled to produce the word chalchal, which denotes a physical reaction to an especially scary situation that causes a person to tremble or shake out of sheer fright (see Isa. 21:3). The prophet Yechezkel foretells of a time when the nation of Cush will experience such tremors (Ezek. 30:4, 30:9). Similarly, the Book of Esther relates that when eponymic heroine Esther first heard about Haman’s decrees against her people, her reaction was vatitchalchal — her body spasmed and shook out of fear (Est. 4:4). Indeed, the rabbis (Megillah 15a, Esther Rabbah §7:14, §8:3) said about Esther that on the spot she either menstruated, miscarried, or defecated/urinated because she was unable to control her bodily movement in reaction to the terrifying news.
In line with this, Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim traces chil to the biliteral root CHET-LAMMED, which he defines as “all-around movement.” He traces over thirty different terms back to this biliteral root, but for this essay it is important to know that he explains chil as the cramping or spasming of the entire body in reaction to something scary. [I have discussed this biliteral root many times in these essays; the most comprehensive treatment appears in “Through the Looking Window” (Jan. 2021).]
Now we can segue to the word dachil, which derives from the triliteral root DALET-CHET-LAMMED. That term does not occur in Biblical Hebrew, yet declensions of that root nonetheless appear six times in the Aramaic parts of Daniel (Dan. 2:31, 4:2, 5:19, 6:27, 7:7, 7:19). The most famous of those cases is when Daniel saw the Fourth Beast, which he described as dechilah (Dan. 7:7) — “scary.” Besides for appearing in Biblical Aramaic, inflections of dachil are typically used by Targum in rendering the Hebrew terms yirah (“fear”), nora (“fearsome/awesome”), and pachad (“fear”). For examples of this, I refer the reader to Rabbi Eliyahu Bachur’s work Meturgaman. For our purposes, it is pertinent to note that Targum Onkelos translates the word chil in the Song of the Sea (Ex. 15:14) as dachla, as he does with the word chalu used to describe the other nations fearing the Jews after the victory against Sichon (Deut. 2:25). [I already discussed the different Hebrew words for “fear/fright” in an earlier essay “Afraid of Fright or Ready to Fight” (Nov. 2016), but it is about time that I revisit the topic.]
I should also point out that in many instances, Targum uses the word dachalah to refers to “false gods.” For example, when the Torah says not to make “gods of silver and gods of gold” (Ex. 20:20), the Torah uses the Hebrew word elohei, but Targum Onkelos renders this in Aramaic as dachalan. Such verbiage focuses on the pagan conception of the gods as dreadful, malevolent forces that man constantly needs to appease in order to escape their capricious outbursts of punishment. This, of course, starkly contrasts with the Jewish conception of G-d, which sees Hashem as a loving, kind Creator Who offers mankind indescribable good for happily performing His will. In fact, some readers might be familiar with the Aramaic term in question from the Kabbalistic formula recited before the performance of various commandments, by which one declares one’s intentions to serve Hashem b’dichilu u’rechimu (“through fear and love”).
In Talmudic Aramaic, the word dachlulei refers to a “scarecrow,” used to ward off ravens (see Bava Batra 27b and Torat Chaim there). In Modern Hebrew, that Aramaic term was Hebraicized to become dachlil.
If we analyze the terms chil and dachil as synonyms, it is quite possible that the way of differentiating between them might simply be that chil is a native Hebrew word, while dachil is an Aramaic word. They might technically mean the same thing, but they come from different languages. That said, in light of what we cited above from Rabbi Hirsch, it seems that chil refers to a specific type of “fear” — that which a person experiences when contemplating his or her place in a new paradigm. By contrast, the term dachil seems to be a more general term for all different sorts of “fear,” hence its usage by Targum for rendering a whole slew of different fear-related words (as mentioned above).
Additionally — although I have not seen any sources that take note of this — it is eerily uncanny that the only difference between the consonants in chil and dachil is the initial DALET that appears in dachil. Perhaps then both of these words are etymologically related to each other, and for some reason the latter word took on an extra letter.
With all of this in mind, we can now approach the final word for this essay: azchil, which derives from the three-letter root ZAYIN-CHET-LAMMED. Menachem Ibn Saruk in Machberet Menachem explains that this Biblical Hebrew root contains two discrete meanings, “fear” and “crawling,” without implying any connection between the two. Our poem draws on the former meaning, but let’s take a closer look at both meanings.
The root ZAYIN-CHET-LAMMED only appears once in the Pentateuch (and, as we will see below, twice more in the rest of the Bible): In the curses of Shirat Ha’azinu, Hashem warns of the different agents He might send against sinners, including “the rage of those who are zochel on the dirt” (Deut. 32:24). Rashi (there) explains this as a reference to poisonous snakes, understanding the root ZAYIN-CHET-LAMMED in this case to be conveying the “crawling” meaning. In Mishnaic Hebrew, the term zochalin refers to “running/flowing water” (Eruvin 10:6, Bava Batra 2:5, 3:6, Eduyot 7:3-4, Mikvaot 1:8, 5:4, 5:5, Parah 8:8). Based on that, Rashi further clarifies that insects (like snakes) that crawl on the ground appear to ambulate in a way that resembles the flow of water on the ground.
Comparable terms can be found in Targum pseudo-Jonathan (to Num. 21:35), wherein zachala refers to a “creeper/worm” (who made a hole in the mountain that Og lifted above his head), while in the Tosefta (Chullin 3:25) and in Modern Hebrew, zachal means the same thing. In Modern Hebrew, a zachlil refers to a “caterpillar,” and is also a type of armored tank that moves on “caterpillar tracks.” And, of course, when a child “crawls” before he or she learns how to walk, in Modern Hebrew the child is said to be zochel.
Using his theory of phonetic substitutions, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (to Deut. 32:24) connects ZAYIN-CHET-LAMMED to SHIN-AYIN-LAMMED (based on the interchangeability of ZAYIN and SHIN, and the interchangeability of CHET and AYIN), the latter of which refers to the “bottom of one’s foot” or a “step,” both of which refer to things related to movement.
Yet, while Ibn Ezra (to Deut. 32:24, Job 32:6) also explains “the rage of those who are zochel on the dirt” in Shirat Ha’azinu as referring to snakebites, he interprets the term zochel as an expression of “fear.” In doing so, he explains that all those who encounter the poisonous snakes in question “fear” them. [A similar dispute between Rashi and Ibn Ezra also occurs in the third instance of ZAYIN-CHET-LAMMED in the Bible in Micah 7:17.]
Ibn Ezra compares this usage of the root ZAYIN-CHET-LAMMED to another verse, wherein the last of Job’s friends offers his monologue aimed at explaining the painful events that transpired in Job’s life: “And Elihu son of Barakel the Buzite answered and he said, ‘I am young in days, and you [his interlocutors] are aged; therefore, I trepidate [zachalti] and I fear from expressing my understanding to you’” (Job 32:6). Indeed, Rashi (to Job 32:6) also agrees that in the context of Elihu, the root ZAYIN-CHET-LAMMED refers to “fear.”
It might well be that zochel in the sense of “fear” is not actually a separate word from its apparent synonym dachil but is actually a cognate of that word! In many cases, the letter DALET in Aramaic morphs into a ZAYIN in Hebrew. Other well-known examples of this phenomenon include zachar in Hebrew and dachar in Aramaic (which both mean “male”); zeroa in Hebrew and deroa in Aramaic (which both mean “arm”); and zahav in Hebrew and dahav in Aramaic (which both mean “gold”). According to this, it is quite possible that zochel is simply a Hebraicized form of the Aramaic dachil, which would mean that the two words not only mean the same thing but are etymologically of the same cloth. This point is made by Metzudat Tzion (to Job 32:6) and has been repeated by rabbinic philologists like Rabbi David Golumb and Rabbi Asher Weiser.
By the way, there are two more ways of understanding the word zachalti that Elihu used: Firstly, Rabbi Yosef Kara (to Job 32:6) explains the word zachalati in Elihu’s apologetic opening as meaning “I have delayed,” understanding that Elihu meant to explain why he waited so long before speaking up. A similar understanding is found in Rabbi Yonah Ibn Janach’s Sefer Shorashim. Perhaps this is related to the “crawling” meaning of that root because crawling is a slower way of reaching one’s destination than simply walking. Secondly, Sforno (to Job 32:6) explains zachalti as meaning “I have humbled myself as though I were an insignificant creature that crawls on his belly,” also harkening back to the “crawling” meaning of that root.
Interestingly, when discussing the root ZAYIN-CHET-LAMMED, Rabbi Yonah Ibn Janach in his Sefer HaShorashim notes that in Arabic astrology, the planet Saturn is called Zachal. Rabbi Shaul Goldman informs me that some have argued that this name comes from Zuhal, a pre-Islamic Meccan goddess of agriculture. Others note that the Arabic cognate of the Hebrew root ZAYIN-CHET-LAMMED yields a verb that means “moving away/withdrawing/retiring.” It therefore makes sense that the planet Saturn would be referred to with this name, because in Medieval astronomy, Saturn was the farthest planet from the Earth (Uranus, Neptune and Pluto were only discovered later). In private correspondence, Dr. Tzvi Langermann added that the parallel Arabic root can also mean “lagging behind/becoming fatigued” (not unlike Rabbi Yosef Kara’s explanation of zachalti, cited earlier). This is likewise appropriate for the planet Saturn, as Saturn’s motion in longitude is the slowest of the planets.
Finally, there is another meaning of the root ZAYIN-CHET-LAMMED in Rabbinic Hebrew: When Rabbi Oshaya’s face “lit up” in excitement, the Jerusalemic Talmud (Sanhedrin 11:4) says his face was “zachlin,” and a similar word (zachalin) is used by the Midrash in reference to Bar Pedaya (Kohelet Rabbah §8:4). In this way, it is possible that since the planet Saturn appears in the sky as an illuminated body, perhaps the word for that planet in Arabic is actually related to “light.”
To be continued… n
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein is an author and freelance researcher based in Beitar Illit. He studied in Yeshiva Gedolah of Los Angeles, the Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem, and Beth Medrash Govoha of America in Lakewood, and received semichah from leading rabbis. He also holds an MA in Jewish Education from Middlesex University/London School of Jewish Studies. Rabbi Klein authored two popular books that were published by Mosaica Press, as well as countless scholarly articles published in various venues. His articles on Hebrew synonyms are commissioned by Yeshivas Ohr Somayach in Jerusalem and have appeared on their website since 2016.