In יהושע י:כא:
לא חרץ לבני ישראל לאיש את לשנו
The root חרצ appears 34 times in תנ”ך and is probably worth investigating.
חרץ
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Category Archives: 06 – Joshua – יהושע
עזר
It is my contention that the root עזר in Biblical Hebrew often has a sense of more than just “helping”, but specifically means to help or save in battle, and is in fact synonymous with ישע. The best example for this is from a Rabbinic – not Biblical – phrase that many Jews repeat three times daily: מלך עוזר ומושיע ומגן. If עוזר means just to help, it doesn’t really belong with מושיע and מגן.
What exactly עוזר ומושיע ומגן have to do with the rest of the ברכה of אבות is a discussion for another time.
Three examples from the beginning of יהושע will make the point for now:
יהושע י:ד עלו אלי ועזרני ונכה את גבעון
יהושע י: ו עלה אלינו מהרה והושיעה לנו ועזרנו
יהושע י:לג אז עלה הרם מלך גזר לעזר את לכיש
The root עזר occurs 294 times in תנ”ך and a full study of all of them is required in order to fully understand the exact sense of the word.
(72 of these are the name אלעזר and another 14 are the name אליעזר)
Another good example is in I Samuel 7:13 where Samuel takes a stone and makes it a monument at אבן העזר where he says עד הנה עזרנו יי.
עכן
Following the conquest of Jericho, in Joshua 6:26 – 7:26 we have the story of עכן who steals from the plunder of the city which הקב”ה had claimed for himself.
In this story we have the verb עכר several times. This verb appears infrequently in תנ”ך.
בראשית לד:ל, we have Jacob scolding Shimon and Levi with עכרתם אתי.
It appears 6 times in our story.
שופטים יא:לה where יפתח uses the word when his daughter is the first to greet him when he returns from battle: וַיְהִי כִרְאוֹתוֹ אוֹתָהּ וַיִקְרַע אֶת בְּגָדָיו וַיֹּאמֶר אֲהָהּ בִּתִּי הַכְרֵעַ הִכְרַעְתִּנִי וְאַתְּ הָיִיתְ בְּעֹכְרָי וְאָנֹכִי פָּצִיתִי פִי אֶל יְדֹוָד וְלֹא אוּכַל לָשׁוּב
Then Jonathan uses it in a very similar context in I Samuel 14:29, where his father, Saul, makes a vow which results in his having to kill his son – although Jonathan is saved by the people in this case. וַיֹּאמֶר יוֹנָתָן עָכַר אָבִי אֶת הָאָרֶץ רְאוּ נָא כִּי אֹרוּ עֵינַי כִּי טָעַמְתִּי מְעַט דְּבַשׁ הַזֶּה
אחאב and אליהו use the phrase call each other עוכר ישראל when they meet in I Kings 18:17-18.
It appears 7 times in the name פגעיאל בן עכרן and then in דברי הימים א ב:ז where it refers to the Jericho story. And where interestingly, עכן is called עכר.
The root then appears a handful of times in משלי and תהלים.
תהלים פרק לט פסוק ג
נֶאֱלַמְתִּי דוּמִיָּה הֶחֱשֵׁיתִי מִטּוֹב וּכְאֵבִי נֶעְכָּר :
משלי פרק יא פסוק יז
גֹּמֵל נַפְשׁוֹ אִישׁ חָסֶד וְעֹכֵר שְׁאֵרוֹ אַכְזָרִי:
משלי פרק יא פסוק כט
עוֹכֵר בֵּיתוֹ יִנְחַל רוּחַ וְעֶבֶד אֱוִיל לַחֲכַם לֵב:
משלי פרק טו פסוק ו
בֵּית צַדִּיק חֹסֶן רָב וּבִתְבוּאַת רָשָׁע נֶעְכָּרֶת :
משלי פרק טו פסוק כז
עֹכֵר בֵּיתוֹ בּוֹצֵעַ בָּצַע וְשׂוֹנֵא מַתָּנֹת יִחְיֶה:
At some point it will be worthwhile to post about the root עכר in the Mishnah.
The story is alluded to in דברי הימים א ב:ז, where in the geneology of the family of Yehudah we are told: ובני כרמי עוכר ישראל אשר מעל בחרם. However, we are not told who כרמי is. In Joshua 7:18 the ancestry of עכן is given as: עכן בן כרמי בן זבדי בן זרח למשפחת יהודה.
Joshua and the ‘שר צבא ה (Joshua 5 13-15)
Here is another story in תנ”ך where an unnamed איש appears to a man or woman, and turns out to be an angel or messenger of הקב”ה.
I prefer “messenger” to “angel”. Although the Greek Ἄγγελος (Angelos) is a literal translation of מלאך and means “messenger”, I think that to the modern American mind “angel” conjures images of winged creatures, for which we have other evidence in תנ”ך, but which do not fit with an unnamed איש who is (mistaken for) a man.
Incidentally, the Yiddish name אנטשל is derived from the Latin “angel”, and is unusual in its being one of the relatively few Yiddish words that derive from Latin rather than German. (I thought I had read this in Uriel Weinreich “Sabesdiker Losn in Yiddish: A Problem of Linguistic Affinity” Word 8, 360-377 (1952) – but I cannot find it right now in that article, so perhaps I came across it somewhere else. At any rate, this article is well worth reading.
The איש has חרבו שלופה בידו. The other characters in תנ”ך with a חרב שלופה are the מלאך who appears to the donkey of בלעם and the messenger of destruction whom הקב”ה sends to punish David for counting the people in I Chronicles 21:16.
The איש says to Joshua “כי אני שר צבא ה’ עתה באתי”. The implication is that this is a messenger of הקב”ה for whom Joshua and the Israelites have been waiting, and it brings to mind Exodus 33:2 where הקב”ה tells Moses after the sin of the Golden Calf that His messenger will lead the Israelites into the Land of Israel, but He will not lead them Himself.