![]() ![]() But this meaning only appears one time in Tanach, in the book of Kohelet (10:9). Mandelkern tells us that there are three different samekh-caf-nun roots in Tanach. Let’s see what happens if we stick with the Hebrew root that we have. But this far-reaching switch is farfetched! He wants to understand the word as if the root was caf-nun-samech (=gather), instead of samech-caf-nun. Luzzatto is willing to postulate a switch of letters. 32:28), it seems like the meaning is “store cities.” But what is its root? S. (Usually it appears with the word “arei”=cities.)įrom the various contexts (see especially 2 Chr. ![]() But “miskenot” appears six other times in Nach, in various forms. ****Īs long as we are on the subject of Exodus 1:11, I am going to discuss another difficult term in the same verse: “arei miskenot.” This is the only time this term appears in the Chumash. He relates it to an Egyptian word that means “bear, carry.” (Egyptian is not a Semitic language.) See Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language, p. Klein writes that the word is “of uncertain origin,” but then makes only one suggestion. But most likely, “mas” is just a foreign word and perhaps not even a Semitic one. See, e.g., the suggestions made in the concordance of S. Very briefly, some suggestions are: 1) MSS, 2) MNS, 3) NSS, 4) nun-sin-aleph, and 4) shortened form of Meches. If one assumes that the word “mas” comes from Hebrew and tries to figure out its root, the theories abound. It seems that anyone overly influenced by modern Hebrew and rabbinic Hebrew will make this same translation error. ![]() The author I mentioned above is not the only source to make this understandable error in translating “mas.” If you look at the Even-Shoshan concordance, the only definition it gives for “mas” is “tashlum chovah le-otzar ha-medinah”(=obligatory payment to the government treasury). ![]() See also Tosafot, Chagigah 8a, “va-yasem.” 1:11 defines “mas” as: “gius la-avodat kefiah.” See also Daat Mikra to 1 Kings 4:6. Fundamentally and originally, the word means something like “forced labor on public works without pay.” The sophisticated word usually used to convey this idea is “corvée.” See, e.g., the Hertz Pentateuch to Ex. (But Soncino suggests “imposed forced labor” even here.) But this is all beside the point. I think the word does mean “tax” at Esther 10:1, and most sources agree. In other words, the “tax” meaning is a later meaning of the word. See, e.g., Brown-Driver-Briggs, and the Anchor Bible. If we focus on the earliest 22 of these references (and ignore the latest reference at Esther 10:1), all 22 times the word means something like “forced labor.” (See, e.g., the Brown-Driver-Briggs work, which does a good job of showing this.) Even as late as Eichah 1:1, “forced labor” is probably the meaning. The word “mas” occurs 23 times in Tanach (in either its singular or plural form). Now that I have researched the biblical word “mas,” I realize that she erred. I thought her comments were clever, and mentally filed them away for a future column. It is a tax so high it cannot be paid in money it must be paid in bodily labor.” The Hebrew word means ‘tax masters.’…This tax, in Exodus 1:11, is a most unpleasant one. When she got to Exodus 1:11, “sarei misim,” she was shocked at its translation: “taskmasters.” She wrote: “But ‘taskmasters’ is not what the literal Hebrew says. Last year I read a book by someone very familiar with rabbinic Hebrew and modern Hebrew who ended up studying the King James Bible and writing a book about the inadequacies of its translations. ![]()
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