Before the Jewish People, led by Joshua, entered the Holy Land, Joshua sent two spies to scout out the city of Jericho. The spies lodged at the house of a woman named Rahav, who proceeded to protect them when the King of Jericho got wind of their presence in the city and sought to kill them.
The two spies ultimately escaped through Rahav’s window, descending to the ground on a rope (chevel). They promised Rahav that if she tied a red string (“tikvah” or “chut”) to her window, then when the Jews conquered Jericho they would spare her and her family (Joshua 2:1-22). In this passage, three different words are used for “rope” or “string”: chevel, tikvah, and chut. This essay attempts to trace the etymology of those words, seeking to clarify exactly how they relate to one another.
Chut
The Hebrew word chut refers to a single thread or string from which a larger fabric may be weaved or sown. It appears only once in the Pentateuch, when Abraham swore to the King of Sodom that he will not take even “a chut to a shoestring” (Genesis 14:23) from the spoils of war, but it appears another six times in the Bible. In the allegorical love story in Song of Songs, for example, one partner says that his lover’s lips “are like a crimson red chut” (4:3). When Samson was tied down by avot (especially thick ropes; see below), he easily released those bonds from upon his arms “like a chut” (Judges 16:12). A famous verse involving a chut is “the three-pronged chut will not be quickly undone” (Proverbs 4:12), which the rabbis interpret as referring to a three-generation family of Torah scholars, for whom Torah study will become thoroughly engrained (Bava Batra 59a).
Although Ibn Janach (990-1050) and Radak (1160-1234) in their respective Sefer HaShorashim trace the word chut to the triliteral root chet-vav-tet, Menachem Ibn Saruk (920-970) in his Machberet Menachem sees the middle vav as extraneous to the core root, thus tracing the term to the biliteral root chet-tet.
Expanding on Menachem’s etymology, Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim (1740-1814) explains the core meaning of chet-tet as “blemish” or “deficiency,” both in a physical and spiritual sense. Accordingly, he explains that the word chet (“sin”) refers to a spiritual blemish or deficiency, but when King David’s wife Batsheba said that if her son Solomon does not ascend the throne after King David’s death, then “I and my son Solomon will be chataim” (I Kings 1:21), this means that they will lack something that should really belong to them.
Taking this a step further, Rabbi Pappenheim explains that the intensive verb form of this root lechateh means “to fix a deficiency or blemish”; in Modern Hebrew, it refers to “disinfecting” something. Accordingly, the korban chatat – the so-called “sin-offering” – is named as such because it has the power to “clean up” a person who has sinned. In line with all this, Rabbi Pappenheim explains that the word chut also relates to this core meaning, as a “thread” is something used to “fix up” or otherwise “prepare” a broken garment.
There are two words in Mishnaic Hebrew that are etymologically derived from the Biblical Hebrew word chut. Chayat (“tailor”) refers to an artisan proficient in working with “threads” and appears multiple times in the Mishna (Shabbat 1:3, Pesachim 4:6, Bava Kamma 10:10; see also Ezra 4:12), while machat (“needle”) refers to the tool used for working with “threads” and also appears in the Mishna (Orlah 1:4, Shabbat 1:3, 6:1, 6:3, 17:2, Eruvin 10:3, Eduyot 2:3, Keilim 9:1, 9:3, 13:5, Parah 12:2, Taharot 3:5, Mikvot 7:7).
Chevel
As mentioned above, when Rahav helped the two spies escape by exiting through her window on a rope, Joshua 3:15 uses the word chevel to denote that rope. Interestingly, Abarbanel argues that the chevel that the spies used to descend the window was the same chut that Rahav tied as a sign, even though the Bible uses two different words.
All the Hebrew lexicographers agree that the word chevel in the sense of rope or string derives from the triliteral root chet-bet-lammed. Another word that seems closely related to chevel is kevel. We utter an inflection of this word every morning in Pesukei D’Zimra when we recite the verse: “to detain their kings with fetters, and their honorable ones with ropes [kevel] of iron” (Psalms 149:8). The only other time this word appears in the Bible is Ps. 105:18. I have not seen this stated explicitly, but to me it seems that chevel and kevel are related to each other via the interchangeability of chet and kaf.
Eitun
The word chevel leads us to another Hebrew word for “rope.” Targum Jonathan (to Joshua 3:15) renders the word chevel in the story of Rahab as atuna. That Aramaic has a Hebrew counterpart in word eitun, which appears once in the Bible (Proverbs 7:16). That word is used in reference to a bed decked with all sorts of decorations, including Egyptian eitun, which Radak explains as referring to “ropes” made from high-equality Egyptian linen. As an aside, Rabbi Pappenheim does not interpret eitun as “rope,” but rather connects the word to the same biliteral root as tene (“wicker basket”), explaining that eitun refers to clothing that was sewn in a way that is has many holes in it, like a wicker basket.
The word eitun, in turn, leads us to another Hebrew word for “rope.” Targum (to Proverbs 7:16) renders the word eitun as meitar. Rabbi Pappenehim explains the etymology of meitar as deriving from the biliteral root tav-reish, which he sees as referring to “elasticity: – both in terms of stretching a rope or string to create a pressurized situation, and in terms of releasing that pressure.
In the former sense, the word meitar refers to a string that is used in a pressurized setting, like the ropes used to hold down a tent (Exodus 35:18, 39:40; Numbers 3:37, 3:26, 4:26, 4:32; Jeremiah 10:20; Isaiah 54:2) or the strings of a bow (Psalms 21:13). In the later sense, words like mattir (“untie”) and heter and muttar (“permission” and “allowed”) refer to a release or lack of pressure in a situation where one might otherwise have expected its presence.
On the other hand, Rabbi David Chaim Chelouche (1920-2016) writes that the ultimate root of meitar is the biliteral tav-reish (“seeing”) and refers to the fact that meitar originally referred to a strong string that was used for a crossbow that was stretched to hold the arrow – when an archer “sees” his enemy within range, he releases the string. In a borrowed sense, meitar came to refer to any especially strong string or rope. The famous String Bridge in Jerusalem is called the Gesher HaMeitarim in Hebrew, using this word for “string.”
Avot
When it comes to the word avot, most lexicographers trace it to the root ayin-bet (“thick”). Indeed, Rabbi Pappenheim explains that avot relates to the Hebrew word av (“thick”) as it refers specifically to a rope that is “thicker” than usual because it is made up of more strings or fibers than a regular rope. Malbim similarly explains that avot are composed of three chevel or moseirah strings braided together. He derives this from Rashi (to Sukkah 33a), who explains that because the “branch of an avot tree” (Leviticus 23:40) refers to the myrtle branch (hadas), the branch must have groups of three leaves, thus suggesting that avot implies a merger of at least three.
The word gadil used in connection with tzitzit (Deuteronomy 22:12) also refers to a type of “string.” Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1880) writes that the word gadil is related to the word gadol (“big/large”) because the gadil was a single string that was comprised of many different fibers such that the string was big and thick.
Another word used in connection with tzitzit is petil. The Torah commands that one should place a petil made of techeilet on the corner of one’s tzitzit (Numbers 15:38). Targum Onkelos (there) translates the word petil as chut, which brings us full circle to the beginning of this essay which started with the word chut.
All in all, the word petil appears ten times in the Bible and its close variant patil (which refers to something “closely tied”) appears once (Numbers 19:15). A later derivative of this word is petilah (“wick”), which appears several times in the Mishna (Shabbat 2:1, 2:3-5, Beitzah 4:4, Sanhedrin 7:2, Meilah 6:3, Keilim 3:2), and essentially refers to a “string” used for lighting a candle.
