Following Aaron’s death, the Canaanite king of Arad heard that the Jews were traversing the “derech ha’atarim” on their way to the Holy Land and decided to pre-emptively attack them (Numbers 21:1). The meaning of the word atar in this context is somewhat obscure, with most sources – Eichah Rabbah §1:21, Targum Onkelos, Menachem Ibn Saruk, Rashi, Rashbam, Rabbeinu Yosef Bechor Shor, Ibn Ezra, and Radak – relating it to the word la’tur (“to spy”), viewing the initial aleph as superfluous to the core root. Derech ha’atarim, they explain, refers to the route that the Ten Spies took close to four decades earlier, entering the Holy Land from the south. This essay, however, follows another set of commentators who take the word atar in this context to mean “place,” “site,” “location,” or “spot.” In that sense, the Hebrew word atar appears to be synonymous with the Hebrew word makom and the Aramaic word duchta. This essay focuses on the etymologies of those words and how they might differ.
Makom
We begin our discussion with the very common Hebrew word makom, which appears an impressive 400 times in the Bible. Menachem Ibn Saruk (920-970) in his Machberet Menachem has no entry for the word, so we do not know what he understood as its root; but both Rabbi Yonah Ibn Janach (990-1050) and Radak (1160-1234) in their respective Sefer HaShorashim list the word makom as a derivative of the triliteral root kuf-vav-mem, presuming that the initial mem is not radical to the core root. Words derived from this root have various meanings, including “standing,” “rising up” ([e.g., against one’s enemies), and “establishing.” How these concepts relate to the word makom is not readily understood.
Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim (1740-1814) fills in the blanks by offering a comprehensive analysis of words derived from kuf-mem and how they relate to one another (being the biliteralist that he was, Rabbi Pappenheim did not see the middle vav as essential to the root from which makom derives). He identifies the core meaning of this root as “height,” in reference to the dimension of a physical object measured along the vertical axis. From this core root, derives the word komah (“physical stature”), kamah (“standing grain,” i.e., unharvested produce), kumah (the act of “standing,” which in a figurative way refers to one who holds his own stature while facing adversity), kiyum (“established,” which refers to something maintaining its stature without ever changing), and finally, makom (“place,” i.e., the geographical location where something has been planted and thus firmly-established, also borrowed in a more abstract sense to refer to any particular “spot”).
In the context of our verse in question, exegetes like Rabbi Toviah ben Eliezer in Pesikta Zutrata/Midrash Lekach Tov , Rabbeinu Meyuchas, and Rabbi Menachem Ricanati all use the word makom to define the word atar. In other cases, Rashi himself also uses the word makom to define the word atar (see Rashi to Daniel 2:38; Ezra 6:3, 6:8, 8:15; and Ketubot 68a, Bava Metzia 67a, Bava Batra 29a, 103a, and Avodah Zarah 7b, 31b).
In context, this would seem to mean that the Canaanite king of Arad heard that the Jews had been taking the “scenic route,” in which case the term derech ha’atarim would literally mean “the path of the sites.” Of course, in Modern Hebrew, the word atar has been reappropriated to more closely parallel the English word site, so it is therefore utilized in reference to tourist attractions, construction sites, and even in the word for “websites” on the internet.
That said, instead of viewing atar and makom as pure synonyms, the aforementioned exegetes all make a point of noting that atar is actually an Aramaic word while makom is Hebrew. This means that while atar and makom might mean the exact same thing, they are not quite synonyms because makom is a native Hebrew word and atar is a loanword borrowed from Aramaic. In fact, outside of the phrase derech ha’atarim, the word atar never appears in any other Hebrew part of the Bible (nor does it ever appear in the Mishna). It does appear five times in the Aramaic parts of the Bible: in Daniel 2:35 and Ezra 5:15, 6:3, 6:5, 6:7.
Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur (1469-1549) points out in Meturgaman that the word atar is the standard Aramaic rendering of the Hebrew makom in the Targumim (for example, see Targum to Genesis 1:9, 13:4, 20:11; Deuteronomy 12:2; Judges 19:13; I Samuel 7:16; II Samuel 17:12; I Kings 13:16; and Jeremiah 22:3). Some readers might be more familiar with the Aramaic word atra, a cognate of atar, which appears in Kaddish D’Rabbanan and also refers to a “place” or “locale.”
Rabbi Yaakov Yehudah (Zilberberg) de Kassif (1914-2003) seems to explain atar as a Hebrew word, however. By way of metathesis, he connects three different Hebrew roots which use the consonants aleph, tav, and reish as all relating to the concept of “boundaries” and “clear delineation.” For instance, tav-aleph-reish refers to the “aesthetic form” (“toar”) of a person, which is outlined by the contours of their body’s shape; tav–reish–aleph refers to a “warning” (“hatraah”) clearly establishing the border of what is considered acceptable and informing the potential sinner of what punishment awaits him should he choose to cross that line; and aleph-tav-reish refers to a “place” (“atar”) as a geographical unit defined by its borders.
Duchta
Readers who study a lot of Gemara might be familiar with “duchta,” another Aramaic word for “place.” This word is quite common in the Babylonian Talmud, and Rashi defines it by using the Hebrew word makom (see Rashi Moed Katan 16b, Ketubot 77a, and Sanhedrin 96b). A shortened version of this word, duch, also appears in the Talmud (Brachot 42b), where Rashi again defines it as makom.
Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur in his Meturgaman has no entry for the word duchta or duch, but the word duchta does appear at least once in Targum as a way of rendering the Hebrew word makom into Aramaic (Targum to Proverbs 27:8; see also Targum to I Kings 14:28 and II Chronicles 12:11, which use the word ducha).
When it comes to Hebrew, we showed how there’s only one word for “place” – makom – while atar is a borrowed Aramaicism. But why does Aramaic itself have two words to convey this idea, atar and duchta?
Rabbi Dr. Ernest Klein (1899-1983) and Rabbi Dr. Yitzchak (Jared) Greenblatt see the Aramaic word atar as related to verb cognates in Arabic and Ethiopic that mean “tracing” or “tracking”; l’ater is used in a similar way in Modern Hebrew. Based on this, one may argue that the “place” or “location” meaning of the Aramaic duchta and duch is an expanded meaning that is not core to the etymology of the words themselves, which refers more to finding something’s location.
Alternatively, Rabbi Joseph Perles (1835-1894) in his German work Etymologische Studien zur Kunde der rabbinischen Sprache und Alterthümer argues that the Aramaic words duchta and duch actually derive from the Old Persian words daqyua and dahi. This explanation is cited approvingly by Dr. Alexander Kohut (1842-1894) in his Aruch HaShaleim, but Rabbi Shaul Goldman clarified that the actual word in Avestan/Old Persian that Perles and Kohut were referring to is dahyu (“country” or “province”). In light of this, it would seem that the ostensibly Aramaic words duchta and duch are not actually native Aramaic words but rather borrowed Old Persian, while Aramaic itself only has one native word for “place” or “location” – and that is atar.
