In Parshat Vayishlach, Jacob’s family is referred to as a machaneh (Gen. 32:9, 33:8) and bayit (Gen. 35:2), even though the common Hebrew word for family is mishpachah, and the biblical term for a relative is she’er (Lev. 18:6). In this essay, we will discuss these various words for family by tracing their etymologies and seeking out their core roots to understand just what they mean. We will also discuss the Hebrew word pamalia and discover some interesting connections to English.
The grammarians unanimously trace the word machaneh to the root that means “dwelling” or “stopping over.” According to triliteralists like Ibn Chayyuj, Ibn Janach, and Radak, that root is chet-nun-hey, while according to biliteralists like Menachen Ibn Saruk, that root is simply chet-nun. Biliteralist Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim of Breslau (1740-1814) also traces machaneh to the two-letter root chet-nun (and elsewhere to the monoliteral chet), explaining that its core meaning is “opposite of being in transit” – traveling.
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (to Gen. 1:32 32:3) explains that Jacob’s family is called a machaneh because they were a group of people that temporarily settled in one spot en route to their final destination. Thus, machaneh is more accurately translated as “camp” rather than family, and in most contexts in the Torah the word machaneh has a military connotation. The biblical word machaneh cognates with such modern Hebrew terms as tachanah (bus stop), chanayah (parking lot), and chanut (“shop/store”).
The basic meaning of bayit is “house.” But sometimes it means “family;” for example, when the Torah commands that when eating maaser sheini foodstuff in Jerusalem, “you and your bayit shall rejoice” (Deut. 14:26). As Radak explains in Sefer HaShorashim, bayit often refers to the members of one’s household, not to the edifice in which they live.
Ibn Janach writes that bayit refers specifically to one’s wife. This is in line with the Tannaic sage Rabbi Yose (Gittin 52a) who said about himself that he never called his wife ishti (“my wife”), rather he always called her bayti (“my house”). Rashi (there) explains that in using this appellation, Rabbi Yose recognized his wife’s role as the mainstay of the house. Alternatively, perhaps Rabbi Yose referred to his wife as bayti because she modestly tended to remain within the confines of her home. The word bayit may invoke this latter idea because Rabbi Pappenheim traces the word to the monoliteral root bet (“inside”) – and the word bayit itself also means “inside” (Gen. 6:14, Ex. 25:11, 37:2, I Kgs. 7:9).
The word she’er: According to Menachem Ibn Saruk, she’er has three meanings: remnant, food, and flesh. Radak understands the “food” and “flesh” meanings of she’er to be related with the common theme of “meat,” which serves as a staple food and also denotes fleshiness. In English too, we might refer to our kin as our “flesh and blood.”
Like the bayit, she’er also refers specifically to one’s spouse. This may be because of the sacred bond of flesh that exists between man and wife.
The word mishpachah: This is the most popular Hebrew word for “family. Ibn Saruk, Ibn Janach, and Radak all trace this word to the triliteral root shin-peh-chet, but divide the core meaning of that root in two as “maidservant” (like shifcha) and “family/clan/tribe” (like mishpachah). Thus, they understand that while both of these terms are derived from the same root, their meanings are not interconnected.
On the other hand, when Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh of Carpentras (an 18th century grammarian and dayan) in Ohalei Yehuda traces the word mishpachah to the triliteral root sin/samech-peh-chet, he understands the other words derived from that root to be thematically related to mishpachah. In his estimation, the core meaning of this three-letter root is “attachment.” He explains that a “family” is a group of people who share a common genealogy and are thus attached to one another. In a similar vein, he explains the word shifcha (“maidservant”) as referring to a female slave who is attached to her mistress.
The Oxford English Dictionary traces the English word “family” to the Latin famulus (“servant”), which was later expanded to refer to a group of servants that constituted a “household,” and eventually to any sort of entourage or retinue of troops or people. By the time English borrowed the word from French, it referred to any group of persons connected by blood or affinity. The English word familiar in the sense of “intimate” or “close relationship” also ultimately derives from this same Latin word. The actual Latin word for “family” was domus, which literally means, “house.” It is the etymological ancestor of such English words domicile, domestic, domain, and domination.
The word pamalia: Rabbi Gedaliah Lipschutz (1756-1826) writes in his Regel Yesharah (to Derech Eretz Zuta, ch. 4) that the word pamalia is not of foreign origin, but serves as an abbreviation of the Hebrew phrase po maliyata, “here is great esteem.” Maimonides writes in Guide for the Perplexed (2:6) that pamalia is the Greek word for “camp.” (In standard editions of Maimonides’ work, this term is translated into Hebrew as machaneh, but the Kapach edition reads tzava). Sefer HaAruch similarly defines pamalia as a “group of soldiers.”
Based on what we have seen earlier, this explanation does not preclude those proffered by Maimonides and Sefer HaAruch because “camp” and “group of soldiers” also fall within the semantic range of meanings implied by the Latin word familia.