Bo: Follow the Leader (Part 1/2)
Biblical Hebrew offers several different terms that denote the concept of “leading.” If we focused just on verbs used in conjunction with the exodus from Egypt to denote Hashem “leading” the Jewish People out of Egypt and “leading” them through the wilderness, we will already encounter several such terms, including noheg (Ps. 78:52), molich (Deut. 8:2, Jer. 2:6, Ps. 136:16), nachah (Ex. 13:17, 15:13, Ps. 77:21), and nohel (Ex. 15:13). Our discussion of these four synonyms will be cut into two halves, with Part 1 of this two-part essay, focusing on the words noheg and molich, while in Part 2 we delve into the other two Hebrew terms for the act of “leading” and attempt to show how they all differ from each other.
The term noheg appears three times in the Book of Exodus, none in direct reference to the exodus itself, but all in adjacent stories: The first time it appears is when relating that in his capacity as a Jethro's shepherd, Moses "led" (vayinhag) his sheep through the desert (Ex. 3:1). The second time that this the term appears is when reporting that the day before the onset of the Plague of Locust, Hashem "led" (nihag) an easternly wind (Ex. 10:13) to foreshadow the arrival of the grasshoppers. The final time this term appears is in the narrative concerning the Splitting of the Sea, when the Egyptians’ chariots forcefully led their riders through the muck and mud straight into the Red Sea bank — where they duly drowned (Ex. 14:25).
The classical lexicographers like Ibn Saruk, Ibn Janach, Ibn Parchon, and Radak all trace the word noheg to the three-letter root NUN-HEY-GIMMEL, which appears about thirty times throughout the Bible. However, as is his way, Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim actually traces that triliteral root to a simpler biliteral root HEY-GIMMEL (viewing the initial NUN as extraneous to the core etymon). Rabbi Pappenheim offers two different ways of explaining the meaning of this two-letter root (and thus how it relates to the concept of noheg), one in his work Yeriot Shlomo (on Hebrew synonyms) and one in his work Cheshek Shlomo (on biliteral stems in Hebrew). Since, in my opinion, the latter source is easier to understand, we will focus on presenting that approach.
Essentially, Rabbi Pappenheim in Cheshek Shlomo defines the fundamental meaning of HEY-GIMMEL as "consistent action." He thus explains that the word hogeh/hagut/higayon denotes "sustained thinking" (for examples, see Josh 1:8, Prov. 15:28, Ps. 19:15, 49:4) as done when delving into the intricacies of a topic, while the words hege/higayon denote "sustained sound-making," like that of crying, cooing, or a person who consistently speaking of the same thing (for examples, see Isa. 31:4, 38:14, 59:3, 59:11, Ps. 37:30, 71:24, Prov. 8:7).
Rabbi Pappenheim sees noheg as relating to this core meaning of HEY-GIMMEL because "leading" entails keeping those under one’s influence on a consistent course. This verbiage is thus used when referring to a shepherd leading his flock (Ex. 3:1, Ps. 78:52) and to a general leading his army (I Chron. 20:1) because in both cases, the leader wants his charges to stay on the right track.
That said, Rabbi Pappenheim does point out that the sort of "leading" denoted by noheg is not always positive. This is because the term noheg refers in general to any repeated mode of comportment or the way one consistently acts — whether he is supposed to act that way or not. For example, Laban uses an inflection of noheg in a negative sense, when complaining that Jacob was "leading" (i.e., treating) his daughters as though they were captives of war (Gen. 31:26). Similarly, when Job criticizes the ills of those evil-doers who abuse from the unfortunate, he said: "the donkey of the orphans they lead [yinhagu], they damage the widow's ox" (Job 24:3). In this case, those bad people take advantage of the orphan’s weakened position to commandeer or steal their donkey and “lead” the donkey away from their rightful owners. This is not an admirable or noble type of leadership, but actually a type of exploitation. Similarly, in the aforementioned case of the Egyptian chariot riders at the Red Sea, the chariots “led” them to their watery demise by consistently heading towards the river bank, even when they should not have.
One common form of the word noheg is the Hebrew term manhig (“leader”), applied to a person who engages in the act of noheg. Other words that are directly related to noheg include the Modern Hebrew word nahag (“driver”) and hege (“steering-wheel”).
Likewise, the term higayon in the sense of “logic/dialectics,” as it is often used in Modern Hebrew, is a Medieval Hebrew neologism that developed after Biblical Hebrew. This usage is explained in Peirush HaMilot HaZarot (“Explanation of Bizarre Words”), written by Rabbi Shmuel Ibn Tibbon (the translator responsible for rendering Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed in Hebrew) as having been coined as a way of expressing Greco-Arabic philosophy in Hebrew. All of these words relate to the concept of “leading,” because a driver “leads” his car and other passengers to their final destination, the steering-wheel is the device used to “lead” the car in the right direction, and logic/dialectics is the modality used to “lead” a person to his final conclusions. [Following from Rabbi Pappenheim’s understanding of noheg as relating to “consistency,” we may add that “logic” refers to the epistemological and intellectual frameworks in which arguments can be made. When employing “logic,” one must consistently refer back to a specific framework in order for a proposition to hold muster.]
The word minhag in Biblical Hebrew refers to the way one rides a horse (II Kgs. 9:20). But in later rabbinic usage, a minhag is a “custom” or “tradition” that people follow. Meaning, a minhag is a particular habit or way of life that a person, family, or community has accustomed themselves to consistently following. In other words, it is a sort of rubric that “leads” a person in determining how to act, hence its connection to the idea of noheg (and, per Rabbi Pappenheim, consistency).
Just like we saw that noheg can sometimes refer to being led into something destructive or otherwise negative, many rabbis over the generations have decried the dark side of minhag which sometimes leads people, families, or communities into placing customs on a higher pedestal than they deserve and/or adopting customs that are unbecoming or are otherwise halachically problematic. To underscore such concerns, many rabbis have homiletically pointed out that the word minhag spelled backwards yields gehinnom (see responsa Mahari Mintz §66, Rabbi Yaakov Emden's Migdal Oz Beis Middos Aliyas Vatranut, Pele Yoetz s.v. minhag, and Sdei Chemed Kllalim Ma’arechet MEM §38).
As mentioned above, another term used to denote “leading” is molich. Forms of this word appear when describing Hashem leading the Jews through the desert (see Deut. 8:15 and Ps. 136:16). Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer clarifies that the term molich in the context of “leading” is simply an inflection of the verb holech (“going/walking”), as it denotes the leader’s role in making something happen and helping the people under his responsibility go from one situation or place to another. Needless to say then, the word molich derives from the Hebrew root (HEY)-LAMMED-KAF — of which declensions appear more than 1550 times in the Hebrew Bible!
Indeed, Rabbi Pappenheim points out that the core etymological basis for this term is not directly related to "leading," but is rather a borrowed or ancillary meaning of the word’s etymological root. Similarly, the word yolech appears in the Bible when Hashem "led" (i.e., took charge of) the sea with a strong easternly wind the entire night before the Splitting of the Sea (Ex. 14:21). In this case, He commandeered that force of nature for the sake of bringing a miracle on the morrow.
Interestingly, even though the letter MEM in the word molich is clearly not essential to the core root of the term, Rabbi Shmuel David Luzzatto (in his comments to Gen. 36:31) writes that the word melech (“king”) comes from molich in the sense that a king “leads” his people in a certain direction. There is a lot to say about the word melech and its apparent synonyms. In fact, Rabbi Shlomo of Urbino in his lexicon of Hebrew synonyms Ohel Moed lists fifty-seven synonyms to the word melech in Biblical Hebrew. All of the terms he lists refer to positions of leadership or authority in one way or another. But that’s a story for another time.
To be continued…
