As the month of Iyyar comes to a close this week, I thought it would be appropriate to discuss the two names for “the second month” in the Jewish  Calendar — Ziv and Iyyar. That month is very special because the commandment of Counting the Omer runs through the entire month, marking it as the only month on the calendar that has a special commandment associated with the entire month.

As Ibn Ezra (to Deut. 16:1) famously writes, technically-speaking Hebrew does not have names for the months of the year (just like it does not have any names for the days of the week). Rather, in the Hebrew tradition, the months are numbered ordinally, staring with the first month marked by when the Jews exited Egypt (what we call Nissan) and continuing through until the twelfth month (what we call Adar). That said, if one looks carefully in the Bible, one will encounter names for the months. For example, in reporting about the construction of the First Holy Temple in Jerusalem during King Solomon’s reign, the Bible states: “And it was in the four-hundred and eightieth year to the Children of Israel’s exit from the Land of Egypt, in the fourth year — in the month of Ziv, which is the second month — to the reign of Solomon over Israel, and he [Solomon] built the house for Hashem” (I Kings 6:1), and later on again summarizes that “in the fourth year, the House of Hashem was established in the month of Ziv” (I Kings 6:37). In these two passages, the Bible gives us a name for the “second month” — Ziv.

Historians and Bible scholars tend to explain that Ziv is the Phoenician/Canaanite name for the second month, and the Hebrew Bible simply borrowed the Canaanite name for that month. Even without resorting to that sort of speculation, we can point out that besides the two instances in which the second month is referred to as Ziv, the word ziv appears six times in the Aramaic parts of the Bible in the sense of “radiance/shine/splendor” (Dan. 2:31, 4:33, 5:6, 5:9-10, 7:28).

The only difference is that the month-name Ziv is spelled defective (ZAYIN-VAV), while the Aramaic common word is consistently spelled plene (ZAYIN-YOD-VAV). Interestingly, Radak in his Sefer HaShorashim writes that the etymological root of the month-name Ziv is the triliteral root ZAYIN-YOD-VAV, even though the name is never spelled with a YOD in the Bible. On the other hand, Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim in Cheshek Shlomo traces the name Ziv to the biliteral root ZAYIN-VAV, which he also sees as the etymon of the word zavit (“corner”). In doing so, he explains that the second month is called Ziv because in it, the sun somehow turns a “corner” (perhaps by introducing the new season of spring?).

The Talmud (Rosh HaShanah 10b-11a) teaches that while everybody agrees that the Patriarch Isaac was born in the month of Nissan, there is a dispute between Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua about whether the Patriarchs Abraham and Jacob were born in Nissan or Tishrei. In elaborating on the ramifications of that dispute, the Talmud explains that one difference is how to understand why the second month is called Ziv: According to Rabbi Eliezer, who held that Abraham and Jacob were born in Tishrei, the second month is called Ziv in allusion to the “radiance/splendor” of trees that occurs in that spring month, as that is when the trees begin to blossom. Similarly, the Jerusalem Talmud (Rosh HaShanah 1:2) writes that the second month is called Ziv because that is when the flora and trees have........

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