In Part I of this mini-series, we discussed the rhyming words chil, zachil, and dachil all of which refer to the state of being scared and the physical effects of such a feeling. In this essay, we will treat the words ra’adah, ziyah, and retet, which are also related to that theme. In our upcoming final installment, we will discuss more Hebrew terms that refer to such fear tremors, including chareid, rogez, ra’ash, and ga’ash.

The Mishnah (Taanit 4:8) states that the greatest days for the Jewish People are Yom Kippur and the Fifteenth of Av. The Talmud (Taanit 30b, Bava Batra 121a) explains that Yom Kippur is such a happy day because not only is it a day of forgiveness and atonement, but it is also the day that the Jewish People received the second pair of Tablets at Mount Sinai. Indeed, in one of the more somber passages in Psalms, the Psalmist admonishes one to “Serve Hashem in fear, and rejoice in ra’adah [trembling]” ( Ps. 2:11). In explicating this passage, the Talmud (Yoma 4b) explains that the “rejoicing” here refers to the reception of the Tablets at Mount Sinai, while the term ra’adah in that verse refers to the fact that the Torah was given “with dread, with fear, with retet, and with ziyah.” The last two terms are seemingly synonymous with ra’adah, as they also refer to the concept of “trembling” or “shuddering” in fear of something scary. In this installment, we explore the etymologies of these three additional synonyms for “shaking in fear” and attempt to better understand what, if anything, is the difference between them.

The term ra’adah and its various inflections are all derivatives of the triliteral root REISH-AYIN-DALET, and appear a total of nine times throughout the Bible. One famous example is when the Song of the Sea mentions that ra’ad (“fearful shaking”) had taken hold of the strongmen of Moab ( Ex. 15:15). Another famous example is in Psalms 104, which depicts Hashem’s control over all facets of nature, stating among other things: “He gazes towards the land and she [the land] quivers (vatirad) / He touches the mountains, and they smoke up” ( Ps. 104:32).

Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer asserts that ra’adah primarily refers to a physical shaking which is internally felt in one’s body, but not discernably visible on the outside. As support for this assertion, he cites the verse wherein Daniel describes his apocalyptic encounter with an angel, by saying, “And I stood shaking [marid]” ( Dan. 10:11). Rabbi Wertheimer contrasts this with the term chil (discussed in Part 1), which he claims refers to physical tremors that can be seen by the onlooker (except for in cases like Ps. 55:5, wherein the chil in question was explicitly said to take place in one’s heart).

Nonetheless, Malbim offers a different explanation, arguing that ra’adah refers to the act of “quaking” in fear specifically in a situation where a person is so full of inner fear that said fear becomes manifest outwardly in the former of physical tremors. In Modern Hebrew, the term re’idat adamah (literally, “quivering of the land”) refers to what we call in English an “earthquake.”

As mentioned above, the Talmud states that the Torah was given with ziyah — which also refers to “shaking in fear.” Interestingly, many people misquote the Talmud as saying that the Torah was given with zeiyah, which means “sweat.” Despite that obvious error, there is nonetheless an etymological connection between the words ziyah and zeiyah. This is because Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim traces both of those words to the two-letter root ZAYIN-AYIN, whose core meaning he sees as relating to “movement triggered by anxiety.”

One of the basic words derived from that root is the........

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