Even though back in ancient times, they may not have had all the complex financial instruments that we use nowadays, people were certainly well-aware of the concept of “money,” and its use as legal tender. In this essay, we look at several terms in Mishnaic Hebrew that refer to the idea of “money,” and try to differentiate between these apparent synonyms. Those words include mammon, damim, maot, zuzim, and more. In doing so, we will touch on issues of etymology, history, and much more.
We begin the discussion with the word mammon. This word does not appear even once in the Bible, but already appears with much frequency in the Mishnah. For example, the Mishnah (Brachot 9:5) interprets Deut. 6:5 as saying that one ought to love Hashem “with all of your money [mammon].” Similarly, mammon appears when giving a possible reason as to why somebody would be kidnapped (Ketubot 2:9), and when relating the Halachic rule of doble jeopardy whereby a person liable for the death penalty is exempt from "monetary" payment (Ketubot 3:2). In one particularly fascinating passage in the Mishnah (Bava Batra 10:8), Rabbi Yishmael states that one who wishes to become wise should engage in the laws of mammonot ("monetary/financial law").
Besides appearing in the Mishnah, the word mammon also appears in the Targumim (that is, the Aramaic translations of the Bible). To that end, Rabbi Natan of Rome in Sefer HeAruch and Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur (in Sefer Tishbi and Meturgaman) write that the Biblical Hebrew words hon (“wealth”) and rechush (“property”) are typically translated by Targum into Aramaic as mammon.
The Midrash (Bamidbar Rabbah §22:8) expounds on the word mammon as an allusion to the phrase mah atah moneh — eino kelum (“what are you counting? It is nothing”). This exegesis partially suggests that the root of the word mammon lies in the Hebrew root MEM-NUN-(HEY), which refers to “counting” (see below). However, Rabbi Ernest Klein in his etymological dictionary of Hebrew (and also in his etymological dictionary of English) writes that the word mammon most probably derives from the word ma’amon (“trust” or “deposit”), which is, in turn, derived from the triliteral root ALEPH-MEM-NUN (“true/trustworthy”), with the initial MEM being radical to the core root.
The word mammon also appears in the Christian Bible as the personification/deification of the greedy pursuit of money/wealth. The way Rabbi Yitzchok Schmelkes of Lvov (1827–1905) explains it in responsa Beis Yitzchak (Yoreh Deah vol. 1 §152), Mammon was originally the name of the pagan god of silver/money, but then eventually came to be a regular word for “money.”
On a more esoteric plane, Rabbi Chaim Yosef David Azulai (known as the Chida) points out that the name of each letter in the word mammon (MEM, VAV, NUN) is spelled by doubling that letter. This alludes to the fact that “those who love money are never satisfied with money” (Ecc. 5:9), so when they have one MEM they want another MEM, and when they have one VAV, they want another VAV, and so forth.
It is generally understood that the Hebrew term damim in the sense of “money” does not occur in Biblical Hebrew, but is nonetheless a mainstay of Rabbinic Hebrew. In other words, even if this usage of damim does not occur in the Bible, it certainly occurs in the Mishnah. To that end, we find the plural form damim in the Mishnah in multiple places (Maaser Sheini 1:5, Pesachim 7:3, Kiddushin 1:6, Bava Metzia 5:3, Bava Batra 2:7, Arachin 5:2, Temurah 5:5), plus we encounter the construct form dmei in even more cases (Terumot 5:1, 6:3–4, 9:2–3, Maaser Sheini 1:4, 2:1, Pesachim 9:8, Ketubot 12:1–2, Nazir 4:4, Bava Kamma 5:4, 8:1–2, 9:1, 9:4, 10:4, Bava Metzia 3:5, 3:12, Zevachim 8:1–2, Bechorot 5:6, Arachin 5:2–3, Meilah 3:2, Kinnim 1:4). Interestingly, HaBachur (in Sefer Tishbi and Meturgaman) points out that the word damim in the sense of “money” always appears in plural form and never as the singular dam. As such, it sometimes makes this difficult for a novice to differentiate between damim/dmei (“money”) and its homonym damim/dmei (“blood”), which appears both in the Bible and the Mishnah.
HaBachur also points out that damim appears in the Targumim as the standard Aramaic translation for the Biblical Hebrew word mechir, usually translated as “price” (for examples, see II Sam. 24:24 and Isa. 45:13) and mecher (“sale [price]” in Num. 20:19). Interestingly, in one particular verse, the words kesef (literally “silver,” but also more generically as “money”) and mechir appear in tandem (Isa. 55:1), with Targum Jonathan (there) translating kesef as damim and mechir as mammon.
In offering translations of damim into the European vernaculars, HaBachur writes in Sefer Tishbi that this Rabbinic Hebrew term means gelt (in Yiddish/German) and dinero (in Spanish). By the way, the word dinero is derived from the name of the Spanish Dinero, which was a Medieval currency used in Spain that was modeled after two earlier coins — the Arabic Dinar and the Roman Denarius. As my learned readers probably already know, dinarim are also mentioned by the rabbis many times in the Mishnah.
Although I wrote earlier that it is generally understood that damim is not used in the sense of “money” in the Bible, there are two possible examples of precisely such usage: The Torah states that if a homeowner finds a robber in an underground tunnel and kills him, "he has no damim" (Ex. 22:1). Rashi understands that damim in this context literally means "blood," as in this case since the homeowner was standing his own ground and defending himself from a potentially deadly robbery, he is not considered to have spilled the robber's blood like an ordinary murderer. On the other hand, Rashi's grandson Rashbam (there) sees the word damim in this case as referring to "money," explaining that the Torah means that the homeowner is exempt from paying any monetary compensation to the estate of the robber whom he killed. A similar dispute amongst Medieval exegetes comes up with the word dam in Ps. 72:14, which Ibn Ezra explain as “blood,” while Ibn Janach and Radak (in their respective Sefer HaShorashim) interpret as “[monetary] worth/value.”
Rabbi Ernest Klein in his etymological dictionary of Hebrew writes that damim in the sense of “money” probably derives from the Biblical Hebrew root DALET-MEM-(HEY), which refers to the state of “being like/equal” to something else. In elaborating on that particular root, Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim explains that its core meaning refers to the concept of “similarity/resemblance.” Other words he explains as derived from this root include domeh (“resembles”), demut (“likeness”), and dimyon (“imagination,” which may be similar to reality, but does not truly reflect it). Moreover, he explains that man is called adam since man was created “in the image of Hashem” (Gen. 1:27) in the sense that he resembles Hashem in some ways. Additionally, Rabbi Pappenheim writes that “similarity” implies “incongruency” because if two things are said to be only similar, then this precludes them from being exactly equal. Because of this, he relates the word dom/domem (“quiet/inactive”) to this root, as stopping activity creates an “incongruency” between the goings-on that continue to be active in one’s mind and one’s outer activity which one has paused. Taking this a step further, Rabbi Pappenheim writes that adamah (“ground”) also derives from this root because it is a space where plants are active and grow, while the adamah itself remains passive and sedentary. Although Rabbi Pappenheim does not explicitly link any of this to the term damim as in “money” (because his work focuses exclusively on Biblical Hebrew, and not Rabbinic Hebrew), we can easily understand how “money” likewise resembles commodities as its monetary value can stand in for the actual commodity.
Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Ehrenreich offers another way of understanding the term damim, seeing it as related to the Biblical Hebrew dom (“silent/quiet”) in one of two ways: Firstly, he explains that when a person commits a sin, one has “acquired” a prosecuting angel which will argue against oneself in the Heavenly Court (Avot 4:11). One of the ways of atoning for sin and “quieting” the accusation of a prosecutor angel is by sacrificing one’s own money (damim) by giving to the poor and/or to Torah Scholars. Secondly, he explains that its well-known that conspicuous opulence on the part of Jews is one of the factors that leads to anti-Semitism, as when the nations of the world see Jewish wealth, they seethe in jealousy. For this reason, it is most advisable for a Jew to keep his wealth hidden and be “silent” about it, rather than to flaunt it for the world to see.
Other commentators explain the word damim in the sense of “money” as related to its homonym damim in the sense of “blood.” In that spirit, Rabbi Chaim of Friedberg (a brother of the Maharal) in Iggeret HaTiyul writes that “money” is called damim — which also means “blood” — because a person “lives off” of their money. Indeed, the Talmud states (Nedarim 64b) that a pauper is tantamount to a dead person. Similarly, Rabbi Yaakov Emden in Ezer Ohr (glosses to Sefer Tishbi) explains that the word for "money" is related to the word for "blood" because just as a person's physical life depends on his blood, so does a person's livelihood depend on his finances. Indeed, the rabbis alluded to such a connection when they said (Bava Kamma 119a) one who illegal takes even a perutah from another person is as if he has taken his soul. Rabbi Azaria Figo finds it incredulous to believe that the rabbis used the word damim to refer to “money” simply because the ignorant masses see “money” as important as one’s actual blood, see his Binah L’Itim (drush #69).
