When Nadab and Abihu offered a “foreign fire” that was not prescribed by the Torah, a fire came out from before Hashem and consumed them (Lev. 10:1–2). The Talmud (Sanhedrin 52a) describes that what happened was that two fiery livewires exited from the Holy of Holies and then split into four, before each fire entered one of the four “nostrils” of Nadab of Abihu and killed them. In that passage, the Talmud uses the word chotem to describe their respective “noses/nostrils.” This essay explores the Hebrew word chotem alongside its apparent synonyms af and nichirayim, which also refer to “noses/nostrils.”
Let’s start with the most common word in Biblical Hebrew for “nose”: af. The early grammarians disagreed about what the exact root of af might be, as Menachem Ibn Saruk (920–970) and Rabbi Yonah Ibn Janach (990–1050) argued that its root is ALEPH-PEH, while Radak (1160–1235) saw its root as ALEPH-NUN-PEH. Either way, a whole slew of other terms might be etymologically-related to af, which include words that mean “anger,” “face,” “even/also,” “although,” and “baking,” in addition to the aforementioned meaning of “nose/nostril.”
Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh of Carpentras (in Aholei Yehuda) writes that the core meaning of af is actually “face,” but that the word also means “nose” because the nose serves as the symbol of a person’s overall mood in the sense that anger is physically discernable on a person’s nose. Either way, the meaning of the word af/apayim is sometimes ambiguous, such that it could be unclear whether it means "nose" or "face" (see Rashi to Song of Songs 7:5).
Now we can talk about the word chotem. Although that word does not appear in the Bible, it does appear several times in the Mishnah: Firstly, the Mishnah (Yevamot 16:3) states that in order to positively identify the body of a dead man (for the purposes of allowing his widow to remarry), one must see his chotem (“nose”). Moreover, the word chotem appears twice when the Mishnah (Negaim 6:7-8) discusses which body parts are or are not susceptible to tzaraat (roughly "leprosy"). Additionally, the Mishnah (Machshirin 6:5) uses the word chotem in discussing whether the liquid that comes from one’s nose renders a fruit or vegetable susceptible to ritual impurity.
Moreover, the Mishna (Middot 3:2) describes the southwestern corner of the altar in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem as having "two holes [for pipes], which are like sorts of two thin chotmin" meaning that these two holes resembled the two nostrils of a nose. The Talmud (Niddah 25a) similarly uses this term when detailing how a miscarried fetus might look if its limbs already began to develop, stating that its two chotmim might resembles the two eyes of a fly. In these last two cases, the word chotem is clearly being used in the sense of “nostril,” and not as “nose” (because people do not typically have two noses!).
Finally, we discuss the word nichirayim (“nostrils”), which appears only once in the Bible, in the verse “And from His nostrils [nichirayim] goes out smoke” (Job 41:12). The classical lexicographers like Menachem Ibn Saruk, Yonah Ibn Janach, Shlomo Ibn Parchon (the 12th century author of Machberet HeAruch), and Radak trace the word nichirayim to the triliteral root NUN-CHET-REISH. That root also gives us various verbs related to the nose, like “snorting/snoring/braying” (see Job 39:20, Jer. 6:29, 8:16).
But Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim (1740–1814) has a different way of looking at it. He traces nichirayim to the two-letter root CHET-REISH, whose core meaning he defines as “other than the one in front of us.” Based on this, Rabbi Pappenheim writes that the word acher (“other/another”) derives from this root, as does machar (“tomorrow,” i.e., another day that is not today), achar (“after,” i.e., a time other than the present), and achor (“back,” i.e., a side other than the one currently facing me). Taking this a step further, Rabbi Pappenheim explains that chor (“hole”) also derives from that root as a derivative of achor because all human beings have a chor on their “backside.” Taking this even further, Rabbi Pappenheim adds that nichirayim is a tributary of the word chor, as essentially a “nostril” is just a “hole” in one’s face. Rabbi Pappenheim further argues that two more words from this root derive from nichirayim: charon (“anger”) because the “nostrils” of an angry person flare up, and charum (Lev. 21:18) — in reference to the physical blemish of a “droopy nose” — because it directly relates to the nose.
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