The Torah commands that when a Jewish boy is born, he should be circumcised on the eighth day (Lev. 12:3). The verb used in that passage to denote “circumcising” the child is yimol, and similar words for the act of “circumcising” appear approximately 30 times in the Bible, mostly in the Books of Genesis (Gen. 17, 21:4, 34:15–22), Exodus (Ex. 12:48, 12:44), and Joshua (Josh. 5). Those words are derived from the root MEM-(VAV)-LAMMED, as is the word milah in the phrase Brit Milah. That said, this essay focuses not on the act of “circumcision,” but on the person performing that act — the “circumcisor.” In this essay, we will explore several terms used to denote the “circumcisor,” namely, mohel, gozer, umana, and rofeh. In doing so, we will trace the etymologies of these various terms and attempt to show how they differ from one another.
The most common term in use nowadays for a practitioner of circumcision is mohel. While the term mohel does not appear in the Bible or the Mishnah, an Aramaic form of this word already appears in the Babylonian Talmud: The Talmud (Shabbat 156a) states that while a person born under the astrological influence of Mars (the Red Planet) may be destined to serve in an occupation where he will shed blood, the individual himself retains the freewill to decide whether this means he will be a professional bloodletter (umana), robber, butcher, or circumcisor (mohala). Cognates of the word mohel appear twice in the Mishnah (Shabbat 19:2, 19:5) in reference to the act of circumcision (mohalin).
It is tempting to say that the words mohel and mohalin derives from the same Biblical root MEM-(VAV)-LAMMED as the Biblical verbs for “circumcising” mentioned above. However, this is somewhat problematic because mohel has an extra HEY that seems to be part of the root, while the Biblical root has no HEY in the middle. The presence of this extra HEY suggests that the root of mohel is actually MEM-HEY-LAMMED, not MEM-(VAV)-LAMMED. Interestingly, in one case the Mishna uses the more abbreviated verb mal (Shabbat 19:6) to denote “circumcising.” That word actually appears already in the Bible (Deut. 30:6, Josh. 5:4, 5:7), and does not have the elusive HEY that we are discussing. I do not know why this particular Mishna uses a different verb for “circumcising.”
But there is another approach which bridges the gap between these two roots and sees them as interrelated. Even though I already mentioned that cognates of mohel in the sense “circumcising” do not appear in the Bible, the root MEM-HEY-LAMMED does appear once in the Bible in a context that seemingly has nothing to do with circumcision. When Isaiah criticizes the Jewish People for engaging in questionable business practices, he accuses, “your wine is diluted [mahul] in water” (Isa. 1:22), charging that wine merchants would regularly dilute their wine in water, but would continue to sell it as though they were hawking unadulterated wine. The word mahul here is a hapax legomenon that refers to “diluting,” and is thus the only instance of the root MEM-HEY-LAMMED in the Bible. [In the Mishnah there are comparable terms, like michal (Demai 7:4) or mochal (Taharot 9:3, Mikvaot 7:3-4, Machsirin 6:5), and some versions actually read mohal. All of these refer to “diluted, watery liquids.” Similarly, the reddish liquids that comes out of a piece of meat after it had been salted according to Halacha is called mohal, and does not have the Halachic status of blood (see Shach to Yoreh Deah §69:79).]
In discussing the Biblical word mahul, Rabbi Shmuel David Luzzatto (1800–1865), known as Shadal (in his commentary to Isa. 1:22) connects that word back to the concept of “circumcising/cutting.” He explains that in both Arabic and Latin idiom, when one dilutes wine by mixing it into water, one can be said to "kill," "slaughter," "wound," or "cut" the now- adulterated wine. This is because one essentially “cuts” the sharpness/potency of wine by watering it down. Based on this thematic affinity, Shadal understands that it makes sense to say that the roots for “circumcising/cutting” and the roots for “diluting” are etymologically-related to each other, as “diluting” is just another form of “cutting.” This approach is also accepted by other language scholars like the German linguist Wilhelm Gesenius (1786–1842) and Dr. Alexander Kohut (1842–1894).
*For more about the Hebrew terms for “circumcisor” —including mohel, gozer, rofeh, and umana — check out the full version of this essay on the Ohr Somayach website at: http://ohr.edu/this_week/whats_in_a_word/
