What a word Doesn't mean

I am a fan of words because I see them as, simultaneously, the signals which cement meaning and fix it in place, and open it up for interpretation. Somehow and magically, words tell us what to know and what we don't know. The Tanach, the written Jewish bible uses words in such a perfect combination that often, we can find significantly deeper possibilities by looking not at what the word means but what the word might be telling us.

For years, I have enjoyed pointing out to students that when the biblical text refers to the Children of Israel as slaves, it calls them "avadim", as the root a-v-d refers to work. But God wants them released from bondage so that "וְיַֽעַבְדֵ֔נִי" v'ya'avdeinu, that he may worship me, even though the root is the same as that of "slave." Prayer is called "avodah sheb'lev" work that is in the heart. Sacrificial rites are called "the avodah." We left serving one master not for some myth of absolute freedom, but so that we could move from one form of Avodah, work, into a higher form of Avodah, worship. Same word! Different subtlety of meaning. The context is important -- the avodah we had in Egypt is not the same as what we have in the service of Hashem.

In Exodus 11:1, God explains to Moses what will happen after the 10th plague. God assures Moses that Par'oh will let the Hebrew slaves go, completely and without qualification. The phrase God uses is

אַֽחֲרֵי־כֵ֕ן יְשַׁלַּ֥ח אֶתְכֶ֖ם מִזֶּ֑ה כְּשַׁ֨לְּח֔וֹ כָּלָ֕ה גָּרֵ֛שׁ יְגָרֵ֥שׁ אֶתְכֶ֖ם מִזֶּֽה

after this, he will send you from here -- [and] when he sends you it will be completely, surely he will cast you out from here.

That's my translation, using the material from sefaria.org, informed by the Rashi commentary which reads

"Onkelos renders it by גמירא, taking כלה in sense of כליל entirely; i. e. he will send all of you away."

Rashi's comment is on the word "כָּלָ֕ה " kallah. He shows how the Aramaic translation connects it to the word k'lil, completely. That word appears in some form or another 15 times in the entire of Tanach with approximately 6 of those instances being in the 5 books of Moses. It means "completely" in places like Exodus 28:31, describing the pure, complete blue of the priest's robe. In Leviticus 6:15 it points to the completely burned offering. In fact, the form Kallah appears 22 times in Tanach, pointing to totality (or complete togetherness, as in Gen 18:21). The Even-Shoshan concordance has yet another entry for the same letters connecting to 206 other uses in various forms (with meanings like "totally lost," "destroyed" and "completed"). The word, it seems, really does point to the absolute nature of the expulsion from Egypt. This, of course, begs the question of "if the meaning is so clear, why did Rashi have to point it out? What other meaning could he be alluding to and discounting, that he needed to clarify it?"

Words allow us more. The text does not say that when Par'oh sends them out, he will "send" (sh-l-ch) the people -- it says that when he sends the people, he will surely chase them out (g-r-sh). That root appears 47 times in Tanach, referring to separation, or removal by force. One way in which it appears is in the discussion of a g'rusha, a divorced woman (check Lev 21:7, 21:14, 22:13, Num 30:10). Now, the root also appears in a variety of cases where the meaning has nothing to do with divorce, so why would it be significant that the word is used in Ex 11:1?

The structure of the phrase is one reason. The quoted section of verse reads, literally

אַֽחֲרֵי־כֵ֕ן after this
יְשַׁלַּ֥ח he will send
אֶתְכֶ֖ם you (pl)
מִזֶּ֑ה from this

and then כְּשַׁ֨לְּח֔וֹ. K'shalcho. The prefix kaf here means "When" as in "when he sends you" so that it is followed by kallah -- when he sends you, completely you will surely be chased out.

כְּשַׁ֨לְּח֔וֹ when he sends,
כָּלָ֕ה completely
גָּרֵ֛שׁ יְגָרֵ֥שׁ surely he will chase
אֶתְכֶ֖ם you (pl)
מִזֶּֽה from this.

It is true that Par'oh sent the people out, but did he chase them out? More accurately, he chased them to try and get them back! So seeing the word "g-r-sh" as a simple "chase" doesn't fully capture the event.

Then we recall that the kaf, however, can also be used as a prefix meaning "like" which would turn the word k'shalcho into "like when he sends".

Then the next word is kallah. As stated above, kallah means "completely" when spelled with a kamatz under the kaf. But the text is written without vowels, so the word could also be seen as a form with a patach under the kaf (and many would not hear a difference in pronunciation). The word kallah with a patach means "bride." It appears 34 times in various forms referring to a woman who is engaged or married*. Interestingly, when discussing a woman who is divorced, the text speaks of her as having been "sent out" (see Deut 24:1,3) with the same sh-l-ch word. Putting it all together (a word referring to a divorcee, a bride and a sending out) we might see the verse very differently.

This would turn the second phrase into

כְּשַׁ֨לְּח֔וֹ like when he sends
כָּלָ֕ה a bride
גָּרֵ֛שׁ יְגָרֵ֥שׁ surely he will divorce
אֶתְכֶ֖ם you (pl)
מִזֶּֽה from this.

It is important to remember that God spoke of the Children of Israel as his bride! (Jer 2:2). The notion of a divine marriage and divorce is an essential aspect to understanding the relationship between God and his people.

Now, not only can we understand what Rashi was clarifying, but we can see how the words have that same dual identity as the example I gave way above. The word "avodah" means worship, but only in the context of Hashem. The Hebrew in Egypt did NOT worship Par'oh -- their avodah was servitude. Same word, but different meanings. If we looked at Ex. 11:1 as about a divorce, it would seem that our relationship with Par'oh was on par with what our relationship with Hashem was going to me -- a marriage. But Rashi comes in and says that, no, this cannot be the case. Same words, but specifically different meanings. He cites Onkelos and says "the kallah word here is NOT about marriage, but about totality -- don't think it is about a bride, even though the other words lend themselves towards that reading!"

Though the language that describes our roles and relationships in Egypt is similar to the words used to connect us to Hashem, it is important to see that the context points to qualitatively different experiences.

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*though I have been told that, strictly speaking, it means 'daughter-in-law' and became "wife" because of the idea that the father, agreeing to match for his son gets the son a wife and himself a daughter-in-law in one fell swoop