February 23, 2022
Bread Versus Meat
The Arabic word for meat is nearly the same as the Hebrew word for bread. The source of the difference reveals much about geography, culture, and human settlement.
Frederick P. Wiener has been studying Arabic. “Of course,” he writes, “I have noticed the significant number of cognates with Hebrew words, which almost always mean the same thing or something similar in both languages. One word that has puzzled me, however, is the Hebrew leḥem, ‘bread,’ whose Arabic cognate of laḥm means meat. I would think there must be an interesting explanation behind this difference in meaning, and I would appreciate your take on it.”
My take begins with the fourth chapter of the Bible. There we read:
And Abel was a herder of sheep, while Cain was a tiller of the soil. And it happened in the course of time that Cain brought from the fruit of the soil an offering to the Lord. And Abel, too, brought from the first-born of his flock and its fat, and the Lord heeded Abel and his offering, but Cain and his offering He did not heed. And Cain was much angered and his face fell.