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What Does יירוט Even Mean?!

We hear the word יירוט (interception) day in and day out on the news. But what’s the real story behind it? Where did it come from, and what does it actually mean? Here’s the lowdown – cut it out and save it.



So, יירוט (interception) is when you purposefully mess with something’s course – be it a plane, a ship, or even a missile – either by forcing it to take a detour or by knocking it out of the sky. These days, יירוט has also become a way to stop missiles and other nasty weapons from reaching their targets. And in the world of espionage? They’re intercepting messages all the time to scoop up hidden intel, usually without anyone noticing.


It looks like the word יירוט showed up in Hebrew as a translation of the military term “interception.” We first see it in Hebrew newspapers in the late 1950s, in phrases like “interception aircraft” (יירוט מטוס).


But where did יירוט originally come from? The root of this modern term goes way back to a mysterious verb in the Bible. Check this out: In the Book of Numbers, Balaam is on his way to curse the Israelites, but his donkey has other plans. It spots an angel of the Lord blocking the path and decides to take a detour. After Balaam gets frustrated and gives the donkey a beating, the donkey basically says, “What’s your deal?!” And then Balaam finally sees the angel too. The angel says: “Why have you beaten your donkey these three times? I have come here to oppose you because your path is reckless before me. The donkey saw me and turned away from me these three times...” (Numbers 22:32-33).


The tricky part here is the phrase “because your path is reckless before me,” where the Hebrew word יָרַט shows up. It’s a tough one to interpret, and it has sparked tons of debate. The ancient Greek translation of the Bible, the Septuagint, and a few other translators understood יָרַט to mean "destroyed." But by the time we get to the medieval commentators (think Ibn Ezra, Ramban, Radak, and Ralbag), they were leaning toward meanings like “distortion,” “deviation,” and “diversion.”


Nowadays, besides those classic interpretations, some scholars think יָרַט might mean something urgent (like the angel was rushing somewhere), while others say it might have connections to similar words in Arabic. And some folks? They believe it’s just a good old-fashioned typo!


The interpretation of יָרַט as “diverted” is what eventually led to the creation of the modern verb יֵרֵט – meaning to knock something off its path. There’s even a cheeky bit of rabbinic interpretation that may have played a role, where they say יָרַט is an acronym describing the donkey’s behavior: "Yir'ah (fear) – Ra'atah (saw) – Nat'tah (deviated)" (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 105a; Menachot 66b, and a few others).

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