כִּֽי־הִנֵּ֥ה הסתו [הַסְּתָ֖יו] עָבָ֑ר הַגֶּ֕שֶׁם חָלַ֖ף הָלַ֥ךְ לֽוֹ׃
For now the winter is past,
The rains are over and gone.
The rains are over and gone.
הִנֵּה הַסְּתָו עָבָר. אֵין עַכְשָׁיו טֹרַח בַּדֶּרֶךְ. סְתָו חֹרֶף. תַּרְגּוּם חֹרֶף סִתְוָא:
For behold, the winter is past. There is no difficulty in traveling now. “סְתָיו” is winter. The Targum of חֹרֶף [=winter] is סִתְוָא.
משל:
כי כבר עבר הסתיו. וגם הגשם שבא אחר הסתיו, כבר חלף והלך לו בהחלט:
Because the winter had already passed Also the rain that comes after the winter had already turned and stopped.
כי הנה הסתיו עבר. כי כבר עבר החורף וחלף זמן הגשם, ואין טורח להולכי אורח והנמשל הוא שאמר הנה כבר נשלם ימי השעבוד וזמן עבודת הפרך:
The winter had passed and the time of the rain had passed by and there is no more trouble for the passerby.
הסתיו. זמן החורף כי וקיץ וחורף (בראשית ח כב), תרגם אונקלוס וקיטא וסתוא:
Stav: time of the winter based on the Onkelos translation of Genesis 8:22, summer and winter.
Word of the Day Stav: How the Ancient Word for Winter Turned Into Fall
Let's face it, Israel doesn't have an autumn and so, neither did the ancient Israelites.
By Elon Gilad
It is autumn, or in Hebrew - stav. If you live in New England, France or some other temperate clime you may be watching the leaves turn gold and brown.
Not here in Israel. We don’t have a fall. Israel has only two seasons - winter and summer. So it isn’t surprising that in the Hebrew of old, in the Bible, Talmud and other ancient texts, there is no word for this lovely season.
But that doesn’t mean that the word stav doesn’t appear in the Bible - it does once: “For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone” (Song of Solomon 2:11).
You’ll notice that the translators of the King James Bible translated stav as winter. This is as it should be; the translation is clearly supported by the text - surely it isn’t autumn that ends with the last rain of the season. And in fact, the word stav comes from the Aramaic word sitva, which plainly means winter.
People continued to use the word stav to mean winter through antiquity and the Middle Ages. That persisted until Mordechai Yaweel published his book Limudei Hateva (“Nature Studies”) in 1836, in which he stated: “The time during which the heat little by little subsides and the cold takes its place shall be called stav.”
The highly influential poet Judah Leib Gordon picked up on this and began using the word in this sense. Later teachers in Israel followed suit, raising the first generations of native Hebrew speakers using stav to mean autumn, not winter. Eventually, everyone was using stav for autumn and ho-REF became the only word for winter.
Let's face it, Israel doesn't have an autumn and so, neither did the ancient Israelites.
By Elon Gilad
It is autumn, or in Hebrew - stav. If you live in New England, France or some other temperate clime you may be watching the leaves turn gold and brown.
Not here in Israel. We don’t have a fall. Israel has only two seasons - winter and summer. So it isn’t surprising that in the Hebrew of old, in the Bible, Talmud and other ancient texts, there is no word for this lovely season.
But that doesn’t mean that the word stav doesn’t appear in the Bible - it does once: “For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone” (Song of Solomon 2:11).
You’ll notice that the translators of the King James Bible translated stav as winter. This is as it should be; the translation is clearly supported by the text - surely it isn’t autumn that ends with the last rain of the season. And in fact, the word stav comes from the Aramaic word sitva, which plainly means winter.
People continued to use the word stav to mean winter through antiquity and the Middle Ages. That persisted until Mordechai Yaweel published his book Limudei Hateva (“Nature Studies”) in 1836, in which he stated: “The time during which the heat little by little subsides and the cold takes its place shall be called stav.”
The highly influential poet Judah Leib Gordon picked up on this and began using the word in this sense. Later teachers in Israel followed suit, raising the first generations of native Hebrew speakers using stav to mean autumn, not winter. Eventually, everyone was using stav for autumn and ho-REF became the only word for winter.
אמר רבי יהושע בן לוי למה נמשלו ישראל לזית לומר לך מה זית אין עליו נושרין לא בימות החמה ולא בימות הגשמים אף ישראל אין להם בטילה עולמית לא בעוה"ז ולא בעולם הבא ואמר רבי יוחנן למה נמשלו ישראל לזית לומר לך מה זית אינו מוציא שמנו אלא ע"י כתיתה אף ישראל אין חוזרין למוטב אלא ע"י יסורין
The verse in Jeremiah compares the Jewish people to an olive tree: “The Lord called your name a leafy olive tree.” Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi says: Why were the Jewish people likened to an olive tree? It is to tell you that just as the leaves of an olive tree never fall off, neither in the summer nor in the rainy season, so too, the Jewish people will never be nullified, neither in this world nor in the World-to-Come. And Rabbi Yoḥanan says: Why were the Jewish people likened to an olive tree? It is to tell you that just as an olive tree brings forth its oil only by means of crushing and breaking, so too, the Jewish people, if they sin, return to good ways only by means of suffering.