Tanach Thoughts

Yesterday, Shabbat of Chol Hamo'ed Pesach 5784, I said a Dvar Torah by my grandparents' שיחיו house. The DT was about the subject of the Israelites having "borrowed" wealth from the Egyptians. It was essentially a combination of what Dr. Aton M. Holzer wrote here and my answer here  on Mi Yodeya. The gist is that while different answers have been given over the millennia as to why it was okay for the Israelites to take the Egyptian wealth, apparently only Dr. Holzer has provided a reasonable explanation for why they claimed they were merely "borrowing". He suggested that the borrowing was based on a Hittite ritual similar to the Israelite scapegoat ritual (more on that, see here , pp. 16-17) where the Hittites adorned two slaves, a bull and an ewe with gold and colorful wool and sent them away to take away a plague caused by an angry enemy deity. The Israelites told the Egyptians they would take the 10 plagues from Egypt but they had to do it properly: adorn...

A thought that I had a bit earlier: When I think about the word "dvir" (דביר), I understand what it's used to refer to: The inner sanctum of a temple (also borrowed to refer to a city in Eretz Yehudah). But I don't know the etymology of the word. What does the word itself literally mean? What do all of its parts put together mean? Why does dvir specifically mean inner sanctum? Well, I don't have a clear answer on that, but I had a thought: Many letters in Semitic languages are interchangeable and often get switched around. And it just so happens that all of the letters in dvir can be interchanged. In this case, some meaning of the word dvir can be leaned by switching three of its four letters: ד, י, ר with their parallels ז, ו, ל. Keeping the ב, we get the word "Zvul" (זבול) which is also a term used to refer to a temple, or part of a temple. I think that's pretty neat.