הכתב והקבלה — גורל אחד לעזאזל

Q — What does 'עזאזל' actually mean? Chazal (Yoma 67b) and Rashi take it from 'עז וקשה' — 'fierce and hard,' a name for the rugged terrain. HaKtav rejects this and offers a different etymology.

A — HaKtav VeHaKabbalah parses the word as a *compound* of two roots: 'עזא' + 'זל.' The first half — 'עזא' — derives from 'עזה' (strength, force, as in 'רוח קדים עזה,' 'עזה כמות אהבה'), but with a deliberate orthographic intensifier: the substitution of א for the normal ה. He grounds this principle in Rabbenu Bachya (Bamidbar 11:20): wherever a word that should end in ה is written with א, the change *magnifies* the meaning ('מרא' is bitterer than 'מרה'; 'בחמא' is fierier than 'בחמה'; 'לזרא' is more repulsive than the standard form). So 'עזא' marks *extraordinary* strength. Combined with the second component, the name designates a terrain of *exceedingly* harsh, hard wildness — a place named for the intensity of its forbidding character, not merely its strength.