tovel

The verb טָבַל taval appears 16 times in the Tanakh. In almost all of them, it means "to dip, to immerse" (something in a liquid). In one verse, however, it means to immerse oneself:וַיֵּרֶד וַיִּטְבֹּל בַּיַּרְדֵּן שֶׁבַע פְּעָמִים כִּדְבַר אִישׁ הָאֱלֹהִים וַיָּשׇׁב בְּשָׂרוֹ כִּבְשַׂר נַעַר קָטֹן וַיִּטְהָר׃"So he [Naaman] went down and immersed himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had bidden; and his flesh became like a little boy’s, and he was pure." (Melachim II 5:14)The use of the kal form taval to describe ritual dipping in water is familiar from Talmudic and later Hebrew (along with the gerund tevila טְבִילָה - "immersion.") But in rest of Tanakh, the verb rachatz רחץ is used for such bathing. In fact, in the same story of Naaman, we find use of rachatz in the previous verse: רְחַץ וּטְהָר - "bathe and be pure."Since in Rabbinic Hebrew taval generally referred to ritual immersion of a person in a mikveh, the other forms of the verb (absent in biblical Hebrew)…