An adverb meaning 'yesterday,' 'formerly,' or 'in time past.' Often used in the phrase 'ethmol shilshom' meaning 'yesterday and the day before' — an idiom for 'in times past' or 'as formerly.'
The Hebrew conception of time is not merely chronological but experiential and relational. When God warns Israel not to mistreat foreigners because they 'were foreigners in Egypt' (Exodus 22:21), the appeal is to ethmol — what they once were shapes how they must now act. Memory of past experience, whether of suffering or of deliverance, is the foundation of covenant ethics. The past is not merely gone; it is formative.