Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Kevin L. Barney" <klbarney AT yahoo.com>]

I shared this thread with a friend who is not on the list; he asked me to
share the following information:

The term shenhabbim used in 1 Kings 10:22 and 2 Chronicles 9:21 is 
rendered
"teeth of elephants" by both LXX and V.  Shen, of course, is the Hebrew 
for
"tooth," and is used of ivory in a number of passages (1 Kings 10:18; 
22:39; 1
Chronicles 9:17; Psalm 45:9; Ezekiel 27:6, 15; Amos 3:15; Song 5:14; 
7:5). This
suggests that habbim means "elephants."  I suggest that it is a 
borrowing from
Egyptian 3bw, "elephant," where 3 is the glottal stop, like Hebrew 
aleph (Wb I,
7, 15).  With different determinatives, the Egyptian word can mean 
"ivory" (Wb
I, 7, 16-17) and is also the name of the city of Elephantine, which is 
called
yeb in the Aramaic papyri and 'ieb in some Greek documents (Wb I, 
7,18).

John A. Tvedtnes

Kevin L. Barney
Hoffman Estates, Illinois
klbarney AT yahoo.com