Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yigal Levin" <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>]

Karl, try this one:

Gen. 46:13: Beney Yissakar, Tola( Upuvah Yob Ve$imron. Repeated with slight
variations in Num. 26:23-24 and 1 Chr. 7:1, both of which have "Ye$ub"
instead of "Yob". 1 Chr. 7:1 also has "Pu)ah" instead of "Puvah".

So Issachar son of Jacob had four sons.

But in Judges 10:1, there's a "minor judge" by the name of Tola( ben Pu)ah
ben Dodo, a man of Issachar, "vehu) Yo$ev be$amir behar Ephraim". So yes,
its possible that this judge was named after the son of his tribal
patriarch, and his father was named after another son of the tribal
patriarch, and that he just happened to live in a place that had a name
similar to another son of the tribal patriarch, and that the word
"sits/dwells" happens to have the same consonants as the third son of his
tribal patriarch, but that's to many coinsidences for me. As far as I'm
concerned, there are two logical possibilities - either the list of
Issachar's "sons" was invented by P (or by whatever tradition P was
following) by taking elements from all we know about anyone from this tribe,
or the Deuteronomistic author/editor/redactor of Judges "invented" the
details about the judge by using the names in the genealogies.

Yigal