Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 12/7/06, Yigal Levin wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> The word "hed" appears only in Ezekiel 7:7 - the "hed" of the mountains. Most
> English translations have "joyful shouting" or such like, probably assuming a
> connection to "hedad" (which appears only in Isaiah).
>
> In modern Hebrew, this word is used for "echo" - which makes sense: the
> "sound" of the mountains". However, is this just a modern Hebrew adaptation?
> Or is it based on ANE cognates or ancient translation traditions? If the 
> latter,
> that is, the word did originally mean "echo", what is its etymology? Is it
> onomatapoeic, based on the sound of echoing?.

The word "Hed" is found in the Even Shoshan dictionary as follows: the word
itself is marked biblical and a little note is written "according to the
interpretation of Ezekiel 7:7"  Next, the two definitions "echo" and 
"response"
are placed with the marking of "Modern Hebrew" (a little superscript Het).  
So,
this would mean that the word with the meaning "echo" is just Modern Hebrew.
HALOT gives cognates for Hed as Arabic ha:dd roraring of the sea, rumbling
of the earth, ha:ddat thunder, and Ugaritic hd.  Also the theophoric name
hadad is found in some Canaanite names as haddu such as Niqmahaddu of
Ugarit, Ribhadda of Byblos, as I'm sure you know.  So on that basis the
equation of Hed with Hedad is probably reasonable.  One article, not related
to anything but which came up during my search for Canaanite names with
the haddu component is:
The Onomastic Evidence for Bronze-Age West Semitic, by M. O'Connor
http://www.questia.com/PM.qst;?a=o&d=5013788435
no firewalls or anything :)

Yitzhak Sapir