Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Isaac Fried:
 
You wrote:  “So XEBRON is a collection of dwellings upon a large hill with 
caves that may be used as dignified burial places.”
 
1.  I may semi-agree with your proposed new etymology of “Hebron”, though I 
think the conventional etymology is more straightforward.  But both 
etymologies may have played a role in the Biblical interpretation of “Hebron”.
 
2.  Your proposed etymology of “Hebron” would work well for Hebron as a high 
plateau, or for Hebron as a high altitude city.  That works nicely for both 
the modern city of Hebron, south of Jerusalem, and for the Hebron in the 
books 
of the Bible after Genesis.  But it does not work for the “Hebron” in the 
Patriarchal narratives.
 
Rather than being a high plateau or a high altitude city, the “Hebron” of 
the Patriarchs was a valley:
 
“So he [Jacob] sent him [Joseph] out of the vale [Valley] of Hebron, and he 
came to Shechem.”  Genesis 37: 14
 
The word for “vale” or “Valley” there is ayin-mem-qof, which means, per 
Gesenius, “a low tract of land of wide extent”.
 
The Patriarchs live in tents in the low-lying Hebron Valley, near a huge oak 
tree called the oak of Mamre.  Up on the top of one of the surrounding hills 
is the city of Arbe.  But Hebron itself is not a city, much less the city of 
Arbe.
 
A later editor, perhaps JEPD, tried to claim that Hebron and Arbe were one 
and the same, so that instead of being a valley, Hebron would be 
reconceptualized as being a high altitude city on a plateau south of 
Jerusalem.  But a 
reference to “now Hebron” is a late gloss, an openly-disclosed editorial 
footnote 
giving the later editor’s own comment on the text, rather than being an 
original part of the text.  That highly suspect phrase is shown in brackets 
here:
 
“And Sarah died in Kiriatharba [--the same is Hebron--] in the land of Canaan…
.”  Genesis 23: 2
 
That sentence originally read:  “And Sarah died in Kiriatharba in the land of 
Canaan….”
 
In the Patriarchal narratives, “Hebron” is a low-lying valley north of 
Jerusalem, not a high plateau or a high altitude city south of Jerusalem, as 
it is 
in later books in the Bible.
 
3.  Going back now to etymology, “Hebron” is het-bet-resh + vav-nun, that 
is, XBR + ON.  The suffix vav-nun/ON means “the place of”.  The conventional 
view of het-bet-resh/XBR is that it means “binding friendship”.  
Het-bet-resh/XBR means “to join”, and hence “have fellowship with”, “league”, 
“be bound 
in friendship”, or simply “society”.
 
A valley located about half-way between Shechem and Jerusalem, essentially on 
the border between north and south Canaan, could well be called “the Valley 
of Binding Friendship”, with the idea being that of binding north and south 
together.  Such a meaning does not fit well the high plateau of the modern 
city 
of Hebron, which is more like living on a mountaintop and looking down upon 
everyone else.  On the other hand, your proposed new etymology of “a 
collection 
of dwellings upon a large hill with caves that may be used as dignified 
burial 
places” fits the site of modern Hebron beautifully, while not fitting a 
valley 
in central Canaan at all.
 
When JEPD, who lived in Jerusalem in southern Canaan over a period of several 
centuries in the mid-1st millennium BCE, decided to reconceptualize the 
Patriarchs as having sojourned mostly in southern Canaan (near now beloved 
Jerusalem) when the Patriarchs were in Canaan, rather than the text’s 
presentation of 
the Patriarchs as consistently sojourning in northern Canaan when they are in 
Canaan, JEPD may have used your alternative etymology of “Hebron”.  The 
concept of “a large hill” fits the high plateau of modern Hebron, south of 
Jerusalem, perfectly.  So your complex proposed etymology may have played a 
role in 
Biblical interpretation, even though it is much easier to see the XBR in 
“Hebron
” as coming exclusively from the word XBR, meaning “binding friendship”, and 
having nothing to do with words for “great” or “large” or “hill” or “
excavate”.
 
I love your analysis that the root of aRBe/”four” is RB/”many”.  That sets 
the stage for RBT (with a common tav/T ending for Canaanite place names) 
being 
found both on the Thutmosis III list and in the Amarna Letters, meaning the 
city of “Arbe” that is referenced in the Patriarchal narratives.  And I can 
see how, with a lot of work, a person (especially a later editor of the Bible 
like JEPD) could possibly view “Hebron” as entailing “a collection of 
dwellings 
upon a large hill with caves that may be used as dignified burial places.”  
Maybe it was precisely that etymological gambit that allowed JEPD to 
reconceptualize “Hebron” in the Patriarchal narratives as no longer being a 
low-lying 
valley between Shechem and Jerusalem, but rather now being viewed as being a 
high altitude city on a high plateau south of Jerusalem.
 
But be that as it may, in the Patriarchal narratives “Hebron” is a valley, 
located north of Jerusalem.  The Valley of Hebron in the Patriarchal 
narratives 
is located at a very different place than is the city of Hebron in later 
books in the Bible.  The Patriarchs are never portrayed in the Patriarchal 
narratives as sojourning in southern Canaan.  The Biblical Valley of Hebron 
in 
Genesis is located at the bottom of the hill where the historical city of 
RBT/Arbe 
(at the top of that hill) is documented as being located in the Late Bronze 
Age 
secular historical records:  north of Jerusalem.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois




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