Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Puns on Historical City Names in Genesis
 
“Shechem” and “Dothan” are historical names of historical cities in 
northern Canaan.  But what about the names of the other 10 cities near which 
the 
Patriarchs are portrayed as sojourning in the Patriarchal narratives?  Can we 
really believe that these are fictional names of fictional cities in southern 
Canaan?  Consider the apt remark of Anson Rainey at p. 9 of “The Sacred 
Bridge”:
 
“The written sources we study may all have an agenda, e.g. Pharaonic 
propaganda, religious exhortation, but the allusions to geographical details 
are 
seldom a matter of invention.”
 
Yet in his long, exhaustive book on Biblical geography, Anson Rainey himself 
cannot figure out these 10 references.
 
The secret is puns.  No one loved puns more than the author of the 
Patriarchal narratives.  The names of all 12 sons of Jacob are explicit puns. 
 The name 
of every other major character in the Patriarchal narratives is an implicit 
pun.  All four wells that Isaac digs in Gerar are given names that are 
explicit 
puns.  So why shouldn’t city names in this text be puns as well?  Is it a “
coincidence” that Abraham gets great divine promises of progeny and land at “
Beth-el”, where “Beth-el” means “house of God”?  Or that the famous Jacob’s 
Ladder divine dream occurs at a place that Jacob calls “Beth-el”?  If 
“Beth-el”
 is an obvious pun, then why not ask if the names of all the cities where the 
Patriarchs are portrayed as sojourning are puns?  The author wouldn’t likely 
give us fictional names of fictional cities in southern Canaan.  That makes 
no 
sense.  No, he is giving us appropriate puns on historical names of 
historical Late Bronze Age cities in northern Canaan.
 
Consider as Exhibit A “Migdal-edar”, at Genesis 35: 21.  Does it make sense 
for that to be a fictional name of a fictional city between Bethlehem of 
Judea 
and the modern city of Hebron?  Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense for this to 
be a pun on two historical names of historical cities in Late Bronze Age 
northern Canaan?
 
In making a pun, one is looking for a different spelling with a somewhat 
similar sound.  The sound should be similar enough so that the audience can 
recognize the original, historical name.  But the sound will usually be 
different 
enough so that the audience will be able to recognize the pun without being 
explicitly told that it is a pun.
 
The most obvious way to do a pun in Biblical Hebrew is to substitute one 
guttural sound for another.  Aleph and ayin had different sounds in Biblical 
Hebrew, but they were both guttural sounds.  So as to pronunciation, the 
sounds of 
these two gutturals were similar enough that the audience could guess what 
the 
original, historical name had been when the normal guttural was used.  
Changing the guttural sound often changes the meaning, enabling the author to 
make a 
comment by means of a pun.
 
“Edar” is spelled in the text with an ayin:  ayin-dalet-resh.  If this is a 
pun, then the most likely word on which this is a pun would be a word that 
had 
aleph instead of ayin, namely:  aleph-dalet-resh.  All of a sudden, 
everything now makes perfect sense.  Adar/aleph-dalet-resh is an historical 
Late Bronze 
Age city in Galilee.  So is Migdal/mem-gimel-dalet-lamed.  “Migdal” is item 
#115 on the mid-15th century BCE list of pharaoh Thutmosis of Canaanite 
cities, most of which cities were in Galilee.  “Adar” is item #28 on pharaoh 
Shisak’
s list from the 10th century BCE.  Both cities are in Amarna Letter 256: 24 
from the mid-14th century BCE in the Late Bronze Age:  “Magdalu” and “Aduru” 
(where Akkadian cuneiform routinely has a U at the end of a name, and the 
vowel sounds in the middle of these words are not explicitly set forth in the 
original Hebrew unpointed text of the Patriarchal narratives).
 
“Edar”, spelled in Genesis with an ayin in order to make a pun, means “flock”
.  “Migdal” means “watchtower”.  Note now the nifty pun at Genesis 35: 21:
 
“Israel journeyed on, and pitched his tent beyond migdal edar [Migdal (and) 
Edar].”
 
Jacob/“Israel” is going to “watch” over his “flock” near Migdal (“
watchtower”) and Edar (“flock”).
 
Scholars see half of the pun.  They see that “migdal” and “edar” are 
suitable words for a herder of sheep and goats like Jacob who is “watching” 
over 
his “flock”, since “migdal” means “watchtower” and “edar” means “flock”.  
(The word “edar”/ayin-dalet-resh is used 9 other times in the Patriarchal 
narratives to mean “flock”.)
 
But scholars have failed to see the historical names of historical Late 
Bronze Age cities in northern Canaan that are being punned upon here.  
“Migdal” is 
historical Migdal, in Late Bronze Age Galilee.  “Edar” is a pun on 
historical “Adar”, also in Late Bronze Age Galilee.  The unexpected spelling 
of “Edar”
 with an ayin has no linguistic relationship to the aleph at the beginning of 
the historical name “Adar”, but rather is a deliberate pun, based solely on 
somewhat similar sound.  The word “and” is also deleted between the two city 
names, in order to make this pun.
 
Note that the historical city name “Adar”/aleph-dalet-resh means “
exceedingly glorious”, and as such is not a fitting name for a place where 
Jacob is 
routinely pasturing his flock.  (Or if the aleph were viewed as not being 
part of 
the root, then the remaining dalet-resh/D-R would mean “habitation”, again 
not being a fitting name.)  Changing the aleph guttural to an ayin guttural 
changes the meaning of the word completely, making it mean something 
appropriate 
to what Jacob is doing there:  “flock”.  “Edar” is not an “exceedingly 
glorious” place, but rather is a run-of-the-mill historical city in Late 
Bronze Age 
Galilee where Jacob is temporarily pasturing his “flock” of sheep and goats.  
By contrast, “Migdal” is a natural pun of sorts, being both the historical 
name of an historical city in Late Bronze Age northern Canaan, and also 
meaning 
“watchtower”.  Yet a “watchtower” could be stretched to reference a 
shepherd “watching” over his flock only if “migdal” was immediately followed 
by “
edar”/“flock”, hence “Migdal-edar” at Genesis 35: 21.  We begin to see that 
these puns are not easy.  Rather, these puns have been meticulously created 
by 
the author of the Patriarchal narratives, who is modifying the spelling of 
historical names of historical cities in Late Bronze Age northern Canaan to 
make 
them into appropriate puns that tell us what the Patriarchs do at these 
places. 
 
Every city in Canaan near which the Patriarchs are portrayed as sojourning is 
like “Migdal-edar”.  In every case, the historical name of an historical 
city in Late Bronze Age northern Canaan is being referenced.  But in most 
cases, 
the author is deliberately making a pun by using a spelling that differs from 
the historical spelling, and that has merely a somewhat similar sound, not 
the 
same sound as the original.
 
“Dothan” and “Shechem” are natural puns.  Most of the other 10 cities 
become puns only by virtue of an unexpected spelling that is usually not 
linguistically derivable from the historical spelling.  But the important 
point is that 
all 12 cities near which the Patriarchs sojourn are intentional puns.  The 
names of all important characters, all wells, all trees, and all cities in 
Canaan 
near which the Patriarchs sojourn are puns.  The name of the city always 
tells us something important as to what role that city plays for the 
Patriarchs.  
But rather than being empty, easy puns that have no historical reference, 
each 
pun in fact is a brilliant pun that is closely based on the historical name 
of a known historical city in Late Bronze Age northern Canaan.  That is the 
way 
the author of the Patriarchal narratives uniquely operates.  
 
Rather than focusing on this as a literary matter, I think we should 
investigate these puns in order to discover the historical setting of the 
Patriarchal 
narratives.  By analyzing these 12 city names, we start to see that the 
author 
of the Patriarchal narratives has an encyclopedic knowledge of Late Bronze 
Age northern Canaan, while saying essentially nothing about (i) southern 
Canaan 
or (ii) any period of time after (or before) the Late Bronze Age.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois




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