Biblical Hebrew Forum

["G. Zack" <atdgz AT hotmail.com>]

Your initial statement was, should I say, sweeping: "... A Personal name is 
not  a grammatically structured word.".

This, of course, is not the fact.

Even the limitation to "early, biblical names" is overly restrictive. 
Certainly all names, royal or lay ending with "Yah" or commencing with "Yho" 
etc.,throughout the entire period covered by the bible, were meaningful 
structures. But not only.

Gad Za"k
CC: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
From: if AT math.bu.edu
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Jacob-El
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 18:18:25 -0500
To: atdgz AT hotmail.com



I am not sure what you are saying. Do you think that YICXAQ the son of SARAH 
is the Hebrew word: he will laugh, from the root CXQ? I would agree with you 
that, at least the early, biblical names include the names of foreign 
deities. It stands to reason that these names were deformed by latter editors 
of the bible, and were associated, as a cover up, with fanciful etymologies.
Isaac Fried, Boston University
On Jan 22, 2009, at 5:54 PM, G. Zack wrote:
Isaac,
I am amazed at your statement.
Without citing a host of clear counter examples from the entire ancient 
Middle East (and for centuries later throughout Europe), let alone other, 
unrelated cultures, and as analyzed  in great detail by, e.g.,  experts of 
ancient Semite  languages (Cross, Alt and others) it is quite evident, as one 
common example,  that  names containing references to deities and their 
wishful or thanked-for "involvement" in the named individual's very-being 
abound (names containing il or )el, Yo, Ywo etc. as well as other deities, 
such as Ba'al etc.).
Perhaps I miss the point. If you meant that a name is grammatically, 
linguistically not a sentence, this all will grant as self evident and 
fundamental truism of those disciplines.
But if you deny intended meaningfulness in combining meaningful units into a 
single label of a meaningful positing of an idea etc.--I doubt anyone would 
support that.
I'd rather believe that I missed your argument altogether...
Gad Za"k
 From: if AT math.bu.eduDate: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 16:30:01 -0500To: 
JimStinehart AT aol.comCC: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.orgSubject: Re: [b-hebrew] 
Jacob-El
Sorry to say but it is all inherent nonsense. A Personal name is not  a 
grammatically structured word. In particular, YICXAQ is surely not  he will 
laugh, YA(AQOB has certainly nothing to do with heel, and R) UBEN has nothing 
to do with seeing a son.
Isaac Fried, Boston University
On Jan 22, 2009, at 9:30 AM, JimStinehart AT aol.com wrote:
 
Isaac Fried wrote “Absolutely not” to the following statement by  Karl:  
“Thename found in the Bible is simply Y(QB, which is the imperfective  
grammaticalform of the verb "to be crooked" or "to deal crookedly" as in 
being  less thanhonest. A derivative of the same root refers to the ankle, 
the  permanentlycrooked part of the leg.”  [I will do a separate post later  
regarding Karl’snew post on this thread.]
I myself see “heel” (not “ankle”) and “crooked” as being involved  with 
thename “Jacob”/Y(QB.  To the extent that Y(QB  s-o-u-n-d-e-d  like  “he 
actscrookedly”, even if the geographical place name Jacob-El/Y(QB-)L is  not 
in factconnected etymologically to “crooked” (but rather, as many scholars  
think, isan old Amorite divine blessing), that would have been a good reason  
for thetownspeople of that town in the Shephelah to drop the ayin/( in  their 
town’soriginal name.
I found on the Internet a very nice account of the name “Jacob”,  written 
bysomeone who may be a colleague of our own Yigal Levin.  Here is how  Dr. 
AmosBar-da of Bar-Ilan University explains Jacob’s name:
“When he was born, Jacob seized hold of Esau’s heel (Heb. ’akev),  hence 
hisname Ya’akov.  Semantically, the word ‘akev’ ‘heel’ comes from 
thedepression that the heel creates when a footprint is made in the  ground.  
The wordmeans a concavity or hollow, as in Isaiah (40:4):   “Let the rugged  
ground (akov)become level and the ridges become a plain.”  The original 
meaning  of the root’-k-v refers to tangible, physical things:  the 
depression in the  ground andthe bone in the foot.  The root then evolved 
more abstractly in twodirections:   1) in the sense of following 
sequentially, one thing  on the heel ofanother; 2) in the sense of being 
distorted, crooked, circuitous  and devious.Indeed, from the point of view of 
Esau, Jacob’s name is derived not  from ‘heel’but from ‘devious plotting’:  
(aoldb://mail/write/ template.htm#_ftn1) [1][1]“Was he, then, named Jacob 
that he might supplant me (’-k-v) these twotimes?   First he took away my 
birthright and now he has taken away  my blessing!”(Gen. 27:36).
“Grabbing Esau’s heel in birth and giving the name Ya’akov denotes 
thebeginning of a cycle of hostility between Jacob and his brother  Esau.  
This cycleconcludes with a formative event in the history of Jacob’s life,  
the episode inwhich Esau’s angel wrenches Jacob’s hip and gives him the name 
Israel.(aoldb://mail/write/template.htm#_ftn2) [1][2]   The transition  from 
Esau’s heelto Jacob’s thigh and the transition from Esau’s view of Jacob as a 
 devious,crooked person, to the view of Jacob as Israel (in Hebrew, Israel  
contains theroot y-š-r, ‘straight’) in a sense represents the idea in Isaiah  
(40:4) thatthe “crooked shall become straight,” characteristic of Jacob’s 
life.”
November 17, 
2008_http://www.biu.ac.il/JH/Parasha/eng/vayetze/amo.html_(http://www.biu.ac.il/JH/Parasha/eng/vayetze/amo.html)
I think that the Y(QB element in “Jacob-El” unfortunately sounded  like 
“heacts crookedly”, regardless of the actual etymology of this  geographical 
placename.  As Robert Alter states at p. 181 of his 1996 book  “Genesis”:  
“Jacob,whose name can be construed as ‘he who acts crookedly’….”
In my opinion, the association with the negative phrase “he acts  
crookedly”was one reason why the townspeople of Jacob-El decided to drop the  
ayin nearthe beginning of their town’s name.  Y(QB was simplified to YQB.   
Instead ofsounding like “he acts crookedly”, it was now “winepress”.
Jim StinehartEvanston, Illinois

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