Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Jim:

On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 7:38 AM, <JimStinehart AT aol.com> wrote:

>
> Halhul, Jezreel and Timnah
>
> When I tried to match XRKR [XLKL] at item #101 on the mid-15th century BCE
> Thutmosis III list to XLXWL/Halhul at Joshua 15: 58 (a city name that
> appears
> nowhere else in the Bible), Professor Yigal Levin properly pointed out that
> a
> kaf/K is not a heth/X.  That was a good tip to do further research.
>
> Consider now XKYLH/Hachilah at I Samuel 23: 19;  26: 1, 3, which features a
> kaf/K as a key interior consonant (instead of a heth/X).  Are
> XKYLH/Hachilah
> and XLXWL/Halhul different spellings of one and the same place?
>
> If we look at Anson Rainey's map at p. 12 of "The Sacred Bridge", we note
> that XLXWL/Halhul is thought to be located north of the city of Hebron, in
> rugged hill country, with there being no town between Halhul and the Judean
> Desert
> (the harsh desert area west of the Dead Sea, which Rainey euphemistically
> calls "The Steppe").  Halhul is located in the midbar/MDBR/rugged, hilly
> pastureland of hill country, facing the Judean Desert.
>
> XKYLH/Hachilah at I Samuel 26: 1-3 exactly matches the foregoing
> description
> of XLXWL/Halhul:
>
> "And the Ziphites came unto Saul to Gibeah, saying: 'Doth not David hide
> himself in the hill of Hachilah, which is before Jeshimon?'  Then Saul
> arose, and
> went down to the wilderness [MDBR] of Ziph, having three thousand chosen
> men
> of Israel with him, to seek David in the wilderness [MDBR] of Ziph.  And
> Saul
> pitched in the hill of Hachilah, which is before Jeshimon, by the way.  But
> David abode in the wilderness [MDBR], and he saw that Saul came after him
> into
> the wilderness [MDBR]."  I Samuel 26: 1-3
>
> MDBR/midbar in I Samuel usually means "rugged, hilly pastureland", not a
> true desert.


Not true. In Biblical Hebrew most likely connected to the root concerning
poking (with a sharp object), stinging or even injuring, so a MDBR is a
place where such plants and animals dwell. Many of these places in the past
were vast grasslands with cacti and spiny trees interspersed among the
grasses, today they are deserts. While a MDBR could contain a rugged, hilly
area, that was not a defining characteristic of MDBR.

Jim, do you know any Biblical Hebrew language?


>  The "midbar of Ziph" (like the "midbar of Maon") is the rugged,
> hilly pastureland of hill country, east of Ziph.  The town of Ziph (like
> Maon)
> was located in the foothills on the western edge of hill country, northwest
> of
> the city of Hebron.


The evidence from archaeology says you are wrong.


>  Saul generally only chased David when David ventured
> north of the city of Hebron, into the midbar of Ziph or the midbar of Maon,
> being
> the rugged interior hill country north of the city of Hebron.


Where is your evidence?


>  (David's usual
> haunts were south [not southeast] of Hebron, per I Samuel 30: 26-31.
>  David's
> usual haunts, south [not southeast] of Hebron, do not include a single one
> of
> the 10 towns listed at Joshua 15: 55-57, because none of such 10 towns were
> located south or southeast of the city of Hebron.)  "Jeshimon"/Y$YMWN as
> used
> here is the Biblical word for the Judean Desert, a true desert.
>

Where do you get these "definitions"? As a verb, Y$M is used once in Ezekiel
6:6 to refer to a place without inhabitants, the noun to a deserted place.

>
> Note that Ziph is grouped together with Jezreel (and Maon) at Joshua 15:
> 55-57.  I Samuel 29: 11 says that "the Philistines marched up to Jezreel".
>  The
> Philistines did not idiotically march down from the high altitude city of
> Hebron into the uninhabitable western extension of the Judean Desert
> southeast of
> Hebron, for heaven's sake.


Where do you get this crazy idea that anyone claims this? 1 Samuel mentions
that the Philistines gathered together at )PQ, a town mentioned in Joshua
19:30. This was in the area alloted to Asher, in central to northern Canaan.
>From there they marched to where Saul's army was encamped.


>  No, the Philistines sensibly marched up from the
> low-lying Shephelah into the foothills of hill country adjoining the
> eastern
> edge of the Shephelah -- where Jezreel and Ziph (and Maon and all the rest
> of the
> 10 towns at Joshua 15: 55-57) were located.
>
> Though there are two Jezreels in Canaan (with the more famous Jezreel being
> located in the Jezreel Valley), there's only one Jezreel in southern
> Canaan.
> Likewise, there's only one Timnah in southern Canaan -- Samson's Timnah,
> located a few miles west of the foothills, in the eastern end of the Sorek
> Valley.
> That general location -- northwest of the city of Hebron, in or near the
> foothills -- is where Jezreel and Ziph and all the rest of the 10 towns
> listed at
> Joshua 15: 55-57 are located.  Why let scholars dream up a second Timnah in
> southern Canaan, just to make Joshua look bad?
>

Why dream up a second Timnah northwest of the city of Hebron? Just to make
Joshua look bad? 2 Chronicles 28:18 mentions that Timnah was either in the
Shepalah, or to the south. Since it wasn't in the Shepalah, it was to the
south.

>
> The Timnah at Joshua 15: 55-57 is the real Timnah -- Samson's Timnah, just
> west of the foothills of hill country.  The Jezreel at Joshua 15: 55-57 is
> the
> real Jezreel in Judah -- the place up to which the Philistines march in I
> Samuel.  Likewise, the Carmel at Joshua 15: 55-57 is the real, historical
> Carmel,
> well known from the Amarna Letters, located just west of the foothills of
> the
> Sorek Valley (very near Samson's Timnah).  All the Biblical geography of
> southern Canaan makes perfect sense, if we don't allow scholars to invent
> duplicate
> towns within Judah having the same names, with all these duplicate,
> fictional
> towns allegedly being located in no-man's land southeast of the city of
> Hebron, a place where no historical towns at all are attested.
>

Why do you repeat yourself, emphasizing the "southeast" when that has
already been shown to have no linguistic nor historic evidence? However,
"south" has archaeological, historic and linguistic evidence. Are you trying
to set up a straw man argument?

>
> Halhul and Hachilah are one and the same place.  The facts that the
> spelling
> XLXWL/Halhul only appears once in the Bible, and that the etymology would
> apparently be a senseless "writhe in pain"/XWL, suggest that XLXWL may be a
> non-standard spelling of this city name.  Looking at the essential
> consonants
> (including the Egyptian rendering), we see XLKL vs. XLXL vs. XKL:  these
> are three
> different spellings of the same historical town in hill country, north of
> the
> city of Hebron.
>
> Note how the entire Biblical geography of southern Canaan makes perfect
> sense, if we don't allow scholars to invent fictional duplicate towns in
> Judah
> (especially in the no-man's land southeast of Hebron, which contains not a
> single
> archaeological site).  All the southern Hebrews knew the geography of
> southern
> Canaan like the back of their hand.  There's no fictional or senseless
> geography of southern Canaan in the Bible.  Not in Joshua, not in I Samuel,
> not in
> Judges, and not in the Patriarchal narratives.  No way.
>
> Jim Stinehart
> Evanston, Illinois


When Solomon died, Pharaoh Thutmosis III / Shisherka / $$Q maneuvered to get
his puppet Jeroboam installed as king over the break away Northern Kingdom.
Then he had an excuse to protect his investment (and gain) in Jeroboam. Why
would he mention an area that he got by guile instead of force of arms?
Would that count as a great, heroic victory? Of course he would still
benefit from that acquisition, and to make sure his puppet stayed loyal, set
up garrison towns. But wouldn't his boasting be for the cities he conquered
by force of arms in heroic battle, in the confines of Judea and Benjamin,
mostly in the hill country, and other areas outside the control of the
Northern Kingdom?

So why invent fictional duplicate towns in areas like the Jezreel valley and
the Shepela to fit your fictional history?

Karl W. Randolph.