Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

James Christian:
 
1.  If you are going to cite the Septuagint, then note that the Septuagint 
sees El-Paran as referencing terebinthes or oak trees of Paran.  There are 
no oak trees south of the Dead Sea!  But there were plenty of oak trees in 
the Transjordan north of the Dead Sea.  So the Septuagint helps me here, 
while 
hurting your traditional view that the Horites are an unattested people 
portrayed as living south of the Dead Sea, instead of being the historical 
Hurrians who historically lived, and are accurately portrayed in the Biblical 
text as living, in the Transjordan. 
 
But before we leave the Septuagint, note that the scholarly view that 
El-Paran/Great Desert means a navigable waterway, namely the Gulf of Aqaba, 
is 
greatly undermined by the Septuagint.  There are no oak trees near the Gulf 
of 
Aqaba!  It’s hard to believe that Greek-speaking Jews in Egypt would have 
confused oak trees with the Gulf of Aqaba, as university scholars would have 
it.  By contrast, oak trees and the Transjordan are a natural match.
 
2.  Your translation manages to get everything after El-Paran completely 
wrong.  You leave out )$R entirely.  That’s not right.  You translate (L as “
in”, yet (L has the exact opposite meaning!  (L means “against” or “up to” 
or “by”, but  n-e-v-e-r  “in”.  When the author wants to tell us that the 
Hurrians lived “in” the hill country that is north and south of the city 
of Seir/Jazer in the Transjordan, he naturally uses the word B near the 
beginning of Genesis 14: 6, meaning “in”.  Finally, MDBR is rarely translated 
as 
“desert” here, because that’s not its normal meaning.  M is a prefix 
meaning “place”.  DBR means “to drive”, that is, to drive flocks across land 
that is very marginal pastureland, being land which could never be farmed, 
but 
not usually meaning a true desert, across which flocks would not ordinarily 
be driven.  The ordinary translation is “wilderness”, but that’s a little 
misleading, because the MDBR is not necessarily “wild”.
 
Although )$R usually means “which” or “that”, it can have the meaning of “
that is”, where it’s function is to clarify what came before.  (L can mean 
“up to”, and MDBR can mean “very marginal pastureland”.  Genesis 14: 6 is 
telling us that the troops sent by the 4 attacking rulers “forcefully 
pressured”/NKH the Hurrians throughout the Transjordan, from where they lived 
“
in the hill country of Seir, to as far as El-Paran/the Great Desert/the 
Syro-Arabian Desert, that is, up to the very marginal pastureland (that 
borders 
the eastern Transjordan, on the west edge of the Great Desert/Syro-Arabian 
Desert)”.  That is to say, the Hurrians throughout the entirety of the 
Transjordan were forcefully pressured in Year 14 to become Hittite partisans. 
 Here 
is how Biryawaza, with a Hurrian-type name, got forcefully pressured by the 
Hittites in Year 14 (of Akhenaten’s reign) in the Transjordan:
 
“Biridaswa [the pro-Hittite princeling ruler of Ashteroth] [and his 
confederates] keep saying, ‘We are servants of the king of Hatti,’ and I 
[Biryawaza] keep saying, ‘I am a servant of the king of Egypt.’  …When the 
king of 
Busruna [Biblical Bezer, far south of Ashteroth, near Kiriathaim] and the 
king of Halunnu [very likely a city near Ashteroth] saw this, they waged war 
with Biridaswa [of Ashteroth] against me [Biryawaza, the Hurrian maryannu 
faced with the unenviable task of trying to keep the Transjordan and nearby 
territory safely within Egypt’s sphere of influence], constantly saying, 
‘Come, 
let’s kill Biryawaza….’”  Amarna Letter EA 197: 13-30
  
3.  Genesis 14: 6 is fully historical.  All the Hurrians throughout the 
Transjordan were forcefully pressured to become Hittite partisans in Year 14. 
 
That means the Hurrians from the well-wooded hill country of Seir on the 
west, all the way over to the marginal pastureland on the east of the 
Transjordan that borders the Great Desert/the Syro-Arabian Desert.  That’s 
exactly 
what Genesis 14: 6 says, and that’s exactly right.  That’s what indeed 
happened in the Transjordan in Year 14.  Read all about it in Amarna Letter 
EA 197.
 
The pinpoint historical accuracy of Genesis 14: 6 is truly breathtaking.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois