Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

1.  George Athas:  Thank you so much for allowing this thread to continue a 
little longer.  Much appreciated.
 
2.  Yigal Levin:  You wrote:  “[W]hy shouldn't Abraham's brother be named 
"nosey" or the like?”  The Patriarchal narratives do not portray Nahor as 
being “nosey” in any way, shape or form.  NXWR makes no sense in west Semitic 
as the name of Abraham’s middle brother.
 
3.  In order to get a handle on the name NXWR, we should consider the two 
main aspects of what Nahor does in the Patriarchal narratives.  First and 
foremost, as discussed in my prior post, Nahor provides the “Hurrian dowry”:  
Nahor’s female descendants from Naharim in eastern Syria in the Hurrian 
heartland marry Abraham’s successors as Patriarchs.  Thus it makes perfect 
sense 
for the primary meaning of NXWR to be the Hurrian word ni-xa-a-ri, meaning “
Dowry” or “Hurrian Dowry”.  
 
But let’s now consider the other, darker side of how Nahor is portrayed in 
the text.  This will involve looking once again at the mysterious interior 
vav that appears in several of these ancient Biblical names.  This can be 
seen at Genesis 31: 53.  Because )LHY can mean either “God” or “gods”, 
depending on the context, and because the context here is that the speaker, 
Laban, 
is certainly a polytheist (not a Hebrew monotheist like the Patriarchs), I 
propose the following translation/paraphrase of Genesis 31: 53, with Laban 
speaking to Jacob as follows:
 
“‘The God of Abraham and the gods of Nahor, [and also] the gods of their 
father[, Terakh, as well], judge between us.’"
 
With Nahor living most of his life in Hurrianland, the obvious implication 
here should be that Nahor, unlike Terakh and Jacob, had taken to worshipping 
Hurrian gods and goddesses.  In order to make that point, NX + W + R may be 
a negative pun, scandalously referencing the “bed” of the most famous 
Hurrian goddess:  Xeba.  Since this aspect of the name NXWR is intended to be 
a 
negative pun, it makes sense for it to embody a scandalous, sexy reference 
to the best-known Hurrian goddess.  (The name of the ruler of Jerusalem in 
the Amarna Letters likewise honors this famous Hurrian goddess [but not her 
bed]:  IR-Xeba.) 
 
Per p. 96 of the Fournet/Bomhard Hurrian language website, the Hurrian word 
that means “bed (especially the bed of Xebat, I$xara and $au$ka)” is as 
follows:
 
na-a-at-xi
 
Note that even with all those vowels, the consonant heth/X immediately 
follows the consonant tav/T.  Such a consonant combination would have been 
virtually impossible for the Hebrews to pronounce.  Accordingly, the first 
consonant likely dropped out, leaving NX as the remaining consonants in the 
Hebrew 
rendering of this Hurrian word for “bed of the Hurrian goddess Xeba”.  
(Likewise in English, “arctic” is hard to say, because the consonant C is 
immediately followed by the consonant T, with no vowel in between.  So many 
people drop the  f-i-r-s-t  consonant, C, entirely, and pronounce that word “
artic”.  Indeed, for many hundreds of years the accepted spelling of that 
word 
dropped the C sound, for precisely that reason.)
 
So NX in early Biblical Hebrew defective spelling could be viewed as being 
the Hebrew consonantal rendering of na-a-at-xi, the Hurrian word that means “
bed of the Hurrian goddess Xeba”.
 
With NX as the Hurrian root of this Hurrian name, then add -W- as the 
Hurrian genitive case marker, and finally -R as the Hurrian comitative 
suffix, 
which means “together with” or “with” or “as”.  The meaning of NX-W-R is 
then:  “as of bed of the Hurrian goddess Xeba”.
 
As a secondary meaning, being a negative pun, NXWR implies “As of Bed of 
the Hurrian Goddess Xeba”, being the Hurrian word na-a-at-xi-we-ra, whose 
pronounceable consonants are NX-W-R.  Note that those two Hurrian meanings of 
the name NXWR (including the primary meaning, “Hurrian Dowry”) perfectly 
encapsulate the two aspects of Nahor in the Patriarchal narratives.  On the 
one 
hand, it is good that Nahor supplied the “Hurrian Dowry” for the first 
Hebrews, that is, Nahor’s female descendants Rebekah, Leah and Rachel, who 
are 
raised in the heart of Hurrianland in Naharim and who become the Matriarchs 
of the Patriarchs who follow Abraham.  But on the darker side, Nahor embraced 
Hurrian gods and goddesses, being colorful deities that even Terakh had not 
known or honored.  So a meaning of “as of bed of the Hurrian goddess Xeba” 
nicely captures the fact that Laban, as a male descendant of Nahor living 
in the heart of Hurrianland, had “gone native” as to religious matters, 
worshipping a whole panoply of Hurrian gods and goddesses.
 
Please note that these two Hurrian meanings of NXWR neatly sum up the 
entire function of Abraham’s middle brother in the Patriarchal narratives.  
Note 
also that the frequent use of Hurrian names in the Patriarchal narratives 
(as has been explored in several of my recent threads, including XBR-W-N as 
meaning in Hurrian “Heaven of Mine”, and ‘PR-W-N as meaning in Hurrian “of 
the (Hurrian) lord”) is dating the composition of this text to the 14th 
century BCE, because that was the  o-n-l-y  time in 5,000 years of human 
history 
when the Hurrians had a presence in Canaan.  The interior vav in these 
ancient Biblical names says it all.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois