Biblical Hebrew Forum

[jimstinehart AT aol.com]

r. Fournet:
 
You wrote:  “All this is nonsense in the first place.  Who can believe that a 
Semitic name could be suffixed by the grammatical morphemes of another 
language?”
 
Leah names all 6 of her blood sons.  Leah is portrayed in the text as living 
exclusively in Naharim until middle age.  Wouldn’t it make sense if 2 of 
those 6 names are west Semitic names with a non-Semitic-sounding final 
element?  The vav nun/-WN/-we-ni- ending of the names of Leah’s blood son #2 
and blood son #6 are, in my opinion, purposely designed to “sound 
non-Semitic”.  Many of the proper names in the famous non-Semitic letter on 
your website, which in my view was written only 3 years before the 
Patriarchal narratives were composed, feature long suffixes with the -we-ni- 
suffix sequence element.  That’s vav nun/-WN in Biblical Hebrew.
 
If the names of those two sons of Leah contained that vav in the Late Bronze 
Age (which I believe they did), then that vav way back then would have been 
pronounced by the early Hebrews something like “we”, because back then a vav 
was a true consonant.  The following nun then would likely have been 
pronounced something like “ni”, being two true consonants back to back, 
creating two syllables.  So the original pronunciation of the name of Leah’s 
#2 son would likely have been something like $ima-WE-NI.  And at p. 23 of 
your website you have Mi-zi- ir- ri- e- WE-NI-eš;  and the name of Leah’s #6 
son would have been pronounced something like Zebelu-WE-NI, and at p. 23 you 
have Ši-mi-i- gi- ni- e- WE-NI- e-ma-a-an, and Zebulun named one of his own 
sons Al-WE-NI at Genesis 46: 14, and at p. 24 you have d Ši- mi- i- gi- ni- 
e-WE- NI- e- im- ma- ma- an;  and Levi, another son born in Naharim and named 
by his mother Leah, names one of his sons Gara$a-WE-NI, and back at p. 23 
again you have at- ta- a- ar- ti- i- WE- NA-a- ma-a-an, and Genesis 26: 34 
has Ayali-WE-NI, but that non-Semitic letter from the same time period never 
lets up, as at p. 24 you report  še-e-ni- ib-[WU]- ú- e-NI- e- wə, though the 
Bible can counter with Ssibaiya-WE-NI at Genesis 36: 2, yet that short 
portion of that famous non-Semitic letter on your website is not done yet, as 
you report at p. 24 ti- WE- e- NA, though perhaps the Bible manages to have 
the last word with Epiri-WE-NI at Genesis 23: 8.  What your website reports 
is what Leah heard from birth to middle age.  So why doesn’t it make sense 
for Leah to give two of her sons in Naharim in eastern Syria names whose 
ending recalled the hundreds of -WE-NI- suffix sequences she had heard her 
non-Semitic neighbors saying every day of her life until she finally left 
Naharim and moved to Canaan?  That letter on your website is what Leah heard 
from her neighbors every day of her life, isn’t it?   
 
If you insist that the vav nun endings of $M(-WN and ZBL-WN have no 
non-Semitic connection, then please set forth your own view as to an all-west 
Semitic analysis of the vav nun suffix in those two names.  It seems unlikely 
to me that a 1st millennium BCE editor would have jammed vavs into those two 
ancient names.  But if that is not your theory of the case, then what is your 
theory of the case?  Vowels were not recorded in early Biblical Hebrew.  
Certainly the name $M(-WN in particular is a truly ancient name.  Where did 
the interior vav come from in that name?  I myself cannot even find a 
published scholarly theory as to where that interior vav came from.  Do you 
know of one?  Other than ultra-generic statements that plene-type spelling 
appears throughout the Bible, I have not been able to find any scholarly 
explanation of why there’s an interior vav in the ancient name $M(-WN.  How 
did that vav get there, and when, and why, and by whom?  Either the scholarly 
theory is that a 1st millennium BCE editor took it upon himself to update the 
spelling of that ancient name [though I have never seen a published statement 
to that effect as to this name, so maybe that in fact is not the scholarly 
theory of the case], or else, as far as I can tell, no scholar has ever 
opined what that interior vav is doing in the name Simeon.
 
What’s your theory of the case?  You’re quick to characterize my theory as 
being “nonsense”, but that implies that there’s a more convincing theory of 
the case out there.  What would that be?
 
The whole point of this thread is to explore the vav nun suffix in Biblical 
Hebrew.  If I’m barking up the wrong tree in my proposed non-Semitic analysis 
of the vav nun suffix, then why don’t you or someone else set forth a better, 
more convincing theory of the case?  I’m all ears.
 
My own theory of the case is that (i) the vav nun suffix was there in the 
name $M(-WN from day #1, and has nothing whatsoever to do with plene spelling 
issues, but rather dates all the long way back to the Late Bronze Age, and 
(ii) the explicit purpose of that vav nun/-WN/-we-ni- suffix was precisely to 
give the name of Leah’s #2 son a “non-Semitic sound”.  On my view, it’s not a 
“coincidence” that the name Simeon ends with -we-ni, and that so many names 
in that famous non-Semitic letter you cite on your website similarly include 
in their long suffixes the component -we-ni- [or some close variant thereof].
 
In your opinion, why is there a vav in the name of Jacob’s son #2?
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois