Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

The Early and Middle Bronze Age name for the Damascus area was the Akkadian 
word Apu or Apum, often in the genitive as Api, meaning “reed thicket”.  
In west Semitic, the A would be aleph/).  There was no city of Damascus yet, 
and the oasis there on the Barada River had the biggest reed thicket marsh 
in western Asia west of Mesopotamia.  In the Late Bronze Age, the Canaanite 
Shift made the pronunciation Opi, and the peh/P could easily shift fo bet/B.  
In Akkadian cuneiform, Obi would be U2-bi [which is indistinguishable in 
Akkadian cuneiform writing from U2-pi].  U2-bi happens to be the exact 
spelling of the Hurrian word for “barley”.  The Hurrians took over the 
Damascus 
area in the 14th century BCE, and by then elementary irrigation had made this 
a great grain-growing area, including barley.  Though Hurrian princeling 
Biryawaza of Damascus uses the old Akkadian name A-pi, the two other 
princelings who use this word in the Amana Letters, both of whom are Hurrian 
princelings, call it U2-bi, being the Hurrian word for “barley”, and having a 
quite 
similar pronunciation to the Late Bronze Age pronunciation of A-pi.
 
Hurrian princeling Etakkama [whose Biblical nickname is “Arioch”] 
complains about rival Hurrian princeling Biryawaza in Amarna Letter EA 189, 
and at 
line 12 on the reverse side mentions “U2-bi” -- the Damascus area controlled 
[with Egypt’s explicit blessing] by Hurrian maryannu/charioteer/rephaim 
Biryawaza.  Though Anson Rainey renders this name as U2-pi, in Akkadian 
cuneiform pi and bi are indistinguishable.  Based on the Hurrian meaning, and 
on 
Genesis 14: 15 as well, to me it is more likely that the second syllable in 
this Amarna Letter name actually is -bi, rather than -pi.  [Scholars have 
split over the years as to whether the consonant here is B or P.]
 
We can now see a letter-for-letter exact match in three different 
languages.  In the Akkadian cuneiform of Amarna Letter EA 189 rev. 12, we see 
U2-bi.  
The Hurrian common word for “barley” is identical:  U2-bi.  Both of those 
are U + B + vowel ending.  Genesis 14: 15 is the exact Hebrew equivalent:  
WBH.  The Hebrew vav/W represents the foreign vowel U as its own separate 
syllable.  B is B.  And a vowel ending in Hebrew is represented by -H.  [A 
final yod/Y would mean “people” in Hebrew, and so could not be used.  Some 
scholars have noted that -H in Hebrew is a feminine ending, whereas the 
original 
Akkadian Apum or Apu was masculine.  But the early Hebrew author was 
reflecting not the Middle Bronze Age Akkadian name, but rather the 
Hurrianized 
Late Bronze Age version of this name:  U2-bi.]
 
The main reason why analysts have failed to see this three language exact, 
letter-for-letter match is because the preceding letter at Genesis 14: 15 is 
a scribal error.  Originally it was H-, with the meaning being “the Ubi”
/H-WBH.  The original H- meant “the”, as Hebrew uses the definite article H- 
when referring to a region [such as “the Mizpeh”].  But by the 1st 
millennium BCE such a rendering no longer made sense to the Hebrews, and 
inevitably 
some scribe somewhere along the line wrote down XWBH, which seemed to be a 
nice play on the Hebrew common word XBH, which means “to hide”.  To later 
scribes, HWBH did not make sense, because no city name in ancient greater 
Canaan starts with he/H, and H-WBH made no sense either, since no Hebrew word 
or 
name starts with a vav/W as a vowel.  XWBH seemed to make much more sense 
to later scribes, and so H-WBH became XBWH, with that initial, virtually 
inevitable one-letter scribal error.
 
But if we restore the original he/H at Genesis 14: 15, the pinpoint 
spelling accuracy of this truly ancient Biblical text comes shining through.  
WBH 
in the phrase H + WBH is ubi in Hurrian, and Ubi is also the 14th century BCE 
Hurrianized name of the Damascus area.  We would fully expect a Late Bronze 
Age composition to mention Ubi in connection with Damascus, since a variant 
of Ubi was the name for the Damascus region, and Ubi was in common use for 
this area in the Amarna Age.  Scholars recognize that it would make perfect 
non-linguistic sense for “Hobah” at Genesis 14: 15 to be referencing the 
Api/Upi area of Damascus.  But since that name only appears in Amarna Letters 
written by Hurrian princelings, we should think Hurrian, and see that the 
Hurrianized version of this ancient Akkadian name was U-bi, meaning “barley” 
in Hurrian.  The old Akkadian “reed thickets”/Apu were long gone from 
Damascus, having now been replaced by “barley” and the Hurrians.
 
Rather than “Hobah” being an unattested name of an unattested city north 
of Damascus, as analysts have previously thought, it’s actually a fully 
historical name meaning “the Ubi”:  H-WBH, the well-attested Late Bronze Age 
Hurrianized name for the Damascus area.  If we are willing to take a glance 
at 
a handful of basic Hurrian words, like ubi meaning “barley”, we can solve 
many of these 3,000-year-old Biblical mysteries.  The only people who use 
this name in the Amarna Letters are Hurrian princelings, so it makes logical 
sense to consider a Hurrian interpretation of this old Akkadian name.  That 
Hurrianized version of the name for the Damascus area is what got picked up 
at 
Genesis 14: 5:  H-WBH/“the Ubi (area of Damascus)”.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois