Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Chavoux Luyt <chavoux AT gmail.com>]

Shalom Jim

From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
>
<snip>

> XBH is used five times in the Bible, being a common word meaning ?to hide?
> .  XBH never has an interior vav/W.  At Genesis 14: 15 we see the only
> appearance of XWBH, in context clearly being a geographical place name.
>  This is
> usually explained as being a west Semitic name meaning ?hiding place?,
> based on XBH.  But note the interior vav/W in XWBH.  The common word
> XBH/?to hide
> ? by contrast never has an interior vav/W in the Bible.
>
We would only expect XBH to have an interior waw if it had the "present
tense" and was pronounced "Chobeh" or if it was a proper name and pronounced
(as the text is pointed in this case) "Chobah". So the presence/absence of
the interior waw isn't really relevant unless it would be expected on
grammatical grounds.
<snip>

> With P and B often being interchangeable in going from one ancient language
> to another, we would expect Genesis 14: 15 to say something like H-WBH,
> where H- means ?the?, and WBH is one likely Hebrew spelling of Ubu or Ube
> or
> Upe or Upu or Upi or Apu or Api or Apum or Apina.  Has there been a
> one-letter transcription error here?
>
This seems to me extremely unlikely, since no name in Hebrew starting with
"U" will start with the letter waw (as you also mentioned). The "u" sound
for waw was a late development and even as such the waw is used optionally
to help pronunciation rather than being a proper "letter".

HWBH does not really seem possible, because not a single city name in
> greater ancient Canaan begins with he/H.  [That?s why HM at Genesis 14: 5
> cannot
> be ?(the city of) Ham?.]

Well, here we have one counter-example :-). Names like "Hebron" and "Hormah"
comes to mind? This feels to me slightly like stretching the evidence beyond
what can really be concluded from it. You assume (on what grounds?) that the
original text was Akkadian with a scibal error. In this case the evidence
just doesn't seem convincing to me.

Regards
Chavoux Luyt