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  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] Samson's "Jawbone": Geography and Linguistics
  • Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2011 10:07:37 EST


Samson is portrayed as killing a thousand Philistines with a jawbone
somewhere in the Shephelah, but where? The text says Lehi/LXY at Judges 15:
9,
14-15, which as a common word means “jawbone”, but no LXY, with that
spelling, is attested as a geographical place name.

One logical possibility for the locale of this famous slaughter is the
southern Shephelah. The most prominent place in the southern Shephelah is
the
Lachish Valley, which in turn was dominated in Biblical times by the second
most important city in Judah: Lachish. The Hebrew spelling is LKY$, where
the kaf/K has no dagesh, so is pronounced similar to a heth. We have this
name as La-ki-$a in the Amarna Letters, so we know it’s a 3-syllable name:
L-KY-$. [Indeed, the later-added yod was probably put in there both to mimic
the sound I, but more importantly to show that there is a distinct second
syllable in this name, before the third syllable.]

What most people may not know is that the name La-ki-$a has no known
etymology, often being explained simply as “from an unused root of uncertain
meaning”. This non-Hebrew proper name was thus ripe for re-interpretation by
the
Hebrews.

>From a Hebrew point of view, the inexplicable La-khi-$a [where khi sounds
like XY] might be thought of as having either L-Kh-Y or L-Kh as its root [of
unknown meaning], plus a suffix $ [also of unknown meaning, though many
non-Semitic languages have such a suffix]. L-Kh-Y/LKY [where the kaf/K has
no
dagesh] had almost the same sound as L-X-Y, which means “jawbone”. So the
author of Judges treated Lachish as having a root that meant, or that at
least could be an obvious pun on the Hebrew common word LXY meaning,
“jawbone”.
[Perhaps the final shin was even viewed as indicating “Shaddai”, in which
case LXY + $ could be thought to mean “Jawbone of God”.]

Since LKY-$, where the kaf has no dagesh, sounds like LXY-$, it’s natural
for a story about Samson killing all those Philistines with a “jawbone” to
be set at a place [historical Lachish] whose name means, or at least can be
an obvious pun on, LXY, meaning “jawbone”.

But wait. Couldn’t LXY alternatively be viewed as being L-XY, and have a
different meaning in Hebrew? Is that in fact the pun being made at Genesis
16: 14 and Genesis 25: 62? Linguistics can tell us a lot about geography in
the Bible.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois




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