Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

All Semitic words and names in the Hebrew Bible that start with )YL are 
plays on “mighty”.  One theory would be that there is an unused Hebrew verbal 
root )YL, which means “to be mighty”.  Although that is a tempting theory, 
it does not seem to be borne out by a comparison to cognate languages.  ’al’
iy = “strong” in Ugaritic.  allallu = “strong” in Akkadian. Assyrian for “
stag”, being a “mighty” adult male deer, is ailu.  One begins to suspect 
that )Y in Hebrew was used to represent the initial true vowel A in these 
cognate languages.  Perhaps there is a somewhat similar phenomenon in 
Aramaic, 
where HaYLaA = “power, mighty work, strength”.  The archaic 2-letter root, 
being the true root of Semitic words that mean “mighty” or “strong”, may 
have been AL.  Hebrew of course has no true vowel A, so that usually comes 
out in Hebrew as )YL, where )Y represents the true vowel A, but sometimes it 
comes out in Hebrew as )WL or )L, where )W or ) represents the true vowel A.  
Most Hebrew words that start with )WL or )L have nothing to do with “mighty”
, whereas all Hebrew words and names [other than non-Semitic names] in the 
Hebrew Bible that start with )YL are plays on “mighty”.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois