Biblical Hebrew Forum

[jimstinehart AT aol.com]

Jack Kilmon:

You wrote: “I think we need to look at Northwest Semitic for an L/R shift 
which was not uncommon.”

That seems to have been the suggestion as well of Andronic Khandjani on this 
thread.  But how does L help in analyzing )B-R-HM?  )B-L-HM might mean 
“father to a multitude”, I suppose, but that leaves out the role of the 
divine entirely.  The Biblical name does not just mean that Abraham is going 
to have a lot of descendants, which after all is quite commonplace.  Rather, 
Genesis 17: 5 is telling us that the name “Abraham” means that Abraham will 
be the father of a multitude pursuant to specific divine intent.  To me, the 
name “Abraham” works much better if there’s an express reference to the 
divine in there, and the only hope for that is the R in the middle of the 
name. 

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois