Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

At Judges 4: 17 and 5: 24, Jael is said to be the wife of Heber the Kenite. 
 “Kenite” is QYN-Y, and “Jael” is Y(L.  QYN-Y is not a Hebrew name, but 
nicely tracks the Akkadian-based Hurrian name Qa-a-ni-ya attested at Nuzi, 
which means “Teshup Is Firm”.  [Note Hebrew yod/Y being used there in 
non-final position to represent the non-west Semitic vowel A.]  In the phrase 
“
Araunah the Jebusite” at II Samuel, “Araunah” is broadly recognized as being 
a 
Hurrian personal name [meaning “Lord”], and “Jebusite” [which means “Made 
by Teshup”], like “Kenite”, appears to be an Akkadian-based name with H
urrian characteristics, with a close parallel attested at Nuzi.  With both “
Kenite” and “Jebusite” being Hurrian names and in the Bible effectively 
meaning 
“Hurrian”, Joshua 15: 63 tells us that the Jebusites, that is the 
Hurrians, were in Jerusalem “unto this day”.  Because a small group of 
prominent 
Hurrian families remained in Jerusalem until the Exile, it was easy for the 
pre-exilic author of II Samuel to come up with the bona fide Hurrian personal 
names “Araunah” and “Uriah”, both of which are attested at Nuzi.  
Accordingly, we should rightly expect the pre-exilic author of Judges to 
likewise be 
able to come up with a Hurrian woman’s name for the name of the wife of 
Heber the Kenite.  A-al-li-ia is an attested Hurrian woman’s name, and could 
be 
slightly simplified to A-a-li [dropping the optional suffix -ia or -ya, 
which is a Hurrian theophoric, as in Qa-a-ni-ya/QYN-Y and I-bu-us-ya/YBWS-Y]. 
 
To represent A-a-li using Hebrew letters, we would expect Y(L, as the two 
Hebrew letters that can be used to represent a Hurrian vowel, including A or 
I, as its own separate syllable are yod/Y and ayin/(.  The meaning of this 
Hurrian woman’s name is “Grand Lady”.
 
Whereas the foregoing Hurrian analysis makes perfect sense on all levels, 
the traditional west Semitic analysis of the name of Heber’s wife fails on 
all possible counts.  “Jael” cannot be a west Semitic name meaning “Male Ibex”
 for Heber’s heroine Kenite wife, because (i) all the Kenites in the Bible 
have Hurrian names, not west Semitic names, (ii) Heber’s wife is a woman, 
not a male, and (iii) Heber’s wife has no qualities of an ibex.  It would be 
nice to think that Randall Buth is outside of the mainstream, but he 
definitely is not, when he responds to the foregoing seeming impossibility of 
Y(L 
being a west Semitic name meaning “Male Ibex” for Heber’s Kenite wife as 
follows:
 
“I see the name Ya`el as suggesting either 
a. a dialect where a common noun ya`el is used, 
b.analogical formation based on עז
c. a masculine noun used as a feminine name 
not enough to prove the gender of ya`el.”
 
What Randall Buth is nicely re-creating for us is how post-exilic Jews must 
have re-intepreted and mis-interpreted these ancient non-Semitic names on a 
west Semitic basis.  In post-exilic times, after all knowledge of Hurrian 
names had vanished, some post-exilic Jewish elder doubtless said, per Randall 
Buth, that Y(L could be from an unattested “dialect” and mean “[male or 
female] ibex”.  But does such a name fit Heber’s wife?  Not only is it not a 
feminine name, but also Jael does not “ascend” to mountainous heights like 
a “[male or female] Ibex”.  Rather, Jael gets down low and heroically 
murders Hebrew enemy Sisera in his sleep, being a “heroine”, a “grand lady”, 
in 
doing so, and as a Kenite thereby eminently deserving the non-Semitic, 
Hurrian, attested female name A-a-li, meaning “Grand Lady”.
 
XT-Y/Xu-ti-ya [meaning “Praise Teshup”] and QYN-Y/Qa-a-ni-ya and 
QN-Z-Y/Qa-ni-zi-ya [meaning “Blessed Teshup Is Firm”] and YBWS-Y/I-bu-us-ya 
at truly 
ancient Genesis 15: 19-21 are all non-west Semitic names, all of them are 
attested names at Nuzi in Late Bronze Age eastern Syria, and in the Bible all 
of them effectively mean “Hurrian”.  All 19 personal names paired in the 
Bible with these four non-west Semitic names are themselves bona fide 
non-Semitic Hurrian personal names, based on historically attested Hurrian 
names.  
19 of 19.  Pre-exilic Biblical authors could come up with Hurrian personal 
names at will because, per Joshua 15: 63, a small minority of Hurrian 
families remained living in Jerusalem until the Exile.  All of these names -- 
19 
personal names, and 6 non-west Semitic names of peoples at Genesis 15: 19-21 
-- in 25 out of 25 cases make perfect sense in Hurrian, while in most cases 
making little or no sense in west Semitic.  Just as Joshua’s trusted ally 
does not have a west Semitic name that means “Dog”, but rather has a Hurrian 
name, KL-B/Kelip, that means “Pleasing to Deity”, and just as MDYN is the 
Hurrian name Mitanni for Late Bronze Age eastern Syria, fittingly being the 
place out “east” where Keturah’s son MDYN is sent by Abraham, not an 
unattested word in some west Semitic “dialect” in the singular meaning “a 
brawling”
 [with Keturah’s son MDYN doing no “brawling”, and with MDYN also not 
being a “judge”, if there were to be an attempt to conceptualize this name as 
being M-DYN], and with MDYN in any event not being attested in Arabia prior 
to the Common Era, so also Heber’s wife does not have a west Semitic name 
meaning either “Male Ibex” or, on the “dialect” analysis, “[Male or Female] 
Ibex”.  Heber’s wife Jael has no ibex qualities and does not come from a 
tradition of west Semitic names.  Rather, Y(L is a Hurrian name, A-a-li, that 
means “Grand Lady”.  As for the name of her Kenite/Hurrian husband, 
XBR/Xa-vur [“Heber”] means “heaven” in Hurrian, is used in Ugaritic 
literature for 
the idealized kingdom of mythical King Keret, and is the root of the 
Hurrian-based Patriarchal nickname [meaning “The Heaven” or “Heaven”] for the 
Patriarchs’ favorite place to sojourn in southern Canaan:  
XBR-W-N/Xa-vur-un-ne [“Hebron”].
 
Why do Biblical scholars persist in carrying on the post-exilic Jewish 
tradition of doing inappropriate west Semitic analyses of non-west Semitic 
Biblical names?  Shouldn’t today’s scholars instead consider doing a Hurrian 
analysis of the 19 Biblical names, such as Y(L [A-a-li] as the name of 
Xavur’s 
wife, that are closely associated with the ancient Hurrian names 
XT-Y/Xu-ti-ya [“Hittite”] or QYN-Y/Qa-a-ni-ya [“Kenite”] or 
QN-Z-Y/Qa-ni-zi-ya [“
Kenizzite”] or YBWS-Y/I-bu-us-ya [“Jebusite”]?
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois