Biblical Hebrew Forum

[jimstinehart AT aol.com]

Isaac Fried: 

In response to my assertion that “‘Jael’ cannot be a west Semitic name 
meaning ‘Male Ibex’”, you wrote:  

“You are committing, I am afraid, a fatal mistake in thinking of the name as 
a word.” 

Au contraire, I would say that in your west Semitic analysis of these 
non-Semitic names, “You are committing, I am afraid, a fatal mistake”.

Most Hurrian names mean something like “Praise Teshup” or “Teshup Is Firm”, 
etc., and are very obviously built upon common words [though this can be the 
Hurrian spelling of an Akkadian verb, per about 30% of the Hurrian names 
attested at Nuzi].  Thus consider the 6 classic Hurrian names at Genesis 15: 
19-21:

1.  Qa-a-ni-ya {or Kā-ni-ya}/QYN-Y [‘Kenites’]:  “Firm Is Teshup”.  Kā-ni or 
qa-a-ni is the Hurrian spelling of the Akkadian verb kanu, meaning “be firm”, 
and Hebrew yod/Y in non-final position can optionally be used to represent 
the long Akkadian vowel A;  -ya is a classic Hurrian theophoric suffix.

2.  Qa-ni-zi-ya {or Ka-ni-zi-ya}/QN-Z-Y [‘Kenizzites’]:  “Firm Is Blessed 
Teshup”.  Qa-ni is the same Akkadian verb, but this time the simplified 
Hurrian spelling ka-ni [which both at Nuzi and in the Biblical spelling is a 
variant that does not explicitly reflect that fact that the Akkadian vowel A 
here is long] does not require the vowel A to be recorded in Hebrew;  -zi- or 
-iz-zi means “blessed”, and the suffix, as always, is -ya, meaning “Teshup”.

3.  Xu-ti-ya/XT-Y: [‘Hittites’]:  “Praise Teshup”.  Unlike the prior two 
Akkadian names with Hurrian characteristics, this is the first of three 
purely Hurrian names.  Xuti in Hurrian means “to praise”.

4.  Piri-zi-ya/PR-Z-Y [‘Perizzites’]:  “Blessed Teshup is Lord”.  Piri is one 
of the many spellings of the well-known Hurrian word for “lord”.

5.  Gera-ga-%i-ya/GR-G-%-Y [‘Girgashites’]:  “Teshup is Strong”.  Gera means 
“long”, and gera-%i means “long, strong”.  -ga is a Hurrian suffix used to 
make a common word suitable to be a name.

6.  I-bu-uS-ya/YBWS-Y [‘Jebusites’]:  “Made by Teshup”.  I-bu-us is one of 
the funky Hurrian spellings of the Akkadian verb epē$u, meaning “to make”.

Note that contrary to your advice, for all six of these vintage Hurrian names 
it makes perfect sense to be “thinking of the name as a word”.

Same with A-a-li/Y(L [Jael], whose long form would be A-a-li-ya, meaning 
“Lady [devoted to] Teshup” or “Lady [devoted to] Xeba”, where a-a-li means 
“lady, queen” in Hurrian.  [Many Hurrian names, as here, omit the implied 
theophoric suffix.]  Once again, it makes perfect sense to be “thinking of 
the name as a word”.

A-a-li, the wife of Xavur/XBR the Kenite, should have a Kenite/Hurrian name.  
Because a few prominent Hurrian families continued to live in Jerusalem until 
the Exile, it in fact was easy for pre-exilic Biblical authors, even though 
they knew almost nothing about Late Bronze Age eastern Syria, to come up with 
vintage Hurrian personal names at will, such as A-a-li.  As a Kenite, the 
wife of Xavur should not have a west Semitic name, and she doesn’t.  Same 
with “Uriah” the ‘Hittite”, and “Araunah” the ‘Jebusite’, and every other 
personal name in the Bible that is paired with any of the above six names at 
Genesis 15: 19-21.  Those six Hurrian names represent the Hurrian ruling 
class that dominated Canaan during the Patriarchal Age [in Years 12-14].

In my opinion, we should give up on the 2,500-year-old tradition of doing 
creative west Semitic re-interpretations and mis-interpretations of these 
non-west Semitic vintage Hurrian names. 

Even if a “dialect” is claimed, so that in west Semitic Y(L would allegedly 
mean “[male or female] ibex”, instead of being the Hebrew word “male ibex”, 
such a name still does not fit the story of Sisera’s murder at all, which has 
nothing to do with an “ibex”.  Why?  Because Y(L is a non-Semitic Hurrian 
name, A-a-li, as we should rightly expect for a 
Qa-a-ni-ya/QYN-Y/Kenite/Hurrian.    All 25 names -- the 6 names at Genesis 
15: 19-21, and the 19 personal names that are paired with them later in the 
Bible -- make perfect sense as Hurrian names.  25 of 25.  If we think Hurrian 
for the Kenites, etc., then we are  n-o-t  making a “mistake in thinking of 
the name as a word”.  All 19 of these personal names, including Y(L/A-a-li, 
are based on Hurrian common words, that’s all.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois