Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

1.  Prof. Yigal Levin wrote:
 
“I'll go even further. Part of the writer's task is to write in such a way 
as to attract and engage his audience, so that they will want to read the 
story and then be receptive to the messages that are embedded in the story. 
Also, since at the time most people could not read, the stories were 
presumably read to the audience, and the etymologies helped people remember 
the 
stories and their contexts.”
 
Yes, “the etymologies helped people remember the stories and their contexts”
, but then why is there no express etymology for the names Abram, Isaac and 
Benjamin?  All those names are far more important than the name 
ZBLWN/Zebulun.
 
And of more direct relevance to this thread, why doesn’t Genesis 25: 25 say 
that Rebekah gave Jacob his name?  When it says that “they” gave him the 
name Jacob, that seems to imply that Isaac and Rebekah came up with that name 
together.  By sharp contrast, the text bends over backwards to insist that  
L-e-a-h  and  R-a-c-h-e-l  came up with the names of Jacob’s 11 oldest sons 
on their own.  If Isaac can participate in naming Jacob, then why oh why is 
Jacob AWOL when it comes to naming his 11 oldest sons?
 
Scholars seem to have missed why it is  n-e-c-e-s-s-a-r-y  to portray  
L-e-a-h  and  R-a-c-h-e-l  as giving Jacob’s 11 oldest sons their names. 
 
2.  Rev. Bryant J. Williams III wrote:
 
“[T]he text gives the reason for the etymologies.”
 
Yes, but surely you are aware that the mainstream scholarly view is that 
the names of Jacob’s 11 oldest sons were likely in place centuries before one 
of the multiple authors of the Patriarchal narratives came up with stories 
in which Leah and Rachel purport to explain these 11 names.  Here’s how Prof. 
Yigal Levin sets forth that mainstream scholarly view:
 
“In fact, some of the stories may well have originated in oral tradition, 
but that is impossible to actually prove.”
 
Ouch!  Think what the consequence of that would be.  Prof. Speiser has 
given an Akkadian etymology of ZBLWN that can compete with Leah’s Hebrew 
etymology.  Prof. Wenham, quoted below, suggests that this is an Amorite 
name.  
Isaac Fried and Prof. Yigal Levin suggest Hebrew etymologies of ZBLWN:  
[Isaac 
Fried] “Seems to me that ZBULUN (Gen. 30:20) is a variant of IYZEBEL (1kings 
16:31) and of E$BAAL of 1Ch. 8:33.”  [Prof. Yigal Levin]” Why would it be? 
Zebulun and Iyzebel (Jezebel) are probably both derived from Zebul, but 
Eshbaal, the son of Saul whom the book of Samuel calls Ishboshet, probably 
means "Man of Baal" - "Baal" in this case referring not to the Canaanite 
deity 
but to YHWH.”  But note that those Hebrew theories do not explain the 
interior vav/W in ZBLWN, as do the competing scholarly Akkadian and Amorite 
theories for this name.  
 
If scholars are right that Leah’s Hebrew etymology did not come into being 
until centuries after the name ZBLWN came into being for one of Jacob’s 
sons, then Isaac Fried could no longer merrily say:
 
“…the curious fact that seemingly reasonable parents whimsically give to 
their nice Jewish boy son the apparently bizarre name….”
 
Yes, I’m quoting Isaac Fried slightly out of context here, because he was 
actually talking about the name Isaac.  But do you see my point?  Isaac Fried 
may be confident that the names of Jacob’s 11 oldest sons are Hebrew names 
of “nice Jewish boys”, but you see, that’s precisely the problem.  If those 
11 names came into being centuries before chapters 29 and 30 of Genesis 
were written [the scholarly view, which I oppose], then what guarantee would 
there be that these are Hebrew names, rather than Akkadian or Aramaic or 
Hurrian, etc. names?
 
Speaking of that pesky interior vav/W, let me quote another mainstream 
scholarly musing on the “real” meaning of $M(WN, where (W/ayin-vav is the 
focus:
 
“[I]t may be a theophoric name, ‘The god On has heard’, for a god ‘on 
appears in Ugaritic texts….”  Gordon Wenham, “Genesis 16-50” (1994), p. 243.
 
Ouch!  See what I mean?  Is $M(WN a Ugaritic name that honors the Ugaritic 
god ‘on, with chapter 29 of Genesis coming centuries later and giving an 
unconvincing Hebrew etymology of this Ugaritic name that had long ago been 
adopted by a tribe?  We begin to see that scholars have struggled mightily 
with 
that irritating interior vav in the names $M(WN, ZBLWN, GR$WN, and )LWN.  
Isaac Fried suggests a Hebrew analysis of that (W phenomenon, where $ is seen 
as I$, the name of a god, and then M(WN can be “habitation”, per Psalms 90: 
1.  Although that’s a Hebrew etymology, would we really be comfortable 
having the name of Jacob’s second-born son honor a pagan deity?  
 
Note how the scholarly response, which jettisons the Hebrew nature of these 
names entirely, is far more disconcerting than my own theory of the case, 
which is that these -WN endings are designed to recall the “sound” of Laban’
s mainly Hurrian-speaking neighbors, while the names themselves are still 
Hebrew names (not Hurrian or Akkadian or Ugaritic names).    Along the same 
general lines, Prof. Wenham claims that Issachar and Zebulun are Amorite 
names.  [I don’t know why Prof. Wenham  keeps talking Ugaritic and Amorite, 
when 
everything’s happening way out east in eastern Syria.  Just think if 
Biblical scholars knew Hurrian, the language spoken by the people who 
dominated 
eastern Syria in the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, when Jacob was out there.] 
 
Commentators seem blissfully unaware what’s riding on this issue.  We 
absolutely need  L-e-a-h  and  R-a-c-h-e-l  to give Hebrew etymologies of 
these 
11 names, or else there’s no defense to the claim that these are not Hebrew 
names at all!
 
This issue is not in play regarding Jacob’s youngest son, because Benjamin 
was born in Canaan.  Ditto for Isaac.  And in my controversial opinion, 
ditto for Abram, too.  For sons born in Canaan, there’s no worry that their 
names might not be west Semitic names.  Accordingly, note that Genesis 25: 25 
doesn’t feel the slightest need to clarify exactly what role Rebekah played 
when “they” gave Jacob his name.  Why?  Because Jacob was born in Canaan, and 
Rebekah had long ago resigned herself to living the rest of her life in 
Canaan, so we can count on Jacob’s name being a Hebrew name.
 
But what everyone should be worried about is whether the names of Jacob’s 
11 oldest sons, who are portrayed as being born way out in eastern 
Syria/Naharim, are what Isaac Fried assumes they are:  “nice Jewish boys’” 
names.
In my opinion, the names of Jacob’s 11 oldest sons did not exist prior to 
the composition of chapters 29 and 30 of Genesis as names of tribes in 
greater Canaan, or as names of Jacob’s sons. When scholars confidently assume 
that 
those 11 names likely pre-date the composition of chapters 29 and 30 of 
Genesis by many centuries, they unwittingly give up on the Hebrew/Jewish 
character of those names!  In my opinion, it was an early Hebrew who came up 
with 
those 11 names, the sole author of the Patriarchal narratives.  He did not 
do midrash on 11 pre-existing names of tribes of Israel.  No, he himself 
created those names.  In particular, in my opinion the names $M(WN and ZBLWN 
did 
not exist in greater Canaan prior to the time of the composition of those 
charming, memorable stories that Leah tells us as to what those names mean to 
her. 
 
My point on this thread is to emphasize the absolute, critical importance 
of the fact that for Jacob’s 11 sons born way out in eastern Syria, to 
mothers who to that point had lived their entire lives in eastern Syria, 
those 
mothers are portrayed in the text as giving those 11 sons Hebrew names, 
thereby 
establishing the Hebrew/Jewish character of the tribes of Israel.  And  
t-h-a-t  is why the text goes out of its way, only in chapters 29 and 30 of 
Genesis and nowhere else, to insist that the mothers of those sons, that is,  
L-e-a-h  and  R-a-c-h-e-l , came up on their own with those 11 names of Jacob’
s 11 oldest sons, on a Hebrew basis.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois