Biblical Hebrew Forum

[jimstinehart AT aol.com]

Nir Cohen wrote:  “this is interesting, since in talmudic aramaic?/hebrew? 
כלבה was used for lioness (i speak from memory only. anybody can confirm?). 
so maybe jephuneh gave his sons names after the most noble of animals? and in 
semitic?”

Genesis 15: 19-21 refers to Canaanites, Amorites, QNZY [Kenizzites] and 7 
other peoples.  It seems unlikely that the Kenizzites are Canaanites or 
Amorites, and it also seems unlikely that anyone in Canaan other than 
Canaanites or Amorites would be native west Semitic speakers having west 
Semitic names.  Therefore, anyone whom the Bible states is a Kenizzite or a 
son of Kenaz would logically be expected to be a foreigner with a non-west 
Semitic name.

Othniel is expressly stated to be a “son of QNZ”, and Othniel’s brother Caleb 
is expressly said to be a Kenizzite [Numbers 32: 12].  For all of “Kenaz” and 
“Kenizzites” and “Othniel”, the Hebrew lexicons say that the name is “from an 
unused [west Semitic] root”.  Isn’t that suspicious?  We would expect a 
Kenizzite like Othniel to be a foreigner with a non-west Semitic name, and 
there is no used west Semitic root for Othniel, so why try to insist that 
such a foreigner’s name is west Semitic?

As to the name “Caleb”, although KLB is the west Semitic word for “dog”, the 
Biblical references to dogs are consistently negative, whereas Caleb is 
viewed extremely positively by Biblical authors.  Yes, some foreign cultures 
had a higher opinion of dogs, but that would reinforce the idea that Caleb 
the Kenizzite was a foreigner.  As a foreigner, why would Caleb be thought to 
have a west Semitic name?  Per Genesis 15: 19-21, we should not in fact 
expect a Kenizzite to have a west Semitic name, because the Kenizzites are 
neither Canaanites nor Amorites, and who else in the Patriarchal Age besides 
the Hebrews themselves were native west Semitic speakers?

Logically, when neither “Kenizzite” nor the personal names of people in the 
Bible who are said to be Kenizzites make sense as attested west Semitic 
words, shouldn’t we at least  a-s-k  if all these names may be non-west 
Semitic names?  I honestly do not understand the insistence that Kenizzite 
names allegedly  m-u-s-t  be west Semitic.  How does such an assertion make 
logical sense?  Doesn’t “Kenizzite” mean a foreigner who is not a Canaanite 
or an Amorite, and wouldn’t such foreigners be expected to have non-west 
Semitic names?  Whether the Bible is pure fiction or pure historical fact or 
anywhere in between those two extremes, and regardless of its composition 
dates, wouldn’t it make more sense if persons identified in the Bible as 
Kenizzites had non-west Semitic names?  So since Caleb is explicitly stated 
to be a foreigner, why insist that Caleb has a west Semitic name meaning 
“Dog”?

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois