Biblical Hebrew Forum

[jimstinehart AT aol.com]

Chavoux Luyt:

You wrote:  “How do you square this origin for the word with the usage (the 
actual verse that I quote) of referring to the "Land of the Hebrews" and 
Joseph being a "Hebrew slave" when talking to the Egyptians?”

Joshua 24: 2 and Genesis 10: 21 [the latter of which you cite] were composed 
long after the Patriarchal narratives.  By the time of Joshua 24: 2, the 
later Hebrews seem to have misinterpreted the Patriarchal narratives as 
saying that the Hebrews had been indigenous to Mesopotamia, even though the 
Patriarchal narratives in fact accurately portray the Hebrews as being 
indigenous to Canaan.  Joshua 24: 2 has the phrase (BR H-NHR in stating where 
Terah and his family had lived.  (BR in that phrase is a west Semitic common 
word that comes from the Hebrew verb meaning “to pass over” or “to go over” 
or “to pass through” [as at Genesis 12: 6], but here effectively means “the 
region on the other side”;  H-NHR means “the river”, so that the phrase means 
“the region on the other side of the river”, and hence implies northern 
Mesopotamia, being the region [from the point of view of people in Canaan] on 
the other side of the upper Euphrates River.  Having said that, the Hebrew 
common word (BR occurs about 650 times in the Bible, and rarely has anything 
to do with the Euphrates River or Mesopotamia. 

(BR is a person’s name at Genesis 10: 21.  Regardless of when Genesis 10: 21 
may have been composed, the name itself may well be very old.  If it’s a west 
Semitic name, it presumably means “to pass over” or “to go over” or “to pass 
through” or “the region on the other side”, but as such it does not 
necessarily have any specific connection to the Euphrates River or 
Mesopotamia.  The phrase you reference from Genesis 10: 21 is BNY (BR, which 
simply means “sons or children of Eber”.

It is very possible that (BR is a name of foreign origin.  The very next 
sentence, Genesis 10: 22, has several foreign proper names:  “The children of 
Shem;  Elam, and Asshur, and Arphaxad, and Lud, and Aram.”  Thus it is 
possible that (BR as a proper name at Genesis 10: 21 is a Hurrian name, in 
which case it would be pronounced E-bi-ri, and it would mean “lord”.  Perhaps 
(BR was originally and properly a Hurrian name, but the Hebrews later gave it 
a west Semitic re-interpretation.  We in fact don’t know where exactly the 
various names in chapter 10 of Genesis came from.  It seems more likely than 
not that many of those names are ancient names of foreign origin that later 
were re-interpreted by Hebrew authors.

By using the name (BR at Genesis 10: 21, and introducing the phrase BNY (BR, 
that Hebrew author neatly provided the basis for giving a new, west Semitic 
interpretation of the ancient name of the people of Israel, which from the 
beginning had been (BR-Y.  The final yod/Y was no longer viewed as being the 
Hurrian suffix -ya, which means “the divine”, but was re-interpreted 
centuries later to be a standard west Semitic suffix meaning “people”.  So 
the Hurrian name (BR-Y which at Genesis 14: 13 had originally meant “God Is 
Lord” was, centuries later, re-interpreted on a west Semitic basis to mean 
“people from the region on the other side”, even though both historically and 
per the Patriarchal narratives, the Hebrews are indigenous to Canaan and are  
n-o-t  “people from the region on the other side”.  Please note that in the 
context of Genesis 14: 13, which is the first use of (BR-Y/“Hebrew” [with the 
original pronunciation having been E-bi-ri-ya], Abram needs to convince three 
princelings in the area, one of whom [A-ni-ir] is a Hurrian, that Abram is as 
powerful as a Hurrian princeling, so that those princelings will agree to 
join with Abram in trying to rescue Lot, who had been taken hostage by the 
Hittites [with “Tidal” at Genesis 14: 1 being a classic Hittite royal name, 
being the name of the older brother whom Suppiluliuma murdered to seize the 
Hittite throne near the beginning of the Amarna Age;  Suppiluliuma’s 
conquests would soon spell the end of the Hurrians].  In the context of 
Genesis 14: 13, Abram needs to assert that he is a “lord” in a world [the 
Amarna Age] in which most of Canaan was dominated by Hurrian princelings.  We 
know from the presence of dozens of Hurrian names in the text, as well as the 
description of many historical events, that the Patriarchal Age was the 
Amarna Age.  In that context, it makes all the sense in the world for Abram 
to adopt for himself and his people a name based on the Hurrian word for 
“lord”, and to call himself the “God Is Lord” person:  E-bi-ri-ya = H-(BR-Y = 
“the Hebrew”.

At Genesis 40: 15 [which you also cite], Joseph refers to Canaan as being 
“the land of the Hebrews”:  )RC H-(BRYM.  Joseph’s great-grandfather Abraham 
had been the first Hebrew, and had been referenced at Genesis 14: 13 as being 
“the Hebrew”/H-(BR-Y.  By the fourth generation, though, that originally 
Hurrian name (BR-Y has now become Semiticized by taking a standard Hebrew 
plural ending, -YM, meaning “people”.  It is at Genesis 39: 17 [which you 
didn’t cite] where the wife of Joseph’s Egyptian master calls Joseph H-(BD 
H-(BR-Y:  “the servant the Hebrew”.  These uses of (BR-Y and the Semiticized 
(BR-YM in chapters 39 and 40 of Genesis simply reflect the fact that Abraham 
had chosen to call himself H-(BR-Y, the E-bi-ri-ya, the God Is Lord person, 
which is simultaneously both properly deferential to YHWH, while also firmly 
asserting that Abram is as powerful as the Hurrian princelings who dominated 
the ruling class of Canaan in the Patriarchal Age/Amarna Age.  

The Hebrews are indigenous to Canaan and certainly are not Hurrians.  But the 
first Hebrew, who lived in a Hurrian-dominated Canaan, chose a Hurrian-based 
name to describe himself and his people:  (BR-Y = E-bi-ri-ya.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois