Biblical Hebrew Forum

[jimstinehart AT aol.com]

Hebrew Meanings of Biblical Names

The name of Abraham’s father is spelled TRX, traditionally transliterated as 
“Terah”.  In my view Terah is portrayed as being a native west Semitic 
speaker, in which case his name TRX should make sense in Hebrew.  

One of Terah’s signature characteristics is that he “wanders” and “journeys”. 
 We first meet Terah in Ur in southern Mesopotamia, but then he soon ends up 
in XRN in northern Mesopotamia, where he has “wandered” or “journeyed”.  
Although my own view of why Terah makes this journey differs from the 
traditional view, perhaps we could all agree that one key role of Terah in 
the Patriarchal narratives is “to journey”.

Does Terah’s name, TRX, mean “you journey”?  Is it a shortened version of 
T)RX?

There is a Hebrew verb )RX [see for example Job 34: 8] that means “to go, to 
journey, to wander, to take a long caravan trip”.  “You journey” or “you 
wander” would be T)RX.  For a name, the full-form T)RX could perhaps be 
shortened to just TRX, meaning “You wander, journey, take a long caravan 
trip”.  [As to why TRX might have been preferred to T)RX for this name, Prof. 
Gordon J. Wenham at “Genesis 1-15” (1987), p. 252 points out that some form 
of TRX is attested as a place name in northern Mesopotamia, in the general 
vicinity of Harran.  Thus by using TRX as an abbreviated spelling of T)RX, 
the name TRX could also recall the geographical locale of northern 
Mesopotamia, where Terah lives out his long life.  But TRX as such 
geographical place name probably is not a west Semitic name, so it cannot 
function as the Hebrew meaning of the name of the father of west Semitic 
native speaker Abraham.]  Since one of Terah’s key characteristics is that he 
makes a long “journey” from Ur to XRN, and since I see Terah as being a 
native west Semitic speaker, it would make sense for Terah’s name in 
Hebrew/west Semitic to mean “you journey”, with TRX being a play on [that is, 
an abbreviated version of] T)RX.

By contrast, the traditional analysis of the name “Terah”/TRX tries to tie it 
to the moon or a moon god.  The Hebrew word for “moon” is YRX, and there was 
a Canaanite moon god with the same name, YRX.  But the first letter of the 
name “Terah”/TRX is tav/T, not yod/Y.  At one time it was thought that Ugarit 
attested a moon god named TRX, but that view has now been largely abandoned:  
“Although some scholars argued that Terah occurred as a divine name in the 
Canaanite texts from Ras Shamra [Ugarit], most now agree that there is no 
evidence of a god trx at Ugarit.”  Victor P. Hamilton, “The Book of Genesis: 
Chapters 1-17” (1990), Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, p. 363.  Although it is 
true that both Ur and Harran were centers of worship of moon gods, 
nevertheless the Patriarchal narratives never mention the moon or any moon 
god regarding Abraham’s father Terah [or regarding any of Terah’s descendants 
who remain at XRN].  Moreover, the traditional linguistic analysis regarding 
“moon” seems untenable.  Concerning 3-letter consonantal west Semitic roots, 
where the differing consonants are not related to each other (TRX vs. YRX), 
it seems to me that the fact that 2 out of 3 letters match means nothing.

I see the Hebrew meaning of the name TRX as being T)RX:  “You Wander”.  I do 
not see the Hebrew meaning of the name TRX as having anything to do with 
YRX/“moon”.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois