Biblical Hebrew Forum

[jimstinehart AT aol.com]

David Kolinsky:

1.  You wrote:  “Did it ever occur to you that YaRae'aCh = Moon also means 
‘wanderer’?"

I don’t see the relevance of that.  TRX has nothing to do with the moon/YRX.  
The only time that the word “moon” appears in the entirety of the Patriarchal 
narratives is at Genesis 37: 9 regarding young Joseph’s dream.  Nothing in 
the text supports the traditional view that Terah or his descendants in 
Naharim worshiped the moon.  However, the text is clear that TRX makes a long 
“journey” or “caravan trip”, which is very important in the plotline of the 
Patriarchal narratives.  So it makes sense, adding in the fact that Terah was 
a native west Semitic speaker, that TRX is a shortened from of T)RX, and in 
Hebrew means “you journey”.  The name of each native west Semitic speaker in 
the Patriarchal narratives makes good sense in Hebrew.

2.  You wrote:  “Have you ever noticed that his father's name NaChoR means 
"to be rebuked?"

You mean that you don’t accept the scholarly view that NXWR means “Snorer”?  
But when the subject turns to the name of Abraham’s middle brother, NXWR, the 
middle son of Terah, a meaning of “to be rebuked” would make no sense at all. 
 Rather, the Hebrew meaning of NXWR refers to the “neighing of horses”, and 
foretells that NXWR/Nahor is fated to live most of his life in Naharim, a 
region that was world famous for its horsemanship skills, especially 
regarding chariots.

The Hebrew meaning of NXWR is as a variant of the Hebrew common word NXR.  At 
Jeremiah 8: 16, NXR means:  “the neighing of horses”.  Though the 
ultra-literal meaning of NXR focuses on the sound that horses make, the 
general reference here is to “horses” [not to “snoring”, or to a human being 
“snorting”].   During the Late Bronze Age, Naharim in northern Mesopotamia 
(eastern Syria) was world famous for having introduced “horses” and 
“horse-drawn war chariots” to the ancient near east.  Although Nahor himself 
is a native west Semitic speaker, he ends up living most of his life 
surrounded by charioteers in eastern Syria .  Here’s the most famous sentence 
ever written about Nahor’s non-Semitic neighbors:

“Indeed, it was probably the Hurrians who introduced ‘the light horse-drawn 
chariot with spoked wheels, the training of horses to draw it, its use as a 
platform for firing the composite bow, and the development of scale-armour 
for men and horses to counter it’ (cf. Sherratt 1980:125).” 

Accordingly, instead of NXWR having a senseless Hebrew meaning of “Snorer”, 
as traditionally thought, the Hebrew meaning of the name NXWR in fact deftly 
recalls the time and place where Nahor lived:  northern Mesopotamia, at XRN 
in Naharim, which in the Late Bronze Age was world famous for its association 
with “horses” and “horse-drawn chariots”.

The point is that each native west Semitic speaking person in the Patriarchal 
narratives has a name that makes sense in Hebrew, highlighting one fairly 
important aspect of that person’s role in the Patriarchal narratives.  Thus 
the Hebrew meaning of TRX recalls Terah’s “journey” or “long caravan trip”, 
and the Hebrew meaning of NXWR recalls Nahor living most of his life in a 
locale in eastern Syria famous for the “neighing of horses”.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois