Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Isaac Fried:

 

You wrote:  “I am sorry, but I have to ignore everything you say about "Elamite, Sumerian, Babylonian or otherwise" as I have no way of independently verifying its veracity.”

 

O.K., if we are going to limit ourselves to Biblical Hebrew, there is one of the four attacking rulers at Genesis 14: 1 whose Patriarchal nickname should make perfect sense in Biblical Hebrew.  That ruler’s historical name was “Aziru”.  That’s the same name as the Biblical Hebrew name “Ezra” at I Chronicles 4: 17.  The Hebrew spelling is (ZRH.  In the cuneiform of the Amarna Letters, that same name, with the same west Semitic meaning, comes out as a-zi-ra or a-zi-ru or a-zi-ri.  The Phoenician and Punic versions of this name are simply (ZR.  The name in all of these cases means “to help”, and its implied meaning is “[God] Helps”.  So this is a good Biblical Hebrew name that is the historical name of one of the four [hated] attacking rulers.

 

But what is the Patriarchal nickname of this west Semitic-speaking Amorite princeling ruler of the northern Lebanon state of Amurru?  If the “four kings against five” at Genesis 14: 1-11 is an accurate written record by a contemporary of the Second Syrian War, which was fought in Year 14 [“in the 14^th year”, per Genesis 14: 5, one year after the “Year 13” referenced at Genesis 14: 4], then the nasty, apt Patriarchal nickname of Aziru, the Amorite princeling ruler of Amurru, is:  )MRPL MLK $N(R.

 

A.  “Amrapel”/)MRPL

 

“Amrapel”, the name of one of four attacking rulers at Genesis 14: 1, 9, is )MRPL.  That is a west Semitic name that should be analyzed as being a slightly abbreviated form of )MR plus )PL.  Historically, this must be Aziru, the Amorite ruler of Amurru in northern Lebanon, who unfortunately often operated in Syria and ended up being forced to become a Hittite puppet when the Hittites conquered Syria in the Great Syrian War [Year 12] and the Second Syrian War [Year 14].  Thus the key concepts we should look for in this name and title are (i) “Amorite, Amurru”, (ii) who brought “gloom and darkness” to northern Lebanon by (iii) mucking around too much in “Syria”, eventually being forced to become a Hittite puppet.

 

1.  )MR here is almost certainly the proper name “Amurru”, which is spelled as follows in the Amarna Letters:  a-mu-ri.  “Amorite” in Hebrew is )MR-Y, where the -Y is a suffix denoting a people.  The 3-syllable country name a-mu-ri, which is a play on “Amorite” [having the same root], would be expected to be spelled )MR in Hebrew, and those are precisely the first three letters of this name.  )MR here likely means:  “an Amorite [princeling] from Amurru”.

 

2.  If the last part of this name, PL, is taken to be an abbreviated form of )PL [a view which, interestingly enough, Gesenius held], then )PL = “darkness, gloom, misery, misfortune”.  [See for example Psalm 91: 6.]

 

Thus the full name, )MR -- )PL, abbreviated as )MRPL, means:  “an Amorite [princeling who brought] gloom and darkness [to] Amurru”.

 

B.  “Shinar”/$N(R, which may originally have been $NXR

 

If Genesis 14: 1-11 is truly ancient as a written text, then it must have originally been recorded in cuneiform.  Cuneiform writing did not usually differentiate between gutturals such as Hebrew heth/X or Hebrew ayin/(.  When this ancient cuneiform text was transformed into alphabetical Hebrew in the 1^st millennium BCE, it would be a pure guess what guttural the third letter had been intended to be.  The 1^st millennium BCE scribe here guessed wrong, writing down Hebrew ayin/(, when in fact Hebrew heth/X had likely been intended.

 

$NXR very likely means “Syria”, and is an attested Hurrian name:  $a-an-xa-ri.  Gelb and Purves, “Nuzi Personal Names” (1943), p. 124a.  The expected Hebrew spelling of $a-an-xa-ri, being a 4-syllable Hurrian personal name that references “Syria”, consists of the following four Hebrew letters:  $NXR.  If that third letter was mistakenly recorded as an ayin/( in the received alphabetical Hebrew text, due to cuneiform heth not distinguishing between Hebrew heth/X and Hebrew ayin/(, then there’s an exact, letter-for-letter match here.

 

“Amrapel”/Aziru was an “Amorite” princeling who brought “gloom and darkness” to “Amurru” by spending too much time mucking about in “Syria”, at Tunip and Damascus;  he eventually found himself being forced to become a Hittite vassal in the aftermath of the Great Syrian War.  “King of Syria” is a mocking title, meaning that by spending so much time making raids and small-time alliances with Hurrian princelings in Syria [especially in allying with the Hurrian princeling ruler of Qadesh on the Orontes, Aitakkama, who was a Hittite puppet], this Amorite princeling eventually forfeited the prior independence of Amurru [in northern Lebanon]. 

 

Note that historically Aziru, though he’s supposed to only be the ruler of northern Lebanon, keeps on showing up in Syria [either Damascus or Tunip] in the Amarna Letters:  “Aziru, the son of Abdi-A$irta, is in Damascus along with his brothers.”  EA 107: 20-28.  “Message of Aziru….  I was residing in Tunip….  I swear I was residing in Tunip.”  EA 161:  11-34.  [Tunip was located in the Orontes River Valley, whose Biblical name is “Valley of the Tilled Fields”/Valley of Siddim.  That’s the locale of the fighting in the “four kings against five”.]  In the Amarna Letters, Aziru also constantly talks about warring with the princelings of Nuhasse near the Orontes River Valley in Syria.  So Aziru cut quite a big figure in south-central Syria through Year 14, especially in the Orontes River Valley area in west-central Syria, rather than confining himself, as he should have, to Amurru in northern Lebanon. 

 

One of the most famous Amarna Letters is Akhenaten’s blistering Amarna Letter EA 162, which reams out the Amorite Aziru for consorting with the Hittites and for consorting with the Hurrian princeling who as of Year 13 was a Hittite puppet in Syria, Aitakkama:  “Why are you at peace with a ruler [Aitakkama] with whom the king [pharaoh Akhenaten] is fighting?  …What happened to you among them that you are not on the side of the king, your lord?  …If for any reason whatsoever you prefer to do evil, and if you plot evil, treacherous things, then you, together with your entire family, shall die by the axe of the king.”  22-38.  To quote Wm. Moran’s mini-summary of this letter at p. 250 [regarding the second sentence above]:  “This seems to be a reference to an initial contact with the Hittites…before Aziru’s final capitulation as a Hittite vassal.”  Akhenaten at lines 68-77 then sets forth a series of sarcastic, nasty nicknames to make clear his disgust with the fact that Aziru is consorting with Hittite sympathizers.  [See Robert McRoberts here.  http://suite101.com/article/aziru-and-the-dynasty-of-amurru-a378682]  Genesis 14: 1 has even nastier, and more brilliant, nicknames in showing the early Hebrew author’s similar disgust with the four attacking rulers, whose actions in Year 14 seemed to imperil the future independence of Canaan itself.  If you’re talking truly nasty nicknames, you’re talking Amarna Letter EA 162: 68-77 and Genesis 14: 1, both of which reflect Years 13-14 and the ominous Syrian Wars.

 

“Amrapel king of Shinar” is a nasty Patriarchal nickname that means:  “an Amorite [princeling who brought] gloom and darkness [to] Amurru [by spending too much time mucking about with Hurrians and Hittites in] Syria”.  “Amrapel” is a west Semitic name, befitting the fact that Aziru was a native west Semitic-speaking Amorite.  “Shinar” is a foreign Hurrian name from Syria, befitting the fact that Aziru threw in his lot with the Hurrian princeling Aitakkama, who famously was one of the first Hittite puppets in Syria in Year 13, with Aziru eventually suffering that same fate of becoming a Hittite puppet.  As such, the name and title “Amrapel king of Shinar” fit Aziru perfectly in Year 14.

 

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois