Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Speaking of the “Akkadian and Ugaritic cuneiform tablets” referenced [in different ways] by both Stewart Felker and Isaac Fried, why don’t we ask if an Akkadian-based [east Semitic] proper name similar to ($W [“Esau”] is attested at Ugarit?

 

Although scholars assert that the name ($W [“Esau”] is not attested in the ancient world outside of the Bible, there is in fact one attested personal name at Ugarit that is fairly close to ($W.  Ugarit [which was primarily a west Semitic-speaking Amorite country] has the following attested Akkadian-based [east Semitic] proper name:

 

“[Ugaritic personal name] u$y.  ‘Ebony[-coloured].  …A syllabic spelling may be u-$i-i…and it may correspond to u$ú, dark-coloured wood or stone…, a word actually attested in Ugaritic Akkadian.”  W.G.E. Watson, “Ugaritic Onomastics (2)”, AuOr 8 (1996) 113427, at p. 244.

 

The name u$y at Ugarit reminds one of the Biblical name ($W [“Esau”], and it has the perfect meaning:  “ebony”, which could imply “dark red ebony”.  As noted in my prior post, a meaning of “dark red ebony” is virtually the only meaning of the name ($W [“Esau”] that will fit what Genesis 25: 25 says about Esau.

 

However, neither of the two vowels in the Ugaritic personal name u$y are exact matches to “Esau”.  That should prompt us to examine the common word that underlies this name.  The Akkadian common word for “ebony” is u$û, which is closer to ($W [“Esau”] in that the last two letters match;  but it does not have the same initial vowel as “Esau”.  Closer still is the Akkadian variant of that word, e$ium;  if one takes off the Akkadian ending -m, that latter Akkadian word would be e-$i-u, whose Biblical Hebrew rendering would [as discussed below] be expected to be ($W [“Esau”].  Only in Hurrian itself, however, for example at the Hurrian province of Nuzi in Late Bronze Age eastern Syria, is the common word for “ebony” i-$i-ú, which is an exact match, on a letter-for-letter basis, to the Biblical Hebrew spelling of “Esau”:  ($W.

 

Rebekah is from Bronze Age eastern Syria, and at Late Bronze Age Nuzi in eastern Syria about 30% of the attested names are Akkadian-based names.  Gelb & Purves, “Nuzi Personal Names” (1943), p. 5.  So it is significant to find an Akkadian-based name attested at Ugarit that is fairly similar to the Biblical name ($W [“Esau”], and that appears to be an exact match to some versions of the common word “ebony” that underlies that name at Ugarit.

 

The Hurrian common word for “ebony” is i-$i-ú.  N. Nozadze, “Vocabulary of the Hurrian Language” (2007), p. 187.  As shown in the bracketed paragraph below, the expected Biblical Hebrew spelling of the Hurrian common word i-$i-ú is ($W, which is the precise spelling of the Biblical name “Esau”.  

 

[A brief technical analysis of how the Hurrian common word i-$i-ú would be expected to be rendered in Biblical Hebrew is as follows.  Where a Biblical Hurrian word or name begins with either the Hurrian true vowel I or the Hurrian true vowel E as its own separate syllable (a common phenomenon in Hurrian, though that never occurs in Hebrew common words themselves), that is invariably rendered in Biblical Hebrew by the Hebrew letter ayin/(.  [Hurrian itself had no ayin/(.]  (Thus (PRWN [“Ephron”] at Genesis 23: 8, which is the name of the Hurrian lord who charges Abraham a king’s ransom for Sarah’s gravesite, is the Hurrian name I-pi-ri-i-ne, meaning “the lord” and implying “[Teshup] Is The Lord”.  The Hurrian root of this name is i-pi-ri (alternatively spelled e-pi-ri), meaning “lord”, which is rendered in Biblical Hebrew as (PR.  Hebrew ayin/( in initial position is consistently used in the Patriarchal narratives to represent either the Hurrian true vowel I or the Hurrian true vowel E as its own separate syllable.  [As to the Hebrew vav/W in the name (PRWN, in interior position the Hurrian anaptyxe vowel, which is the same vowel as the preceding vowel, is represented by the Hebrew letter vav/W, which in that case is not the Hurrian true vowel U.]  Another example in the Patriarchal narratives of Hebrew ayin/( being used to represent either the Hurrian true vowel I or the Hurrian true vowel E as its own separate syllable in initial position is the name (NR [“Aner”] of the Hurrian princeling at Genesis 14: 13, which is the Hurrian name E-na-ar, meaning “[Teshup] Acts Like a God”.)  The second syllable in the Hurrian common word i-$i-ú, namely -$i-, is rendered by Hebrew shin/$ alone.  Per the pattern of defective spelling in Hebrew, a standard consonant-vowel syllable like this is rendered solely by the consonant, with no express rendering of the vowel.  Finally, the last element in this Hurrian common word is the Hurrian true vowel U as its own separate syllable;  that naturally is rendered by the Hebrew letter vav/W.  It is important to note that in rendering Hurrian names in Biblical Hebrew, the rule is:  one Hebrew letter per one Hurrian syllable.  Thus we see that ($W is the expected Biblical Hebrew rendering, on a letter-for-letter basis, of the 3-syllable Hurrian common word i-$i-ú, which means "ebony".]

 

We have solved this 3,500-year-old Biblical mystery!  To a woman from Bronze Age eastern Syria like Rebekah, the name ($W [“Esau”] would have meant “ebony”, and as such could imply “dark red ebony”.  That meaning fits perfectly the Genesis 25: 25 description of Esau at his birth, and is virtually the only meaning that could be imagined to fit.  Esau's dark "red" hair, which was as dark red as dark red ebony, and the fact that Esau was so "hairy", made Rebekah's oldest son as a newborn infant look as dark red as dark red "ebony", hence the name ($W : i-$i-ú : "Esau", meaning "[dark red] ebony" in Hurrian and Akkadian, as known in west Semitic-speaking Ugarit, in Late Bronze Age Syria.  Contra the scholarly view, the author of Genesis 25: 25 certainly did know the meaning of the name ($W [“Esau”].  As with the Biblical Egyptian names near the end of Genesis, the early Hebrew author of the Patriarchal narratives was well-versed in several non-west Semitic languages, and he was able to compose or choose non-west Semitic personal names whose underlying meanings in those non-west Semitic languages perfectly reflect the character’s role in the narrative.  Because the Patriarchal narratives were reduced to writing [in cuneiform] by the original early Hebrew author, the received text accurately sets forth, on a letter-for-letter basis, this Biblical name that matches up perfectly, all these millennia later, to attested non-west Semitic names and words from Late Bronze Age Syria, which was the homeland of Esau’s mother Rebekah.

 

The received text, as is, is perfect.  It’s incredibly old as a written text, and it has a stunning degree of historical accuracy in a Late Bronze Age context.

 

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois