Biblical Hebrew Forum

[jimstinehart AT aol.com]

Nir Cohen:

1.  You wrote:  “i do not wish to comment on your analysis of the name rachel. as usual, it is based on suppositions. i do not know of parents who would give their daughter the name pulverize-god or millstone-god. in fact, theoforic female names are not that common.”

You make a good point that theophoric names were more common for men than for women in the ancient world.  But this is the Bible, so we might expect many Biblical women’s names to have a theophoric.

RX/mill-stone would normally be thought to have positive overtones to Rachel’s father, Laban [a native west Semitic speaker in eastern Syria].  Consider the name/title of one of Pharaoh’s top officials at Genesis 40: 5:  )PH [“Baker”].  Both RX and )PH relate to the making of bread, which is a necessity of life, and which normally has positive overtones.  Only later do we find out that the )PH/Baker is impaled by Pharaoh [Genesis 40: 22], and that Rachel doesn’t even get the basic honor of being buried at the Patriarchs’ Hebron, nor is her heroic son Joseph named by Jacob/“Israel” to be the next leader of the early Hebrews.  Since RX/mill-stone would ordinarily have positive overtones, Laban could easily have approved of the west Semitic/Hebrew meaning of RX-L.  [And see the somewhat related meaning of Laban’s own name at #4 below.]  Besides, in order for the name to also make sense in Hurrian [for the benefit of Rachel’s mother, who presumably was not a native west Semitic speaker but rather was a local woman from Bronze Age eastern Syria], one is limited as to what names might be chosen for their newborn daughter.

2.  You wrote:  “though i recognize that her name might somehow have to do with the story of laban's teraphim which she stole (arabic RX = gone  ??? compare with TERAX's name).”

Your comment about the name TRX is fascinating.  I see the root of the west Semitic/Hebrew meaning of Terah’s names as indeed being RX, as a shortened form of the Hebrew verb )RX.  The Hebrew verb )RX (see for example Job 34: 8) means “to journey, to wander, to take a long caravan trip”.  “You wander” or “you will wander” would be T)RX.  For a name, the full-form T)RX could be shortened to just TRX, meaning “You wander, journey, take a long caravan trip”.  That west Semitic meaning perfectly reflects Terah’s long caravan trip journey from Canaan way out east to far-away Ur, and then only making it back as far as eastern Syria on that long caravan trip journey.  Yet I don’t see how )RX, meaning “to wander or take a long caravan trip”, fits Rachel, or would have been a name that Rachel’s parents would have chosen for her.  [The root of the Hurrian meaning of TRX is TRX, not RX [or )RX], so that does not apply to the name “Rachel”.]  Rather, the more natural west Semitic/Hebrew meaning of RX in the name RX -L is “millstone”, a word which in the ordinary case has primarily positive overtones, though it could turn out to be negative.

3.  You wrote:  “but i tend to assume that the name was there in the first place, and the "explaining story" came later.”

But there is no “explaining story” for the name “Rachel”.  Or for the name “Leah”.  I begin to fear that you may subscribe to the scholarly theory that the author of Genesis 17: 5-6 allegedly had no idea what the real meaning of the name “Abraham” was, and he allegedly made up a false etymology and meaning for that name centuries after the name “Abraham” had already come into the Hebrew tradition of the Patriarchal narratives.  But the name “Abraham” is never attested in the ancient world outside of the Bible.  The name “Abraham” doesn’t exist outside of the naming story at Genesis 17: 5-6, which in my opinion tells us precisely, and accurately, what the name “Abraham” means.

4.  You wrote:  “same is, perhaps, לבן ("owner of a heart") and the story about גנב את לבו.”

If you’re switching now to analyzing the name “Laban”/LBN, I’m afraid I don’t follow your reference to “owner of a heart”.  But note the phrase NLBNH LBNYM at Genesis 11: 3, relating to making bricks to build the Tower of Babel, which features LBN LBN twice in succession.  One of Laban’s most famous actions in the narrative is that at Genesis 31: 44-46 Laban and Jacob pile up stones, somewhat akin to making a mini-Tower of Babel as it were, as a peaceful border of sorts between their two peoples.  If the west Semitic/Hebrew etymology and meaning of the name LBN refers to “white bricks”, then perhaps we should not be so surprised that his younger daughter’s name RX -L refers to a “millstone”.  Both bricks and millstones are hard objects that are usually viewed positively, yet in the Tower of Babel story [which long post-dates the Patriarchal narratives] the building of that Tower with bricks turned out to be a negative thing.

5.  You wrote:  “in general i am skeptic about the hidden assumption you are making, that biblical names are necessarily "supposed" to reflect a property of their bearers.”

But based on what the text of the Patriarchal narratives  s-a-y-s , look at all the personal names I listed in my response to Chavoux Luyt that are portrayed as closely relating to the character’s actions in the narrative:  (i) Abraham, (ii) Sarah, (iii) Ishmael, (iv) Isaac, (v) Esau, (vi) Jacob [not to mention “Israel”, which Chavoux Luyt characterizes as being a nickname], and (vi) Reuben [plus Jacob’s other 11 sons].  Why wouldn’t we expect the names “Leah” and “Rachel” to be the same?  You are well aware of Rachel’s sad fate.  Shouldn’t we then expect to see a premonition of that in her name?  By contrast, Leah ends up, against the odds, winning the grand prize, as her son Judah is named as the proper successor to Jacob/“Israel”.  Shouldn’t we therefore expect the name “Leah” to be more positive than the name “Rachel”?  [I see the name “Leah”/L)H as being L -)H : L -)X, and as meaning “Belonging to God”, which is a very positive meaning.]  That’s the way the above 7 names work.  Why shouldn’t the names “Leah” and “Rachel” be expected to work that way as well?

6.  You wrote:  “they are supposed to reflect their parents (mostly, mother's) attitude on, or before, birth. suffice it to bring examples: izchak, or moses, or the 12 tribes, etc etc.”

As to the name “Isaac”, what the text says is this.  At Genesis 17: 17, Abraham [not Sarah] laughs at God’s notion that old Sarah might still be able to bear a child.  Then just two verses later, at Genesis 17: 19, God tells Abraham that Abraham is to call the son that old Sarah will bear “Isaac”.  Thus the name “Isaac” is portrayed in the text as first and foremost reflecting the divine attitude toward the father [Abraham], rather than as primarily reflecting the mother’s attitude regarding the birth.  Yes, Sarah laughs at Genesis 18: 12-13 at God’s reiteration that old Sarah will yet bear a child, and Sarah laughs with delight at Genesis 21: 6 upon Isaac’s actual birth.  Yet the first “laugh” regarding old Sarah bearing a son, which precipitates God dictating that a son to be borne by Sarah shall be called “Isaac” [which means “he laughs” in Hebrew], is Abraham’s laugh, not Sarah’s laugh.  

7.  You wrote:  “nor do i see how isaac ties the name leah to a cow, other than the fact that in israeli children books in the 1950s this would be a fit name for a cow.  maybe he read some of those. but even these books are gone now, and cows are only discussed as food items.”

Isaac Fried’s later post sees the name “Leah” as meaning “heavy (pregnant?) sheep”.  It’s nice to see that Isaac Fried does not rely on the Assyrian word letu for “cow”, since such Assyrian word bears no resemblance to the name “Leah”, or on the Arabic word for “bull”, since (i) Laban wouldn’t call a newborn daughter a “bull”, for heaven’s sake, and (ii) Arabic isn’t relevant to Bronze Age eastern Syria in any event.  But if I understand Isaac Fried’s own explanation of the name “Leah”, he seems to be trying to tie L)H/“Leah” to (WL, meaning a “ewe” or “cow” that is nursing.  But (WL is not at all like L)H as to the Hebrew letters involved.  [But perhaps I have completely misunderstood what Isaac Fried is saying there.]

I myself do not think it makes sense to view the west Semitic/Hebrew meanings of the names “Leah” and “Rachel” as being “Cow” and “Ewe”.  Certainly the names of the last two Hebrew Matriarchs have more significance than that!

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois