YHWH: The Original Arabic Meaning of the Name

This article is based on ch.8 of my, איך נולד התנ”ך [How the Bible Was Born] (Israel: Kinneret, Zmora-bitan, Dvir, 2018).

Source critically, the revelation of God’s name in ch. 3 was part of the E or Elohistic source, whereas the revelation in chapter 6 is, in my view, from the Holiness School’s redaction of the Pentateuch. See Israel Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness School, trans. Jackie Feldman and Peretz Rodman (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007; repr. of, Minneapolis, MN; Fortress Press, 1995), 17 [n24]; trans. of, מקדש הדממה עיון ברובדי היצירה הכוהנית שבתורה (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1992). Other scholars, however, believe it to be from the Priestly text (see discussion in, David Frankel, “The Priestly Moses,” TheTorah [2015].) Editor’s note: For how these two texts played an important role in the development of source criticism, see Zev Farber, “Documentary Hypothesis: The Revelation of YHWH’s Name Continues to Enlighten,” TheTorah (2014).

Editor’s note: For more on how this meaning was understood over time, see James Diamond, “YHWH: The God that Is vs. the God that Becomes,” TheTorah (2017).

Editor’s note: For a claim that this gloss is actually a redactional supplement, added after the E and J sources were combined, see, Zev Farber, “How Does God Answer the Question: ‘What Is Your Name?’” TheTorah (2017).

The related group Kenites (see appendix) counts the founder of metallurgy among its ancestors (Gen 4:22).

Editor’s note: For more on Timna, see Erez Ben-Yosef and Aaron Greener, “Edom’s Copper Mines in Timna: Their Significance in the 10th Century,” TheTorah (2018).

Uzi Avner, “Egyptian Timna – Reconsidered,” inUnderstanding the Wilderness, ed. J. M. Tabes (Louvain 2014), 103-162.

The term “Arab” here may be anachronistic, as the first time we see this term used is in 8^th century Assyrian documents. The point is that the Midianites are from the same area as the Arabian tribes and were likely part of this Arab or proto-Arab group.

Editor’s note: For a source critical explanation for why both Midianites and Ishmaelites appear in this story as the ones who bring Joseph to Egypt, see, Ben Sandler, “Encountering the Documentary Hypothesis in the Joseph Story,” TheTorah (2014).

I discuss some of this briefly in my piece on Hovav, in the context of why the Torah cuts off the end of the story in Numbers 10. See my, “Hovav the Midianite: Why Was the End of the Story Cut?” TheTorah (2016).

The final w is a phonetic complement, i.e., it is not pronounced but is written to clarify the pronunciation of the previous biliteral sign (i.e., a sign that represents two consonants), which is why it is transcribed with only one w. The first vowel “a” is a common rendering for the vowel preceding an aleph; the final vowel “e” is just a convention of Egyptologists; hieroglyphics were written without vowels and we do not know how the end of the word was pronounced.

Editor’s note: The second “w” is problematic. Unlike in the word shaswe, it cannot be a phonetic complement since phonetic complements are paired to the second consonant of a biliteral sign, or to both consonants, but not to just the first. In theory it could be another consonant yielding Yehwaw. It could also be a redundant consonant (as sometimes occurs in toponyms) or an attempt by the scribe to mimic a vowel sound from a foreign language, such as the diphthong aʊ. An attractive possibility, suggested by the Egyptologist Elmar Edel (1914-1997), is that the “w” quail chick (𓅱) is a scribal error, and what should have been written is the “aleph” vulture (𓄿), which is how the word is spelled in Ramses II’s Amara West inscription, which also references Nomad-land Yehwa. If so, then the final consonant is just a phonetic complement, and the proper transcription would be yhwꜣ. See discussion in, Faried Adrom and Matthias Müller, “The Tetragrammaton in Egyptian Sources – Facts and Fiction,” in The Origins of Yahwism, ed. Jürgen van Oorschot and Markus Witte, BZAW 484 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017), 93-114 [98, n36].

Her fuller name, Pallas Athena, originally meaning “Pallas of Athens.” See, Walter Burkert, Greek Religion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 139.

Editor’s note: See discussion of this identification in David Ben-Gad HaCohen, “Locating Beer-lahai-roi,” TheTorah (2014); idem, “Solving the Problem of Kadesh in the Wilderness of Paran,” TheTorah (2015).

Later Arabic does have such a root (in addition to the one we will discuss presently), but with the meaning “to drop, fall, or tumble” not “to be.”

Goitein is best-known for his 6-volume work, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967–1993). Before teaching at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and then at Princeton, he wrote on the Bible and was even in charge of Bible education in mandatory Palestine.

Shelomo Dov Goitein, “YHWH the Passionate: The Monotheistic Meaning and Origin of the Name YHWH,” Vetus Testamentum 6.1 (1956): 1-9.

See my, “The Rise, Decline and Renewal of Biblical Religion,” OBO 283 (2017): 167-180.

Amnon Ben-Tor, “The Sad Fate of Statues of Hazor,” in Confronting the Past: Archaeological and Historical Essays on Ancient Israel in Honor of William G. Dever, ed. Seymour Gitin, George E. Wright, and J.P. Desel, (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 3–16. For more on this conquest, see Amnon Ben Tor, “The Fall of Canaanite Hazor: The “Who” and “When” Questions,” in Mediterranean Peoples in Transition: Thirteenth to Early Tenth Centuries BCE, in Honor of Professor Trude Dothan, ed. Seymour Gitin, Amihai Mazar, and Ephraim Stern (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1998), 456-467; ibid., “Who Destroyed Canaanite Hazor?” BAR 39.4 (2013): 27-36.

Avner, “Egyptian Timna – Reconsidered.”

Editor’s note: For one discussion of this, see Zev Farber, “Moses’ Father-in-Law: Kenite or Midianite?” TheTorah (2015).

Nadav Na’aman, “The Kenite Hypotheses in Light of the Excavations at Horvat Uzza,” in Not Only History: Proceedings of the Conference in Honor of Mario Liverani ed. Gilda Bartolini and Maria G. Briga (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2016), 171-182.

For a discussion of this verse, and how it connects Jehonadab ben Rechab to the Kenites, see, Shemaryahu Talmon, “המה הקינים הבאים מחמת אבי בית רכב” [These are the Kenites who Come from the Father of the House of Rechab], Eretz Israel 5 (5719): 111-113.

See discussion in, Joseph Patrich, The Formation of Nabatean Art: Prohibition of a Graven Image (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1997).