Genesis: 1a 1b 1c 1d 2a 2b 2c 2d 3 4a 4b 4c/5 6a 6b 7 8 9 10 11a 11b 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25a 25b 26a 26b 27 28a 28b 29 30a 30b 31a 31b/32a 32b 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44a 44b 45 46 47a 47b 48 49 50
The Genealogy of Shem, an alternate version of chapter 10, verse 21 ff
11:10: ELEH TOLDOT SHEM SHEM BEN ME'AT SHANAH VA YOLED ET ARPACHSHAD SHENATAYIM ACHAR HA MABUL
אֵלֶּה תּוֹלְדֹת שֵׁם שֵׁם בֶּן מְאַת שָׁנָה וַיּוֹלֶד אֶת אַרְפַּכְשָׁד שְׁנָתַיִם אַחַר הַמַּבּוּל
KJ (King James translation): These are the generations of Shem: Shem was an hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad two years after the flood:
BN (BibleNet translation): This is the genealogy of Shem. Shem was 100 years old when he fathered Arphachshad, two years after the flood.
ELEH TOLDOT (אלה תולדת): Once again the indication of a new scroll.
ARPACHSHAD (ארפכשד): (see also note to Gen 10:22) The name is always read as Arpachshad or Arphachshad, but surely both are in error. In verse 31 we are about to hear that Av-Ram set out from Ur Kasdim (עור כשדים); and as the notes to Genesis 11:4 point out, Nimrod was probably Nebrod, or Nebron of Babylonian myth, who may originally have been Nazimarattas, a Kassite (Cassite) King of Babylon; the Kassites were an Indo-European people who invaded from Kashshu (now Kurdistan) and defeated the Amorite kings of Babylon around 1300 BCE. Their god was called Kashshu, whence the tribe called itself Beney Kashshu. The Yehudit word for Kash or the Kassites is Kesed (כשד) of which KASDIM (כשדים) as a plural denotes the whole region of the Kassites (in the way that we might refer to Berk-shire as one region, the Shire Counties as several regions, or differentiate New York City from New York State); or indeed the people themselves. Thus we should read his name as ARAPH KESED (ארפ כשד).
As to the meaning of ARAPH; Genesis 14:19 identifies Amraphel as the King of Shin'ar, in the Targum as King of Babylon; should we then go further and read even ARAPH KESED as an error or even an acrostical abbreviation for AM-RAPHEL MELECH KESED?
Earlier references denote him as the third son son of Shem.
11:11: VA YECHI SHEM ACHAREY HOLIYDO ET ARPACHSHAD CHAMESH ME'OT SHANAH VA YOLED BANIM U VANOT
וַיְחִי שֵׁם אַחֲרֵי הוֹלִידוֹ אֶת אַרְפַּכְשָׁד חֲמֵשׁ מֵאוֹת שָׁנָה וַיּוֹלֶד בָּנִים וּבָנוֹת
KJ: And Shem lived after he begat Arphaxad five hundred years, and begat sons and daughters.
BN: And Shem lived for 500 years after the birth of Arpachshad, and he fathered sons and daughters.
VA YECHI (ויחי): Note the use of LECHIYOT (לחיות) here, where other lists use U KOL YEMEY (וכל ימי). It's only a matter of style, but it's enough to suggest a different authorship, or editorship.
There is no reference in this list to Shem's other sons, Eylam, Ashur, Lud and Aram; this is presumably because Av-Ram, who is the end-purpose of this list, comes from Ur Kasdim, i.e. out of Kesed, making him a Kassite and not properly a Semite at all! Unless the Kassites can be counted as Semites?
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11:12: VE ARPACHSHAD CHAY CHAMESH U SHELOSHIM SHANAH VA YOLED ET SHALACH
וְאַרְפַּכְשַׁד חַי חָמֵשׁ וּשְׁלֹשִׁים שָׁנָה וַיּוֹלֶד אֶת שָׁלַח
KJ: And Arphaxad lived five and thirty years, and begat Salah:
BN: And Arpachshad lived for thirty-five years, and fathered Shalach.
VA YOLED SHALACH (ויולד שלח): This coincides with Genesis 10:24, which see.
SHALACH: Elsewhere Shelach.
11:13: VA YECHI ARPACHSHAD ACHAREY HOLIYDO ET SHELACH SHALOSH SHANIM VE ARBA ME'OT SHANAH VA YOLED BANIM U VANOT
וַיְחִי אַרְפַּכְשַׁד אַחֲרֵי הוֹלִידוֹ אֶת שֶׁלַח שָׁלֹשׁ שָׁנִים וְאַרְבַּע מֵאוֹת שָׁנָה וַיּוֹלֶד בָּנִים וּבָנוֹת
KJ: And Arphaxad lived after he begat Salah four hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters.
BN: And Arpachshad lived for four hundred and three years after the birth of Shelach, and he fathered sons and daughters.
Without vowels, which is how it's written, there is no difference between SHELACH and SHALACH; why does the traditional reading aloud change here from SHALACH to SHELACH? We have noted this before, in relation to this name and many others; it will recur frequently as we read on.
Samech break.
11:14: VE SHELACH CHAI SHELOSHIM SHANAH VA YOLED ET EVER
שֶׁלַח חַי שְׁלֹשִׁים שָׁנָה וַיּוֹלֶד אֶת עֵבֶר
KJ: And Salah lived thirty years, and begat Eber:
BN: And Shelach lived for 30 years, and fathered Ever.
EVER (עבר): This is the second version of Ever's origins (Cf Genesis 10:24). Once again we are being asked to read Ever as the eponymous father of the "Hebrews", despite all the evidence elsewhere in the Torah that the term "Hebrew" could have come from any one of several quite different sources, of which the most likely is the Egyptian "Habiru", meaning "outsider", or in our terms "unwanted foreign migrant", "asylum seeker", "wetback", et cetera. The key to its placement here, as with the Tower of Babel, is the establishment of Av-Ram's origins in the very place from where Ezra and Zeru-Bavel are trying to persuade the exiles from Yehudah to return to Yisra-El and Tsi'on; the instruction "Lech Lecha" at the opening of the next sedra is as much for them as it was for him. The evidence of history is that significant numbers chose not to return; from them the Mizrachic Jewish community would emerge over the next several hundred years, spreading across Arabia and even into India and China, creating the first, the Babylonian Talmud, and establishing the earliest and greatest of the yeshivot. Today, alas, as a consequence of policy among the Arab nations in the 20th century, Jewish communities can scarcely be found in any Middle Eastern country other than Israel; Turkey still has around 17,000, Iran 9,000, Azerbaijan 9,000, Morocco 6,000, Pakistan 800, Lebanon 200, Yemen 100 and Bahrain 36. The great communities of Iraq, Egypt and the Hejaz are no more.
11:15: VA YECHI SHELACH ACHARAY HOLIYDO ET EVER SHELOSH SHANIM VE ARBA ME'OT SHANAH VA YOLED BANIM U VANOT
וַיְחִי שֶׁלַח אַחֲרֵי הוֹלִידוֹ אֶת עֵבֶר שָׁלֹשׁ שָׁנִים וְאַרְבַּע מֵאוֹת שָׁנָה וַיּוֹלֶד בָּנִים וּבָנוֹת
KJ: And Salah lived after he begat Eber four hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters.
BN: And Shelach lived for 403 years after the birth of Ever, and he fathered sons and daughters.
Note the repetition of dates - 30 years and 403 years. Note also that we have gone back to the style of the previous TOLDOT, suggesting that this verse at least may be a continuation of the same work (or simply an attempt to imitate its style).
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11:16: VA YECHI EVER ARB'A U SHELOSHIM SHANAH VA YOLED ET PALEG
וַיְחִי עֵבֶר אַרְבַּע וּשְׁלֹשִׁים שָׁנָה וַיּוֹלֶד אֶת פָּלֶג
KJ: And Eber lived four and thirty years, and begat Peleg:
BN: And Ever lived for thirty-four years, and fathered Paleg.
PALEG (פלג): see Genesis 10:25, where Peleg is again the son of Ever, but an aetiology is attached. No reference here to his brother Yaktan. Why did he not get mentioned in the previous list? Normally PALEG is PELEG (see next verse); another instance of that odd grammatical variation.
11:17: VA YECHI EVER ACHAREY HOLIYDO ET PELEG SHELOSHIM SHANAH VE ARB'A ME'OT SHANAH VA YOLED BANIM U VANOT
וַיְחִי עֵבֶר אַחֲרֵי הוֹלִידוֹ אֶת פֶּלֶג שְׁלֹשִׁים שָׁנָה וְאַרְבַּע מֵאוֹת שָׁנָה וַיּוֹלֶד בָּנִים וּבָנוֹת
KJ: And Eber lived after he begat Peleg four hundred and thirty years, and begat sons and daughters.
BN: And Ever lived for four hundred and thirty years after the birth of Peleg, and he fathered sons and daughters.
Again the repetition of the same numbers, variations on 3s and 4s.
Samech break
11:18: VA YECHI PELEG SHELOSHIM SHANAH VA YOLED ET RE'U
וַיְחִי פֶלֶג שְׁלֹשִׁים שָׁנָה וַיּוֹלֶד אֶת רְעוּ
KJ: And Peleg lived thirty years, and begat Reu:
BN: And Peleg lived for 30 years, and fathered Re'u.
The Genesis 10 list gives his brother Yaktan's children, but not Peleg's; that list ends with Yaktan; this list therefore picks up now from there.
They seem to be living to much shorter ages than the previous TOLDOT!
RE'U (רעו): cf Re'u-Ven (Reuben), and other names with the same Re'u beginning (but not Re'umah, which is spelled with an Aleph (א), not an Ayin (ע), and comes from an altogether different root); the later text will explain RE'U-VEN (רעו) as "behold a son", which is unconvincing anyway in the context of the story, but even more so in the light of this verse. RE'U may come from the root (רוע) = "noise", used in Exodus 32:17 and Micah 4:9 to mean "an outcry", and in Job 36:33 as a metaphor for the thunder. However it is much more likely that the root is one of:-
(i) RA'AH (רעה) = "to feed a flock, to pasture, to tend", with specific reference to sheep and goats; whence RO'EH (רעה) and RO'EH TSON (רעה צאן); cf Genesis 4:2/Havel = "a shepherd". The word is also used figuratively for "to rule" or "to govern", as most famously in Psalm 23 "YHVH is my shepherd, I shall not want" which probably ought to be translated "YHVH rules over me, therefore I want for nothing".
(ii) RA'AH (רעה) - the feminine form of RA (רע) = "evil, wickedness"; also used in Job to mean "calamity".
(iii) RE'EH (רעה) - "companion, friend"; used in the Babel story (Genesis 11:3).
Most likely the name RE'U (רעו) is from (iii).
See also RE'U-EL (רעואל), a son of Esav referred to in Genesis 36:4 and 10; and the father of Yitro (Jethro), Mosheh's father-in-law, in Exodus 2:18 and Numbers 10:29.
From this root also comes RE'UT (רעות), ostensibly the feminine form = "a female companion", but this may actually come from the Mo-Avi (Moabite) RUT (רות) or Ruth, which was (according to the Biblical version at least) also the name of King David's great-grandmother. On the other hand, it is equally plausible that RUT was a corruption of RE'UT, or a diminutive variation, in the same way that David, or properly Daoud, was really Yedid-Yah.
11:19: VA YECHI PELEG ACHARAY HOLIYDO ET RE'U TESHA SHANIM U MA'TAYIM SHANAH VA YOLED BANIM U VANOT
וַיְחִי פֶלֶג אַחֲרֵי הוֹלִידוֹ אֶת רְעוּ תֵּשַׁע שָׁנִים וּמָאתַיִם שָׁנָה וַיּוֹלֶד בָּנִים
KJ: And Peleg lived after he begat Reu two hundred and nine years, and begat sons and daughters.
BN: And Peleg lived for two hundred and nine years after the birth of Re'u, he fathered sons and daughters.
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11:20: VA YECHI RE'U SHETAYIM U SHELOSHIM SHANAH VA YOLED ET SERUG
וַיְחִי רְעוּ שְׁתַּיִם וּשְׁלֹשִׁים שָׁנָה וַיּוֹלֶד אֶת שְׂרוּג
KJ: And Reu lived two and thirty years, and begat Serug:
BN: And Re'u lived for thirty-two years, and fathered Serug.
SERUG (שרוג): from the root SARAG (שרג) = "to braid, interweave". SERUG (שרוג) is usually thought to mean "a shoot".
11:21: VA YECHI RE'U ACHAREY HOLIYDO ET SERUG SHEVA SHANIM U MA'TAYIM SHANAH VA YOLED BANIM U VANOT
וַיְחִי רְעוּ אַחֲרֵי הוֹלִידוֹ אֶת שְׂרוּג שֶׁבַע שָׁנִים וּמָאתַיִם שָׁנָה וַיּוֹלֶד בָּנִים וּבָנוֹת
KJ: And Reu lived after he begat Serug two hundred and seven years, and begat sons and daughters.
BN: And Re'u lived for two hundred and seven years after the birth of Serug, and he fathered sons and daughters.
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11:22: VA YECHI SERUG SHELOSHIM SHANAH VA YOLED ET NACHOR
וַיְחִי שְׂרוּג שְׁלֹשִׁים שָׁנָה וַיּוֹלֶד אֶת נָחוֹר
KJ: And Serug lived thirty years, and begat Nahor:
BN: And Serug lived for thirty years, and fathered Nachor.
NACHOR (נחור): The same name, of course, as the brother of Av-Ram, but naming children after deceased grandparents is still a normal Jewish practice. From the root NACHAR (נחר) = "to snort, breathe hard through the nose", it was used specifically of horses. Some think the name may be connected with NACHUM (נחום), as in KFAR NACHUM = Capernaum, but this is incorrect. John is not Joan because it shares three out of four letters.
Eventually the repetitions become so coincidental we have to assume that something else is going on: that every one of these men should have lived to the age of 30, or else to have fathered their first son at the age of 30, which is also the length of a lunar month... can we deduce that, having drawn the map of the Middle East in the previous list, we are now drawing the map of the heavens in this one?
11:23: VA YECHI SERUG ACHAREY HOLIYDO ET NACHOR MA'TAYIM SHANAH VA YOLED BANIM U VANOT
וַיְחִי שְׂרוּג אַחֲרֵי הוֹלִידוֹ אֶת נָחוֹר מָאתַיִם שָׁנָה וַיּוֹלֶד בָּנִים וּבָנוֹת
KJ: And Serug lived after he begat Nahor two hundred years, and begat sons and daughters.
BN: And Serug lived for two hundred years after he fathered Nachor, and he fathered sons and daughters.
11:24: VA YECHI NACHOR TESHA VE ESRIM SHANAH VA YOLED ET TARACH
וַיְחִי נָחוֹר תֵּשַׁע וְעֶשְׂרִים שָׁנָה וַיּוֹלֶד אֶת תָּרַח
KJ: And Nahor lived nine and twenty years, and begat Terah:
BN: And Nachor lived for twenty-nine years, and he fathered Tarach.
TARACH (תרח): Note that, like SHELACH and SHALACH and PALEG AND PELEG above, this starts as TARACH and then becomes TERACH. One of the more significant names, as it was one of the main caravanserai of the Beney Yisra-El in the desert (Numbers 33:27) as well as being the name of the father of Av-Ram (see also Joshua 24:2). The caravanserai presumably took its name from TARACH (תרח) = "to delay", which leads us to wonder if the ancestry of Av-Ram is actually unknown (and not surprisingly if, as TheBibleNet believes, he was originally himself the sun-god, a variation on Brahma, reduced to human proportions by the early Beney Yisra-El), and placed with Terach/Tarach because this was the necessary geographical beginning of his story.
11:25: VA YECHI NACHOR ACHAREY HOLIYDO ET TERACH TESH'A ESREH SHANAH U ME'AT SHANAH VA YOLED BANIM U VANOT
וַיְחִי נָחוֹר אַחֲרֵי הוֹלִידוֹ אֶת תֶּרַח תְּשַׁע עֶשְׂרֵה שָׁנָה וּמְאַת שָׁנָה וַיּוֹלֶד בָּנִים וּבָנוֹת
KJ: And Nahor lived after he begat Terah an hundred and nineteen years, and begat sons and daughters.
BN: And Nachor lived for a hundred and nineteen years after the birth of Terach, and he fathered sons and daughters.
Eventually the maniacal consistency of the style of this inventory becomes tedious to a point of irritating. No one would have written this for poetry, though someone might well have written this as a primitive form of clerical record, the parish birth and death certificates archive or some-such. Or one can imagine an Egyptian king hieroglyphing such a litany upon his pyramid to establish pedigree by longevity and divinity through the roots. Or a Jewish Rabbi wanting to establish the same lineage for papa Av-Raham, exactly as the lineage of Jesus is traced - falsely but necessarily - back along the tree to the starting-rod of Jesse in the Gospels (Matthew 1:2-17). After all, this family tree began as an attempt to demonstrate how the world's nations came into being, through the three sons of No'ach. But its purpose has changed by the end, and we can see now why Yaphet went first - the aim being to establish Av-Raham's line through Nachor back, all the way in fact to Elohim.
Samech break
11:26: VA YECHI TERACH SHIVI'M SHANAH VA YOLED ET AV-RAM ET NACHOR, VE ET HARAN
וַיְחִי תֶרַח שִׁבְעִים שָׁנָה וַיּוֹלֶד אֶת אַבְרָם אֶת נָחוֹר וְאֶת הָרָן
KJ: And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
BN: And Terach lived for seventy years, and fathered Av-Ram, Nachor and Haran.
SHIV'IM (שבעים): If 30 was a symbolic number, 70 is equally so.
AV-RAM (אברם): "The great buffalo", or "the great/exalted father" (Jupiter in the Latin and Arthur in the Celtic mean the same) or possibly "the father of the Aramaean people"? See Av-Ram in the Dictionary of Names. Hertz confirms the antiquity of this name, observing that an Abi-Rama was a witness to a Babylonian deed long before this time.
NACHOR (נחור): Is this a confusion of Nachors? Or is this the child being named for the grandfather? Presumably the latter.
HARAN (הרן): literally "mountaineer" or "mountain-dweller", from HAR (הר) = "a hill/mountain". Not to be confused with CHARAN (חרן), which is the place from where Av-Ram started his journey to Kena'an - I say this only because most English translations do make this error, rendering both the man and the place as Haran, failing to distinguish the Hey (ה) in the man's name from the Chet (ח) in the town's.
In Arabic he is known as Ibrahim, not Av-Ram or Av-Raham. Ancient manuscripts refer to a nomadic chieftain by name Abiram or Abi-Ram or Avi-Ram, and very ancient Babylonian deeds, as noted above, refer to an Abi-rama "long before the days of Abram" as Hertz puts it.
Because scholarship needs to look at every possibility, however remote, let us for a moment imagine the aleph (א) in Av-Ram replaced by an ayin (ע), which does almost nothing to change the pronunciation, and is feasible because all this got written down after 1000 years of oral tradition - and a very different option arises. Av (אב) with an aleph (א) denotes "father", which can be interpreted to mean "sheikh", and gives the great man his dignity; but with an ayin (ע), and taken as a single word, unhyphenated, which is how it is written in the Yehudit, and it gives IVRIM (עברים), meaning the "Hebrews". If this were correct, it would make the reading of the entire story very much more straightforward and logical. In fact, as we shall see later, Av-Ram, and especially the later Av-Raham, wasn't a man at all, but the tribal god of the Beney Yisra-El (and as such father with an aleph and Ivrim with an ayin become interchangeable variants anyway), and the stories of his travelling are in fact stories of his people travelling, but carrying the image of the god with them in some ancient equivalent of the Ark of the Tabernacle. So there is something to be gleaned from the hypothesis, even though, having looked at it, we must conclude that it is incorrect. Nevertheless, we shall return to it, for the sake of that gleaning.
Does Haran link to Aharon (Aaron), which is Haroun in Babylonia, Mosheh's brother - هارون in the modern Arabic? Like the previous paragraph, a theory worth exploring for a moment. But only for a moment. One word is of Egyptian origin, the other Assyrian - there is no link.
11:27: VE ELEH TOLDOT TERACH TERACH HOLID ET AV-RAM ET NACHOR VE ET HARAN VE HARAN HOLID ET LOT
וְאֵלֶּה תּוֹלְדֹת תֶּרַח תֶּרַח הוֹלִיד אֶת אַבְרָם אֶת נָחוֹר וְאֶת הָרָן וְהָרָן הוֹלִיד אֶת לוֹט
KJ: Now these are the generations of Terah: Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begat Lot.
BN: Now this is the genealogy of Terach: Terach fathered Av-Ram, Nachor and Haran; and Haran fathered Lot.
LOT (לוט): from the root LUT (לוט) = "to cover over, hide, wrap up"; LATIM (לטים) however, from the same root, = "incantations" or "secret arts"; although Exodus 7:11 gives LACHATIM (לחתים) from LAHAT (לחת) = "to burn, to enflame", whereas Isaiah 25:7 gives HALOT HALOT AL KOL HA AMIM (הלוט הלוט על כל העמים), usually read as "the covering which is spread over all the nations", but the poetic repetition is obscure, and may itself be a form of incantation. Lot is held to be the father of the Beney Amon and Beney Mo-Av (Genesis 14:11, Psalm 83:9).
A third theory holds that the name may be an abbreviation for LOTAN (לוטן), who appears in Genesis 36:21/2 and 1 Chronicles 1:38/9 as the eldest son of Se'ir Ha Chori (שעיר החורי); Egyptian records denote a region of southern Kena'an by the name LOTAN, including Mount Se'ir. The Chori were the Hurrians, the aboriginal inhabitants of Kena'an, who had lived on Mount Se'ir before the arrival of the Hyksos hordes. Mount Se'ir is associated with the Edomites, especially through Kayin (Cain) and Esav (Esau). Thus Lot may be an earlier tribe assimilated into Av-Ram's.
We cannot ignore, especially as there are clear associations of both Av-Ram and Sarai with gods (Brahma and Asherah respectively), that the original Lot may in fact have been female, one of the three daughters of al-Lah who appear in the Qur'an as al-Lat, al-Ahqaf and Manat – the three phases of the moon - but who were in fact pre-Islamic deities, and amongst those rejected by Muhammad, their shrines at Ta'if torn down at his instruction. We shall see more of this when we reach Lot's story. and the destruction of the Cities of the Plain, in Genesis 19, and especially in the strange events that took place with his two daughters afterwards.
11:28: VA YAMAT HARAN AL PENEY TERACH AVIV BE ERETS MOLADETO BE UR KASDIM
וַיָּמָת הָרָן עַל פְּנֵי תֶּרַח אָבִיו בְּאֶרֶץ מוֹלַדְתּוֹ בְּאוּר כַּשְׂדִּים
KJ: And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees.
BN: And Haran died in the presence of his father Terach, in his native land , in Ur Kasdim.
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| Ram caught in a thicket, the "original" Akeda From the Royal Tombs at Ur |
Modern archaeologists identify Ur with Mugheir, a town on the Euphrates east of the junction with the Tigris, not to be confused with El Mugheir on the West Bank of the river Jordan. Babylonian inscriptions mention an Uru as being one of the oldest Babylonian towns and, more significantly to our purposes, a centre of moon worship. Leonard Wooley's work on the royal tombs of Ur is the key to further reading on this.
There is an etymological connection between Uru-shalim and Yeru-Shala'im (Jerusalem) which allows us to conjecture that Uruk and Yareyacho (Jericho) may be similarly connected. Was Ur therefore an actual place, or simply the word for a city, as Ir became in Yehudit? Both cities are known to have been centres of moon-worship – as was the third in this group, the city of Av-Ram's refuge after fleeing Ur and before arriving at Yericho – Charan.
KASDIM (כשדים): the Chaldeans, also called YOSHVEY BAVEL (ישבי בבל); see the earlier reference but note also: because of the religion of Babylon at the time of the exile, when Zoroastrianism was beginning to wax, the term KASDEY (כשדי) entered the Yehudit language with the meaning of "astrologers" or "magicians". English etymologists will observe that the word "magician" itself comes from the Zoroastrians, connecting with the Magi, the priests of that religion, and also the visitors of the infant Jesus according to the synoptic gospels. Essentially a synonym for Babylonians.
KESED (כשד), noted as one of Nachor's sons (i.e. a nephew of Av-Ram); cf Genesis 22:22; possibly given the name later in order to establish a lineal connection to Chaldea.
The text here is intended to establish beyond doubt the Babylonian origins of the "Hebrews", right back as far as Nimrod.
11:29: VA YIKACH AV-RAM VE NACHOR LAHEM NASHIM SHEM ESHET AV-RAM SARAI VE SHEM ESHET NACHOR MILKAH BAT HARAN AVI MILKAH VA AVI YISKAH
וַיִּקַּח אַבְרָם וְנָחוֹר לָהֶם נָשִׁים שֵׁם אֵשֶׁת אַבְרָם שָׂרָי וְשֵׁם אֵשֶׁת נָחוֹר מִלְכָּה בַּת הָרָן אֲבִי מִלְכָּה וַאֲבִי יִסְכָּה
KJ: And Abram and Nahor took them wives: the name of Abram's wife was Sarai; and the name of Nahor's wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah.
BN: And Av-Ram and Nachor took wives; the name of Av-Ram's wife was Sarai; and the name of Nachor's wife was Milkah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milkah, and the father of Iskah.
MILKAH (מלכה): the daughter of Haran, and as such Nachor's niece - as with several incidents in the Av-Ram and Av-Raham story, this would not have been acceptable under the Mosaic Code (Leviticus 18-20).
MALKAH (מלכה) = "queen", the feminine of MELECH/מלך= "king", from the Amonite god MOLOCH/ מולוך. Daniel 5:10 has MALKETA (מלכא) with a final Aleph (א) instead of Hey (ה), which is the Aramaic equivalent and helps us to date that piece. MALKAH with a Hey is most used to refer to Ester (אֶסְתֵּר - "Queen" Esther), a Beney Yisra-El equivalent of Ishtar (in this instance; though it also parallels Astarte, which is the Assyrian equivalent), who was really Hadasah (הֲדַסָּה), a Jewess of the exile (Esther 2:7). The Chaldean MILKAH = "counsel" or "advice", and is not connected at all with queenship, except in that capacity. Large numbers of Beney Amon and Beney Mo-Av gods (see Gesenius) bear the root letters MELECH -probably for the same reasonas the Yehudit: they derive from the root HALACH, which means "to go", but in the Hiphil or causative form, meaning "to lead". The genealogies will tell us later that Lot was the progenitor of both those peoples. Milkah, as Betu-El's mother, is the grandmother of Rivkah (Rebecca); cf Genesis 22:20 and 24:15.
But what is most significant is that both men took wives with goddess names, adding considerable weight of evidence to the theory that Av-Ram and Sarai were, and now with Nachor and Milkah, members of the original pantheon of the Beney Yisra-El, with Yiskah as the fifth member. Who were the others? Lot probably - though we have to look at him through the prism of the consequences of the destruction of the Cities of the Plain, as mentioned above. Betu-El no - a Betu-El is a variation of a Beit-El, which is a baetylos, a phallic stone representing the deity in the same way that Haman in the Purim story does (see Leviticus 26:30). See my notes to Betu-El, which explore this in more detail.
YISKAH (יסכה): Milkah's and Lot's sister, and therefore both niece and sister-in-law to NACHOR; a strange amount of inward marrying seems to be going on here, presumably reflecting the early confederation of various tribes into the people who became the followers of Av-Raham. Most scholars, using the Masoretic pointing, agree it comes from the root SECHAH (סכה) = "to look out, behold"; however, ignoring the traditional pointing, we could read it as from the root SOCH (סך) = "a hut, booth, cottage", also used for "a thicket of trees" and the "lair" of a wild animal; whence SUKAH (סכה) = the "booth" or "tabernacle" used at the festival of Sukot.
There is an interesting alternative view of Sarai and Yiskah in the world of Hasidic Judaism, for which click here.
SUKOT (סכות) is also the name of a town in the tribe of Gad (Joshua 13:27, Judges 8:5, 1 Kings 7:46, Genesis 33:17), of central importance to Ya'akov (Jacob) and later to Mosheh (Moses) - cf Exodus 12:37, 13:20, Numbers 33:5.
The other usage is as SUKOT-BENOT (סכות-בנות), a term related to the Babylonian Samarians, probably the Cuthaeans, who may themselves be the Kittim referred to in Genesis 10:4, who replaced the exiled Yehudim in the 6th century BCE; the name is thought to refer to the tents in which ritual and temple "prostitutes" operated, although this may in itself be a misreading of SUKOT-BAMOT (סכות-במות) = "a tabernacle set up on a high place for an idol to inhabit"; I have to say that all of this makes much more sense than the first version. All the above adds weight to my conviction that these "patriarchs" were either themselves gods or had the function that Egyptian Pharaohs and other ancient kings had of surrogating for the god on Earth and being represented by statues in which they were simultaneously god and man (Mosheh carries on this tradition with Nechushtan; cf Numbers 21:5-9, 2 Kings 18:4).
The willow-booth leads us directly to the cult of the mother-goddess, and especially to Mir-Yam (Miriam), the sister of Mosheh, later on. The fertility theme, begun at Creation with Chavah (Eve), is evident in the undercurrents of the entire Tanach, and appears to have co-existed with Yahwism until Pharisaic times, when it was finally suppressed, and then expurgated out of the scriptures. These notes will scrape off the dust and re-disclose it wherever possible.
For notes on incest see Savina Teubal, "Sarah the Priestess".
Is Yiskah a variant form of Yitschak (Isaac), as some theorists have suggested? The Yehudit makes it highly unlikely - יסכה and יִצְחָק are in every way dissimilar; only in the incorrect English pronunciation do they begin to sound remotely similar. The question is legitimate however, because there is a variant on the name Yitschak; Psalm 105:9; Jeremiah 33:26 and Amos 7:9/16 all give his name as Yischak (ישחק); but with a second letter Seen (ש), not a Samech (ס) or a Tsade (צ), and a third letter Chet (ח) not a Chaf (כ), and for that matter a fourth letter Kuf (ק). John, as I have commented before, is not Joan because it shares three letters, nor Joan Jean, nor Jean Jane. On the other hand, Hertz is probably correct when he says that Yiskah gave Shakespeare the name Jessica for Shylock's daughter, and Wikipedia agrees, so it must be true.
11:30: VA TEHI SARAI AKARAH AYN LAH VALAD
וַתְּהִי שָׂרַי עֲקָרָה אֵין לָהּ וָלָד
KJ: But Sarai was barren; she had no child.
BN: And Sarai was barren, she had no child.
Barrenness in the Tanach is always a vestige of the fertility cult. Because all women are apparently barren until they miraculously fall pregnant, and the story can then pay tribute and homage to the Mother of All Living, who bestowed the child. Asherah, among the tribes of the Middle East, was herself a manifestation of the fertility goddess, and Sarai/Sarah almost certainly variations on her name.
11:31: VA YIKACH TERACH ET AV-RAM BENO VE ET LOT BEN HARAN BEN BENO VE ET SARAI KALATO ESHET AV-RAM BENO VA YETS'U ITAM ME UR KASDIM LALECHET ARTSAH KENA'AN VA YAVO'U AD CHARAN VE YESHVU SHAM
וַיִּקַּח תֶּרַח אֶת אַבְרָם בְּנוֹ וְאֶת לוֹט בֶּן הָרָן בֶּן בְּנוֹ וְאֵת שָׂרַי כַּלָּתוֹ אֵשֶׁת אַבְרָם בְּנוֹ וַיֵּצְאוּ אִתָּם מֵאוּר כַּשְׂדִּים לָלֶכֶת אַרְצָה כְּנַעַן וַיָּבֹאוּ עַד חָרָן וַיֵּשְׁבוּ שָׁם
KJ: And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son's son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram's wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there.
BN: And Terach took Av-Ram his son, and Lot, Haran's son, his son's son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Av-Ram's wife; and they left Ur Kasdim together, to go to the land of Kena'an; and they came to Charan, and dwelt there.
As the death of Haran previously seemed to imply a reason for leaving, so now her barrenness does; as though they were off in search of a cure. But it is clear that, even though they didn't get there, they were heading for Kena'an, well before Av-Ram got his "lech lecha" (Genesis 12:1).
Though, having said that, Kena'an was due west, and Charan due north, so unless they were avoiding a famine, a desert or a war-zone, the route was, shall we say, Mosaic.
Haran the person has a Hey (ה), Charan the place has a Chet (ח). The two names are not connected in Yehudit.
The decision to leave is Terach's, not Av-Ram's, despite the "lech lecha" of chapter 12. Or perhaps, with Av-Ram's "Lech lecha", he wasn't responding to his god so much as fulfilling his father's aspiration.
NACHOR, MILKAH AND YISKAH are presumably left behind at Ur? Or did they go with, but simply didn't get named? Check this against the Betu-El and Lavan (Laban) family lists when Eli-Ezer (Genesis 24) and then Ya'akov (Genesis 29-31) return to the family roots in Padan Aram later on;you will find that Charan (24:10) is named as "the city of Nachor", and Rivkah (Rebecca), who Eli-Ezer will take home as a wife for Yitschak, is described (24:15) as "she who was born to Betu-El ben Milkah, the wife of Nachor, Av-Raham's brother"; so clearly all of them went too. Why then are they not named?
Note that, like Shem, Cham and Yaphet, this leaves a triplet of brothers with names whose meanings reflect the myths connected with other triplet-gods; there appears to be a male triplet wherever the moon-god is male (see Lavan later) but a female triplet (the Three Graces, the three Daughters of al-Lah, etc) wherever there is a moon-goddess, and that this is one of the significant differences in the source-myths of Av-Ram when compared with Av-Raham.
No reason is given for their departure except the strange hint in the previous verse that Sarai's barrenness may have had something to do with it. However, the key question is: were the early Beney Yisra-El or their predecessors ever in Ur Kasdim? In all likelihood no, they were not - rather:
(i) UR KASDIM may have been one of the centres or even the centre of the exile between 586 and 536 BCE; returning from there to repopulate Kena'an, the idea of an early connection would have had a nice symbolic flavour.
(ii) some of the Babylonian Samarians (Samaritans) who replaced the exiled Yehudim may themselves have come from Ur Kasdim, or its environs, and brought various legends with them which were later amalgamated.
Frequent references in the stories that follow confirm both of these options and will be noted at the time.
It says they were going to Kena'an; why then did they stop and settle at Charan? This may be a late addition, with two alternate options: a) that in fact they went to Charan without any intention of going to Kena'an, perhaps never even having heard of Kena'an at that stage; b) and this is the more likely, that the Samarians who were force-transferred to Kena'an by the Babylonians in 586 BCE themselves came from Padan Aram, and this was Ezra's method of harmonising two distinct people into one by a careful manipulation of history. As always at TheBibleNet, options are open to exploration, provided there is evidence in the text, the history, the archaeology, the language. No definitive view on this or any other subject.
But there is also a third option, and these are not incompatible - each can have happened, but at a different point of history. If we do reject Ur as a place of origin, can we then see this group of people as Emorite invaders from north-east Syria who conquered their way across the known east, including Babylon etc, who stopped, or at least "delayed" (the meaning of Charan) at Charan, after which the next phase of their conquest took them into Kena'an, where they swallowed up the existing tribes under their own dominion (this would help explain the strange family relationships, marriages, begats etc, but also add weight to the claim in Ezekiel 16:3 that "Thus says your Lord YHVH to Yeru-Shala'im (Jerusalem): Your origin and your nativity is of the land of the Kena'anite; your father was an Emori, and your mother was a Chiti." The latter of which endorses what we have said previously about Chavah ,and shall be saying shortly about Yah, at Machpelah and at Chevron.
Or perhaps there were two traditions, because after all there were an enormous number of unhomogenous peoples who made up the Bible community.
And perhaps also a fourth option, that they set out for Kena'an, as central and Eastern European Jews set out for America in the 19th and 20th centuries CE, but the first place they could get to was England, or France, or Germany, or Greece, and they stopped there to work out the next stage, but got no further.
11:32: VA YIHEYU YEMEY TERACH CHAMESH SHANIM U MA'TAYIM SHANAH VA YAMOT TERACH BE CHARAN
וַיִּהְיוּ יְמֵי תֶרַח חָמֵשׁ שָׁנִים וּמָאתַיִם שָׁנָה וַיָּמָת תֶּרַח בְּחָרָן
KJ: And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years: and Terah died in Haran.
BN: And the days of Terach were 205 years; and Terach died in Charan.
By arithmetical calculation, Terach did not in fact die until 60 years after Av-Ram left Charan. Though we have no idea how long a year was in these early Biblical calculations.
Pay break; end of second scroll
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