Arpachshad

ארפכשד


Genesis 10:22 makes him the third son of Shem and the father of Shelach. He lived in the eastern hills between Mesha and Sephar.

Genesis 11:10 ff says he was born two years after the Flood, when Shem was 100. At the age of thirty-five he begat Shelach. He died aged 438 and had other sons and daughters.

Josephus links him with Arrapkha or Arrapha, with the Akkadian suffix "shad" meaning "mountain" (also "breast" in Yehudit, as in El Shadai - אל שדי - Av-Raham's name for his god). This is identified with modern Kirkuk.

The confusion of "breast" and "mountain" is fascinating because Av-Raham's god El-Shadai is usually translated as "God of my Breast", based on Shad (שד) = "breast", a term which is utterly meaningless unless as a figure of speech, or the recognition of a female deity. Much more comprehensible would be this now-viable alternative: "God of the Mountain"; the only question being: which mountain?

Sanskrit has Arjapak-Shata for a land of Asia. Other references include Arrapachitis.

See also Judith 1:1, where he is the king of the Persian Medes, ruling from Ecbatana, in the twelfth year of Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, which would be 592 BCE.

Unless the Yehudit is simply a phonetic rendering of a Chaldean or Persian or Sanskrit original, the name could be a compound of Araph (ארפ) = "boundary" and Kesed (כשד) = "southern Mesopotamia"; "the third son of Shem" being the normal Biblical way of expressing a tribal group ancillary to a larger racial group; in which case it would need to be pronounced Ereph-Kesed r Arapah-Kesed. However, the phonetic rendering is much more likely as this is not a Yehudit name.

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