Becher

בכר


Genesis 46:21 names him as a son of Bin-Yamin; from the meaning of the name (see below) he should surely have been Bin-Yamin's eldest son. This, however, is complicated, because there are two remarkably similar words, and in some of their senses they overlap, but in others they remain two completely different words, this one spelled with a Chaf in its centre, the other with a Chet.

Bachur (בחור), the other spelling, means "boy" or "young man", and is used as an alternative to Yeled (ילד).

Numbers 26:35 makes Becher a tribe out of Ephrayim.

Becher (בכר) really means "a young he-camel", and so was originally slang, in the way that we call children "kids" though they are not actually "young goats" - and some of those "kids" would be boys, of course, which would be Bachurim (בחורים).

And our Bachur (בכור), the one with a Chaf, is actually still more complex. The root Bachar (בכר) has the sense of "doing anything first", whence Levacher (לבכר) means "to rise early" or even "to do something in the morning" - hinting thereby at first-born sons.

The first fruits (cf Ezekiel 47:12) are thus Bikurim (בכורים), and the summer harvest festival of Shavu'ot is also for that reason called Chag ha-Bikurim.

But then, again, there is Bachur (בחור) with a Chet, meaning "a young man" (see for example Judges 14:10), and the feminine Bachurah (בחורה) for a young girl, which could infer "a virgin", though it is never used with that specific meaning, but only for any young girl. However, in Biblical times at least, there was also Mavkirah (מבכירה), which sounds like it must come from the same root, but it doesn't, it comes from the Chaf root, and this word quite specifically meant "a young woman who has just had her first child" (cf Jeremiah 4:31), the stage after Almah (עַלְמָה), which is a married woman who has not yet had her first child, but still a stage earlier than Ishah (אשה), which is a fully mature woman, with child - this distinction is especially important in the light of Isaiah 7:14, which prophesies the birth of the Messiah to an Almah, and not to a Mavkirah.

I noted at the top of the page that Becher ought, from the meaning of his name, to be the "first fruits" of Bin-Yamin's loins, but in fact he is the second son of Bin-Yamin, following Bela. Is it possible that... let us consult Torah...

Deuteronomy 21:16 tells us that

21:16 BE HAYAH BE YOM HANCHILO ET BANAV ET ASHER YIHEYEH LO LO YUCHAL LEVAKER ET BEN HA AHUVAH AL PENEY VEN HA SENU'AH HA BECHOR

וְהָיָה בְּיוֹם הַנְחִילוֹ אֶת בָּנָיו אֵת אֲשֶׁר יִהְיֶה לוֹ לֹא יוּכַל לְבַכֵּר אֶת בֶּן הָאֲהוּבָה עַל פְּנֵי בֶן הַשְּׂנוּאָה הַבְּכֹר

Then it shall be, on the day that he causes his sons to inherit that which he has, that he may not make the son of the loved on the first-born ahead the son of the hated, who is the true first-born

and the word for "first-born" is... BECHOR, with a Chaf.

The passage is an expression of the Law of Primogeniture, which is to say the right of the first-born to inherit, an important statute given the supplanting myths of Kayin and Havel, Yishma-El and Yitschak, Ya'akov and Esav, Ephrayim and Menasheh, Parets and Zerach (and in a rather different way Mosheh and Aharon as well), in all of which the younger son is made to inherit and receives the paternal blessing, while the disinherited elder, having no further claim on the family's estate, leaves to wander in the metaphorical land of Nod until he finds a new home - usually in Edom. Given that the Law of Primogeniture is Deuteronomic, and does not appear elsewhere in the Tanach, we seem to have conclusive evidence that ultimogeniture continued amongst the Beney Yisra-El at least until the late 7th century BCE.

   But do we also have conclusive evidence that Becher, the second-born, was regarded as the first-born? And if so, was Bela literally sacrificed, or was it simply ultimogeniture; and if the latter, why did the next son, and the son after that, not inherit the right to inheritance, and keep on passing it down to the very last - not forgetting that papa Bin-Yamin was himself the very last among Ya'akov's children?

Still one more oddity about the name Becher, which is that there is an entire section that I would expect to be writing, but in fact it has no place here. That section would pick up the coincidence that Bin-Yamin should have a son named Becher, given that his central role in the Yoseph story centres on a silver goblet furtively planted in his bag at Yoseph's instruction (Genesis 44:1), so that the brothers could be halted on their way home, accused of stealing, and their father's heart broken for the second time in his life when he learns that his beloved Bin-Yamin, his favourite now that Yoseph has been lost to him, is in gaol, caught red-handed. An act of terrible cruelty by Yoseph, but that is by-the-by. To most of today's Jews, the word for that silver goblet, the one from which they make Kiddush on Friday nights and festivals, the equivalent of the communion cup at Catholic Mass, is BECHER, and wouldn't it just be weird to give a name to your son that recalled that incident on every occasion that you named him?

But the word for "goblet" in the Genesis story isn't Becher, it's Geviy'a (גביע), and no point looking through the modern Ivrit or the Biblical Yehudit lexicons and dictionaries either, because you won't find it there. Though the word is employed universally today, BECHER, in the sense of a libation cup, is actually Yiddish, written down as בעכער with not one but two Ayins to make sure you don't mistake it for the Biblical Becher, and as to its etymology... BIKOS ( βῖκος) in Greek was a drinking vessel, and it poured into BIKARR in Old Norse and BACARIUM in Latin for a vase or a wine vat, and stained the white  English tablecloth as BEAKER, either from the Frisian BIEKER, or the Dutch BEKER, or the German BECHER, or the Danish BAEGER, or possibly even the Italian BICCHIERE, all of which mean "cup".

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