Chirah

חירה


Genesis 38:1 ff names a Chirah of the Beney Adul-Am, with whom Yehudah either travelled south, or with whom he stayed on his journey south, depending on how you translate the slightly ambiguous Yehudit.

On this journey, Yehudah met Shu'a (שוע), a woman of the Beney Kena'an, and fathered on her Er (ער) and Onan (אונן) and Shelah (שֵׁלָה). Presumably (unless they were triplets) he visited her several times over several years, or even married her and lived with her, but the tale tells all this in very brief.

The location is a place named Cheziv (כזיב), which may be an error for, or a more primordial version of, Achziv. Cheziv (כזיב) would in fact be Keziv if the spelling were correct, because there is never a prefictual Chaf (כ) without a dagesh (כּ). Achziv, with an initial aleph (א), occurs in Joshua 15:44 as a place in the tribe of Yehudah (not the rather beautiful beach of the same name just north of Nahariya, in what was formerly the tribal territory of Asher; that Achziv is now on the Lebanese border; Yehudah went south, not north).

There then follows the infamous story of Onan's act of what was actually coitus interruptus, though the term Onanism is today erroneously used as a synonym or even a euphemism for masturbation; and then Yehudah's incestuous sleeping with his daughter-in-law Tamar, on whom he fathered Parets (פרץ) and Zerach (זרח). It is all a very odd tale, which interrupts the Yoseph stories with a seemingly irrelevant digression, and doesn't seem quite to make sense in itself. And as to Chirah - we wonder why he even got a mention. Let us then try to unravel it.

CHIRAH (חירה): The name Chirah means, literally, "nobleman"; which makes us think that the man who travelled with Yehudah is not actually named at all, but only his rank given. However its root-word, Chur (חור), gives the troglodytic Chorites (Horites) of Mount Se'ir, so perhaps it means he was a Chorite nobleman who happened to be living in Adul-Am; it also stems into Chavar (חור) = "to whiten", whence "linen". I shall return to that seeming non sequitur later.

A Beney Adul-Am (עדולמי) was a resident of the royal Kena'ani town of Adul-Am, in the plain country of Yehudah (the tribe, not the man), later fortified by Rechav-Am (Rehoboam). Joshua 12:15 lists it among the cities conquered in the occupation, while Joshua 15:35 gives it to Yehudah (again the tribe, not the man).The story should therefore read: "Once upon a time, in the royal city of Adul-Am in Yehudah, there lived a nobleman of the Bene Chur..." But who was this nobleman? And why did Yehudah take up with him?

SHU'A (שוע): Several English translations make it seem as though Shu'a was the father of an unnamed woman of the Beney Kena'an on whom Yehudah fathered the three boys Er, Onan and Shelah, rather than the girl herself. The name appears in the Tanach only here, and in the story of Iyov (Job), which is not a Yisra-Eli story anyway, and in late passages of Yesha-Yahu (Isaiah) and Psalms - which leaves us wondering if it isn't an error or a late redaction. The word seems to have intimations of prosperity about it, even of nobility: it may even mean "wealthy". So perhaps the "nobleman" Chirah was in fact named Shu'a. But if so, what was the girl called? The answer is, either Shu'a, or we don't know.

1 Samuel 22:1 marks the cave of Adul-Am as the place where David hid from Sha'ul (Saul), gathering around him an army of mercenaries and malcontents, and training what would become the first Shield of David (Magen David), his personal bodyguard, and with it the strike-force with which he would inherit the kingdom from Sha'ul. One of David's daughters, likewise the victim of an incestuous incident, was also named Tamar, the same name as the woman in the Yehudah story, and a curious coincidence that raises the alarm-bell of mythology.

The time-scale of the Yehudah-Tamar story is, as noted above, problematic: Yehudah meets a woman in verse 1; by verse 5 she has three sons; in verse 6 the eldest is already old enough to marry and to commit a sin of such wickedness that he is struck down for it - an unstated sin, but even worse apparently that Onan's. At least fifteen years must have gone by in just six verses, and probably more. What was his sin? And why would Onan not perform the brother-in-law's sacred duty, the Levirate?

The key statement is that he knew the seed would not be his (Genesis 38:9); which implies a matriarchal inheritance, and links this tale to several patriarchal ones with the same theme. Is this then a part of the patriarchy-matriarchy conflict? Tamar (תמר) of course is the date-palm goddess, and Devorah (Deborah), the Yisra-Eli judge-prophetess who is really the Kena'ani (Canaanite) bee-goddess, sat under a date-tree and gave oracles (as did the other Devorah, nurse of Rivkah, who was buried under the weeping-oak Alon-Bachot at Beit-El. The bee-goddess is the guardian of the bee-hive tombs, the ancient burial chambers which we in English call tumuli or barrows. The ancient temple-caves, like Machpelah, were burial-caves as well as oracular-caves. The story of Er and Onan must therefore be a rite connected to the shrine of Adul-Am, the "Kena'ani woman" a hierodule, and "Yehudah" the chosen partner in the sacred marriage, bearing the royal title for the occasion.

The naming of Tamar as a "whore" is a commonplace in the Tanach as a replacement for the sacred hierodule, and therefore denotes Tamar as a priestess, not a whore. The refusal of Onan to fertilise the priestess of Tamar has fairly obvious mythological connotations, as does the priestess' sacred harlotry with Yehudah. Anything rather than allow her shrine and cult to become obsolete seems to be the explanation of this myth... or else there is a take-over of the shrine being described. But by Yehudah, or by King David? The two Tamars need further exploration.

ER (ער): The same word as Ir = "a city". 1 Chronicles 4:21 names him as a son of Yehudah's son Shelah - where Genesis 38 and also 46:12 make him Shelah's brother - who in turn fathered Lechah (לכה) and La'adah (לעדה) the father of Mareshah who is himself said elsewhere to be the father of Chevron (Hebron), and also - another odd coincidence for which you will have to go back to my explanation of the name CHIRAH earlier - "the clans of the linen workers at Beit Ashbe'a".

Er's family, according to the Chronicles passage, was famous for their wrought fine linen, so perhaps Chirah was the Master, so to speak in mediaveal English terms, of the Worshipful Company of Linen-Makers, whose patroness deity was Tamar. The fine linen also links to the scarlet thread in the story of the birth of Parets and Zerach, the twins fathered by Yehudah on Tamar. What then of Ashbe'a?

ASHBE'A (אשבע): The initial Aleph may be Aramaic, or it may be a first person singular in the future tense; it really doesn't matter. The important part is the root, which is SHEV'A, not Sheba, as in King Solomon's famous Yemeni wife, but as in Be'er Shev'a, "the well of the oath" - and yet one more coincidence before I go on, that her name is Shu'a (שוע), though it might actually be Shev'a, or even Shov'a, depending on how you determine the middle Vav should be pronounced.

Most lexicographers of Yehudit go for the first person singular in the future tense, and reckon Ashbe'a means "I abjure"; but it comes to the same point if we regard it as a place, and the name in Aramaic. Like Be'er Sheva, it is a holy place of oath-making, so a courthouse, a registry office, or any other legal function for which an oath with witnesses is required - and in this case Chirah probably mentioned by name because he was the witness. Witness to what? I would surmise that it was a common-law marriage, Yehudah undertaking to "mistress" Shu'a, but not prepared to marry her, because she was not a Yisra-Elit, and marrying out would have cost him his place in the tribe. So he fathered children with her over several years, and had obligations to her orphaned offspring as well. So she called in the debt when his mamzer sons failed to meet their obligations - though it should also be pointed out that the Levirate law did not really apply to them, because they too were not YIsra-Elim, because that status can only come biologicaly through the mother (questionable, actually, in Biblical times, but that is the official position!)

And as to the other protagonists in the tale:

Onan (אונן): from the root Anan (אנן) meaning "to be sad" or "sorrowful".
Shelah: Numbers 26:20 says the sons of Shelah were the Shelanites, as Parets fathered the Partsim and Zerach the Zarchim.

Parets (פרץ): Numbers 26:21 says his sons were Chetsron and Chamul. The name means "rupture" or "breach".
Zerach (זרח): "the sunrise"; also "leprosy". 2 Chronicles 14:8 mentions an Ethiopian king named Zerach who invaded Yehudah during the reign of King Asa. Genesis 36:13 names another Zerach as the son of Re'u-El, Mosheh's father-in-law.

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