Chushim

חושים


Genesis 46:23 names "them" as the sons of Dan, which must make them the first family in history to give all its children the same name! I wonder how many of them there were!

Irony apart, this phrase is important for our understanding of the Tanach's genealogical tables in general; clearly no one ever does give all their children the same name, and Chushim may not be plural itself (it could, after all, be a misprint of Shucham, who is named as a son of Dan in Numbers 26:42), but the Genesis text is unquestionably in the plural: u-veney Dan = וּבְנֵי דָן. So we can state unequivocally that Chushim is not a man in this instance, but a clan; and presume from it that other names in the genealogical tables are likewise. So also, when we read of the "twelve sons of Ya'akov", who do indeed become tribes later on, but may in fact have already been tribes at that stage.

Cf 1 Chronicles 7:11/12, where the name is also given, but the text makes even clearer that this is a clan, even a whole tribe, and not a single individual.
See also 1 Chronicles 8:8/11, where Chushim is female, the wife of one Shacharayim, whose ancestry in the text is very ambiguous; their sons were Avi-Tuv (אֲבִיטוּב) and El-Pa'al (אֶלְפָּעַל), the latter of which is presumably an amateurish attempt by the Redactor to conceal the conjoinment of El with Ba'al (אֶלְ בעַל).

From the same root as Chusham = "to make haste", but the names do not seem connected otherwise.


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