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| Megalithic burial site in central India |
Genesis 33:20 names it as an altar set up by Ya'akov on his way back from Padan Aram, on a strip of land to the east of Shechem, bought from the sons of Chamor for a hundred sheep.
This unnamed location was probably an ancient burial ground, most likely a megalithic barrow complete with cromlech-dolmen-menhir. We can deduce this from the fact that Yoseph's bones were later buried there (Joshua 24:32).
Altars are not generally set up in random places, and burial-grounds usually have chapels of some sort, so the question is: who was the El Elohey Yisra-El, the "El of the Elohim of Yisra-El", which is a most odd version of the godname, but also an oddity because the term Yisra-El had only come into existence a few days earlier, when Ya'akov received it as a result of achieving stalemate in his wrestling-match with the man of Penu-El? All the inferences of that event lead us to understand the "wrestling-match" as the one described by Frazer in "The Golden Bough", and Ya'akov's renaming as Yisra-El as the giving of his royal name to the newly-anointed priest-king. So it would be logical for the new king to erect an altar and give thanksgiving for his appointment. But to which deity or deities?
Chamor is a donkey, probably the red ass though the word is used generically throughout the Tanach. Beney Chamor indicates a donkey-cult, though whether an oracular shrine based on an ass' jawbone (cf Shimshon's use of the jawbone in Judges 15:16), or a temple to the Egyptian deity Set (Adam's third son Shet - שת) is not immediately obvious from the text, or even from the inferences of the text, because the wrestling-match at Penu-El equivalates with Shimshon's "wrestling-match" and shrine-erection at Ramat Lechi, while the coronation equivalates with Sha'ul's ritual donkey-ride to celebrate his coronation at all the key shrines of the donkey cult in 1 Samuel 9.
Did Ya'akov literally purchase the shrine and physically erect an altar, or is this simply a way of expressing his sacrificing of hundred sheep to the local shrine god, and thereby establishing his kingship? Bear in mind that immediately afterwards the Beney Chamor were ritually slaughtered, their gods "hidden" under the oak at Shechem; after which Ya'akov erected an altar to the bee-goddess Devorah at Beit-El.
El Elohey Yisra-El itself is a fairly meaningless term, probably a late emendation. Elohey Yisra-El would simply mean "the gods of Yisra-El". Unless we read El as an abbreviation for a baetylus or stone image.
It does however achieve the honour of having its own special prayer for ambitious non-Beney Yisra-El, uttered by the sire of Ashur named Ya'bets (יַעְבֵּץ) - who "was more honourable than his brethren; and his mother called his name Ya'bets, saying: 'Because I bore him with pain" - in 1 Chronicles 4:10: "And Ya'bets called on Elohey Yisra-El, saying: 'Oh that you would bless me indeed, and enlarge my border, and that your hand might be with me, and that you would work deliverance from evil, that it may not pain me!' And Elohim granted his request." I am unclear how one knows that such a request has been granted.
Copyright © 2019 David Prashker
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