Hadad

הדד


Genesis 36:35 names him as a son of Bedad (בדד) who became an Edomite king; he "smote Midyan in the field of Mo-Av (שְׂדֵה מוֹאָב). His city was Avit (עבית). Cf 1 Chronicles 1:46.

The name occurs in Zechariah 12:11 as Hadad-Rimon (הדד-רמון), a town near Megiddo, or in the Yazar-El (Jezreel) Valley (see my note to Judges 6:33), according to Saint Jerome.

The name also occurs in 2 Samuel 8:3 and 10:16-19, as well as in 1 Chronicles 18:3-7, as Hadad-Ezer ben Rechov (הדדעזר בן-רחב) a king of Syrian Tsova (Zobah - צובא) in King David's time. Some commentaries claim that the name is sometimes given as Hadar-Ezer (הדרעזר) in some versions of the text, but I can find no evidence of this; the Dalet-Reysh (ד-ר) mis-identification is very common however - Dodanim and Rodanim is one example - so there may well be some texts that have the error.

Hadad was the name of the principal Syrian deity, and one of the sons or grandsons of El in Kena'ani mythology. Among other roles he was the storm-god, Ba'al-Hadad. The Romans called him Adodus and the Akkadians Adad. That his father should therefore be named Rechov is not surprising; Rachav was also an important Kena'ani god (see below). That the Chronicles version should makes Rechov a place rather than a person is also not surprising; the Yisra-Eli town of Rechovot took its name from the god in the same way. King Shelomoh's successor, Rehoboam in English, is Rechav-Am in Yehudit, likewise from the same source. It was commonlace at this epoch for kings to take their names from the gods whose representative on Eath they were.

Three kings of Damasek (Damascus) bore Hadad's his name in their title, as Ben-Hadad - cf 1 Kings 15:20 and 20:1; 2 Kings 6:24 and 8:7; also 2 Chronicles 16:2 and Jeremiah 49:27.

The Rimon in Hadad-Rimon (above) either reflects a merging of two deities into one, or, given that it was the name of a town, the existence of two place of worship in the same vicinity - not uncommon today, where churches, synagogues and mosques exist side-by-side, but less common back then. Rimon was also a Syrian god (see 2 Kings 5:18), so the merge and/or the sharing of space, is not all that problematic. His name means "pomegranate", which fruit is associated in mythology with the Underworld; and indeed Rimon was the ruling deity of the ancient Syrian Underworld.

The ornaments on the crown of the Torah Scroll also came to be called "rimonim". The usual explanation is that this is because there are pomegranates depicted there. Which does not answer the deeper question: why are there pomegranates depicted there? In all cultures of that era and that time the pomegranate was symbolic in two ways: it was the "fruit with a million seeds" that was crushed under the heel of the bridegroom at the wedding ceremony, as a gesture to bestow fertility on his bride (the breaking of a glass replaced this in later Jewish practice); it was the fruit that was given to the "maiden" by the god of the underworld, to entice her into his kingdom (a reversal of fertility; when she is in the underworld she loses the power to bear fruit). Cf the Persephone and Ceres myths of Greece and Rome.

Several places in Kena'an carry his name: Joshua 15:32 and 19:7 name one in the southern part of Shim'on; Joshua 19:13 mentions another, named Rimon Ha Meto'ar (רִמּוֹן הַמְּתֹאָר) in Zevulun; Judges 20:45 gives it as the name of a rock near Ha Giv'ah (הַגִּבְעָה - Gibeah), while 1 Samuel 14:2 speaks of Sha'ul pausing under a pomegranate tree at Migron (מִגְרוֹן), on the northern extremeties of Ha Giv'ah. Numbers 33:19 speaks of a Rimon-Parets (רמון-פרץ) as a station of the Mosaic journey through the wilderness.

As noted above, Rechov, as in Hadad-Ezer ben Rechov, is no less a personage than Rachav (Rahab - רָחָב), the "harlot" of Yericho (Joshua 2:1 and 6:17); the serpent-goddess of the Beney Kena'an, identified with the serpent known as Livyatan, or Lev-Yatan, or Levi-Atan or Leviathan (לִויָתָן in the Yehudit), and especially the Babylonian Tiamat, who appears as Tehom (תהום) = "the deep", in the Biblical Creation myth (Genesis 1:2).

And finally there is Hadad ha Edomi ( הֲדַד הָאֲדֹמִי) in 1 Kings 11:17-25, "Then YHVH raised up an adversary to Shelomoh, namely Hadad the Edomite; he was of the king's seed in Edom...and he reigned in Aram."

Not to be confused with Chadad (חדד) with a Chet (ח), who was one of the twelve sons of Yishma-El (Genesis 25:12-15).

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