Phiychol

פיכל


Genesis 21:22 ff names him alongside Avi-Melech, described as the king of Gerar in both Genesis 20:2 and Genesis 26:26.

The name literally means "the mouth of all", and as such it should be treated as a title - "spokesman" in theory, but "Prime Minister" or "Royal Chamberlain" may be more accurate - not the name of a man, and definitely not "the captain of the army", which is how some translations render him. This is reinforced by his appearance in the two identical stories, in which first Av-Raham and Sarah, then Yitschak and Rivka (Rebecca), find themselves in Gerar, in what are clearly two versions of the self-same story.




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