שוח
Genesis 25:2 names him as a son of Av-Raham and Keturah, and as an Arabian tribe. In Keturah is probably reflected the Sumerian/Akkadian roots of Sarah, in Av-Raham the Mesopotamian/Assyriac.
Genesis 25:2 names him as a son of Av-Raham and Keturah, and as an Arabian tribe. In Keturah is probably reflected the Sumerian/Akkadian roots of Sarah, in Av-Raham the Mesopotamian/Assyriac.
Job 2:11, 8:1 ff and 25:1 ff give the Shuchites (שוחי) as a tribe of eastern Batanaea in Arabia. Bildad of the Beney Shu'ach (בִלְדַּד הַשּׁוּחִי) is one of the three friends who come to irritate and annoy (the text gives "sympathise" - lanud - לָנוּד and "comfort" - lenachem - לנחם) but the context and subtext conflict with this!) Iyov by trying to rationalise him out of his entirely reasonable and justified anger with Elohim.
However see my notes on Yishbak, which appear to identify Shu'ach as the Shukhu or Sukhu of northern Syria.
Shu'ach means "to sink down" or "subside" and is used to mean "a pit", especially in the sense of She'ol, the Yisra-Eli Hades (cf Psalm 44:26; Lamentations 3:20; Proverbs 2:18 and 22:14; Jeremiah 2:6).
1 Chronicles 4:11 has a Shuchah (שוחה), though verse 4 renders it as Chushah (חושה); and in the same way Genesis 46:23 renders as Chushim (חושים) what Numbers 26:42 gives as Shucham (שוחם), a son of Dan.
There is also Su'ach (שוח), found in Genesis 24:63, usually translated as "to tend the herd", though I am intrigued to find the Chabad translation prefers "to meditate". There are words that have variations of meaning, or which develop over time to mean something different, but to get from the physical act of herd-tending to the spiritual act of meditation requires some explanation; the only one I can give is that, in early Judaism, which is to say from 70 CE when Judaism was founded, there was a need to provide Biblical, and preferably Toraic "proof" of every newly introduced Law, and where one did not actually exist, it had to be "deduced" from the text. So, for example, the Rabbis wanted to develop prayer services as an alternative to Temple sacrifice, there no longer being a Temple, and a "substitute", as founding father Yochanan ben Zakkai called it, required. So habituated were people to the three Temple times, it was deemed necessary to keep them; but it needed to be shown that prayer was also connected to those times.
1 Chronicles 4:11 has a Shuchah (שוחה), though verse 4 renders it as Chushah (חושה); and in the same way Genesis 46:23 renders as Chushim (חושים) what Numbers 26:42 gives as Shucham (שוחם), a son of Dan.
There is also Su'ach (שוח), found in Genesis 24:63, usually translated as "to tend the herd", though I am intrigued to find the Chabad translation prefers "to meditate". There are words that have variations of meaning, or which develop over time to mean something different, but to get from the physical act of herd-tending to the spiritual act of meditation requires some explanation; the only one I can give is that, in early Judaism, which is to say from 70 CE when Judaism was founded, there was a need to provide Biblical, and preferably Toraic "proof" of every newly introduced Law, and where one did not actually exist, it had to be "deduced" from the text. So, for example, the Rabbis wanted to develop prayer services as an alternative to Temple sacrifice, there no longer being a Temple, and a "substitute", as founding father Yochanan ben Zakkai called it, required. So habituated were people to the three Temple times, it was deemed necessary to keep them; but it needed to be shown that prayer was also connected to those times.
So the Rabbis went in search of convenient text, and found Av-Raham apparently praying in the morning in Genesis 19:27, Yitschak apparently praying at dusk in the verse here, and Ya'akov apparently praying at night in Genesis 28:11, Beautiful construct! Except that Av-Raham wasn't praying; he simply "got up early in the morning to the place where he had stood before YHVH, And he looked out towards Sedom and Amorah, and toward all the land of the Plain, and behold, and lo, the smoke of the land went up as the smoke of a furnace." Except that Ya'akov wasn't praying; he simply "lighted upon the place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took one of the stones of the place, and put it under his head, and lay down in that place to sleep"; and in that sleep he dreamed the famous ladder. And here, Yitschak wasn't praying either, he was tending his sheep, and looked up, and saw camels coming towards him, and it was his wife, Rivkah, arriving from Padan-Aram, for which he may well have said a polite thank you to his god or even goddess, but he definitely didn't put on his tallit and daven the Amidah.
The entire fabrication belongs to the aggadic tradition and can be found in Berachot 26b; but even there it is set aside by the Talmudic Rabbis, who could see that the argument would not survive scrutiny, but wrote it down anyway, and then stated that the three times of prayer are the times of sacrifice (shacharit and minchah), and of the cleaning of the sacrificial altar (ma'ariv).
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