Genesis 10:26 names Yerach (ירח) as an Arabian tribe out of Yaktan (יקטן), a descendant of Shem; they lived near the Red Sea in the region of Eilat.
Yerach = "a month" in Chaldean, giving us the root of the moon-link of this word. In Yehudit Yareyach (ירח) is one of several words for "the moon", and indeed the word for month - Chodesh/חדש - should really be Yerach Chadash (ירח חדש), because Chadash, whence Chodesh, means new (or more precisely "renewal"; and in this context the distinction is significant), and the Yehudit month, being lunar, always begins with the new moon.
Joshua 6 tells the story of Yehoshu'a's (Joshua's) conquest of the city of Yericho (יריחו), for which there is absolutely no archaeological evidence whatsoever. The Masoretic pointing wants to name it Yericho, though there is also Yerecho ( יְרֵחוֹ) in Numbers 22:1 and elsewhere; probably the ancient pronunciation of the town was Yareyacho, and it evolved via Yereycho to Yerecho and eventually Yericho. The city is located in Beney Yamin (Benjamite) territory. and by whatever pronunciation the name means "city of the moon".
Archaeologists have shown Jericho to be a multi-layered tel, whose earliest strata belong to the 9th millennium BCE, thus making it one of the oldest of all the cities built by men, as old as Ur and Charan, the other two major centres of moon-worship in the ancient world; a triple-shrine indeed, as Mecca, Yatrib (Madina) and Yeru-Shala'im are to Moslems; and very much places of ancient pilgrimage, which may not be irrelevant when we consider the journey of Av-Ram, [if] when he fled the ruins of Ur. That he should have gone to Charan, and thence travelled south to settle in the valleys around Yericho, seeming to follow the moon-shrines, cannot be purely coincidental.
1 Chronicles 5:14 names Yaro'ach (יָרוֹחַ) as one of the ancestors of Ever and his six siblings; one of the great namings in the Tanach: Avi-Chayil ben Churi ben Yaro'ach ben Gil'ad ben Micha-El ben Yeshishai, אֲבִיחַיִל בֶּן-חוּרִי בֶּן-יָרוֹחַ בֶּן-גִּלְעָד בֶּן-מִיכָאֵל בֶּן-יְשִׁישַׁי.
Yerach-Me-El (ירחמאל) occurs in 1 Chronicles 2:9 ff and 24:29; Jeremiah 36:26 and 1 Samuel 27:10; the tribe of Jerahmelites, at least in most English versions. Also 1 Chronicles 2:27, which names a man of Yehudah, the second son of Ram the Beney Yerach'me-El (יְרַחְמְאֵל)
Similar names include Yerocham (ירחם), which occurs in 1 Samuel 1:1; 1 Chronicles 9:12 and 27:22; 2 Chronicles 23:1 and Nehemiah 11:12, though it is not certain that the name is connected to Yerach; it may be from the root Racham (רחם) = "mercy".
In 1 Samuel 1:1 he is the father of El-Kanah ( אֶלְקָנָה ), and the father-in-law of Chanah (חַנָּה - Hannah), the parents of the prophet Shmu-El (שְׁמוּאֵל - Samuel); the genealogy here is long, and traces back to Ephrayim, and interestingly includes a man named Tohu - who on Earth names their child after the demi-god of primordial chaos!? In Ramatayim-Tsophim, "the hills overflowing with honey", which would be a perfect definition of Paradise, if the same was true of its dairy produce! And with a Tsuph (צוף = "honey") for an ancestor as well, and another who was Eli-Hu (אֱלִיהוּא) with a conveniently Aramaic Aleph (א) appended (but badly, there is no accompanying nikud) to disguise his god-name - always so much more to these texts than meets the eye. And this a tale that specifically honours the goddess of fertility - "And he had two wives: the name of the one was Chanah, and the name of the other Peninah; and Peninah had children, but Chanah had no children" (verse 2); the goddess of menstruation, the moon.
1 Chronicles 9:8 likewise provides a lengthy genealogy, this time listing the Beney Yamin (Benjamites) who were carried into captivity in Bavel (Babylon): "and Yivne-Yah (יִבְנְיָה) the son of Yerocham, and Elah (אֵלָה) the son of Uzi (עֻזִּי - elsewhere in the Tanach rendered as Uzi-Yah/עֻזִּיה), the son of Michri (מִכְרִי), and Meshulam (מְשֻׁלָּם) the son of Shephat-Yah (שְׁפַטְיָה), the son of Re'u-El (רְעוּאֵל), the son of Yivne-Yah..." Several names suffixed by the name of the moon-goddess Yah.
1 Chronicles 9:12 then does the same for a third Yerocham, this time in the list of the Beney Levi, and with an extraordinarily lengthy genealogical archive: "and Ada-Yah (עֲדָיָה) the son of Yerocham, the son of Pashchur (פַּשְׁחוּר), the son of Malchi-Yah (מַלְכִּיָּה), and Ma'sai (מַעְשַׂי) the son of Adi-El (עֲדִיאֵל ), the son of Yah-Zerah (יַחְזֵרָה), the son of Meshulam (מְשֻׁלָּם), the son of Meshilemit (מְשִׁלֵּמִית), the son of Immer (אִמֵּר)..." More Yah-names, and even one that is self-evidently a woman's name, Meshilemit being the feminine form of Meshulam.
1 Chronicles 27:22 has Azar-El (עֲזַרְאֵל - "El's helper") the son of Yerocham as one of the captains of the tribe of Dan. By no coincidence in the context of our explanation, that chapter begins by informing us of a system by which
"The Beney Yisra-El after their number, to wit, the heads of fathers' houses and the captains of thousands and of hundreds, and their officers that served the king, in any matter of the courses which came in and went out month by month throughout all the months of the year, of every course were twenty-four thousand."
A monthly cycle. Because this was the base for all things in Yisra-El, or now in Judaism. A lunar calendar. Because the deity of Creation, who is a sun-god, works only by day, and then it is evening, and then morning, another day; and between those two, the period in which life is ruled by the goddess...
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The modern city of Yerucham (יְרוּחָם), sometimes written in English as Yeruham, but definitely pronounced Yerucham in Ivrit and not Yerocham, even though it is spelled identically, was founded as a development town in the years since Israeli independence, and is believed to be on the site of an ancient town bearing the same name, and known by archaeologists as Tell Rachma (the Rachma again suggesting "racham = mercy" rather than "yerach = moon"; certainly it takes its name from the Biblical Yerucham. The town appears on the lists of cities conquered by Pharaoh Sheshonq (Shishak), around the time of King Shelomoh (Solomon), and is believed to have been the town close to the well where Hagar found shelter with Yishma-El (Genesis 21), though there is no evidence beyond folk-lore to support this claim, and its location, twenty-two miles south of Be'er Sheva, makes it unlikely (though not half so unlikely as the Moslem version, which has her finding water herself and Ismail at Mecca).
2 Chronicles 23:1 describes the coup by Yeho-Yada (יְהוֹיָדָע - probably the original was Yahu-Yada), which was presumably staged at the time that it was in order to prevent the current sacred ruler from breaking the tradition of single-cycle kingship by forcing a second seven-year cycle - an interesting example to be explored by those who have begun to refute the theories of Frazer in "The Golden Bough" and Campbell in "The Masks of God".
"And in the seventh year Yeho-Yada strengthened himself, and took the captains of hundreds, Azar-Yahu (עֲזַרְיָהוּ ) the son of Yerocham (יְרֹחָם), and Yishma-El (יִשְׁמָעֵאל) the son of Yeho-Chanan (יְהוֹחָנָן), and Azar-Yahu (עֲזַרְיָהוּ) the son of Oved (עוֹבֵד), and Ma'asey-Yahu (מַעֲשֵׂיָהוּ ) the son of Ada-Yahu (עֲדָיָהוּ), and Eli-Shaphat (אֱלִישָׁפָט) the son of Zichri (זִכְרִי), into covenant with him..."
But I have been naughty, and perhaps my use of the word "ruler" rather than "king" alerted you. Go back to the previous chapter of Chronicles. The ruler for those six years was Atal-Yah (עֲתַלְיָה), a queen, the mother of king Achaz-Yah (אֲחַזְיָהוּ) who "also walked in the ways of the house of Achav (Ahab); for his mother was his counsellor to do wickedly" (22:3), and who joined with Achav and Iy-Zevel (Jezebel) in war against the Beney Aram, and was murdered when the house of Achav was overthrown; and then his mother wiped out the entire house of Yehudah and took the throne herself...
And why am I telling all this? Because, just like the tale of Yehoshu'a's conquest of Yericho, these are the ancient tales of the battles between the sun and moon, told in the Philistine versions as Shimshon (Samson) and Delilah, but reduced to fake history by the Redactor so that monotheism can be presented as though it always was, and the moon goddess expurgated... but look at all the Yah names...
Nehemiah 11:12 lists the princes and priests at the time of the return to Yerushala'im, and again look at the names...
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And then there is an entirely different line that we need to follow, because the YERECH, from the same root, is "the thigh", the femur in Latin. And why would that be...?The word occurs in Numbers 5:21, and again in verses 22 and 27 of the same chapter, where the Kohen is dealing with an accusation of adultery against a married woman. The methodology belongs to the goddess cult, and specifically the one associated with Mosheh's sister Mir-Yam (Miriam), who is the "goddess of the bitter waters", and as such of the two Great Lakes that occupy much of central Egypt, as well as the Nile and other springs, wells and oases in the desert.
The accused woman is given "bitter water" to drink, and if nothing happens, then the accusation must be false; but if she has "gone aside to another man", the "oath of swearing" required of her includes this statement by the Kohen: "May YHVH curse you, and make your name a proverb of wickedness among your people, and may YHVH make your thighs rot, and your belly swell...", the "thighs" here presumably a gentle way of describing what is really intended, which is the sexual parts themselves, the pudenda and the uterus.
The Yerech, then, isn't simply the thigh, but specifically what is called elsewhere "the hollow of the thigh" - that allusion is to Genesis 32, where the hollow of Ya'akov's thigh is put "out of joint" in his wrestling-match with one of the moon-goddess' night-spirits, the Lilim, at Penu-El. And from this, in Jewish tradition, though the oath of the adulterous woman endorces it, the concept of the "sacred thigh" in Judaism. Is this then the reason why Jericho might in fact be more correctly translated as "The City of the Sacred Thigh"?
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