Yishbak

ישבק


Genesis 25:2 names him as the fifth son of Av-Raham by Keturah.

The name means "leaving behind"; a Chaldean root (Shabak/שבק), it occurs only in the Book of Daniel 4:12 and 4:20 (4:15 and 4:23 in some translations), and as the character Shovek (שובק) in Nehemiah 10:25 (10:24 in some translations). It is thus one of the few instances in the Bible where we can state categorically that the word/name only entered the Yehudit language with the exile in Bav-El (Babylon), and thence draw what conclusions we will about the other Keturite names.

The likely explanation is that they were the ancestral tribes of the people of northern Ashur (Syria) who were transferred to Yehudah and Kena'an at the time (586-536 BCE) that the Yehudim were transferred to Bav-El, the peoples who we now think of as the Shomronim or Samaritans, and who brought with them both the Aramaic language, which would become the national language for the next five hundred years, and their tribal legends and literature; and because the returning Yehudim understood that the new nation needed to be a "one state solution" and not the declaration of war that would be implicit in a "two state solution", and because those who has not been taken into exile had already intermarried with of them, it was deemed necessary to incorporate them into the scriptures, and therefore to make them descendants of Av-Raham. The invention of Keturah as a wife of his extreme old age allowed this.

Most of the tribes associated with her bear out this theory (see notes to Keturah), but none more interestingly named than Yishbak, since the Yehudim who returned from Bavel were required to "leave behind" their foreign wives (Ezra 10 ff).

Probably Yishbak was the Iashbuqu of northern Syria, and as such a close relation of Shu'ach, who was probably the Shukhu of northern Syria.

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