Genesis 11:29: the sister of Lot. Or is she? The text is very odd: "And Av-Ram and Nachor took wives; the name of Av-Ram's wife was Sarai" - so far so good, but... "the name of Nachor's wife was Milkah the daughter of Haran the father of Milkah and the father of Yiskah." Does this imply two Milkahs, a grandmother and a granddaughter? Or is it simply a very odd way of explaining the family situation, with Yiskah as her brother (and is Yiskah a variant for Yitschak-Isaac?) Answer no: just because these names sound alike phonetically doesn't mean they are automatically connected. Lot, we learn in the next verse, is the son of Haran, who is himself the brother of Av-Ram and Nachor, the third of Haran's three sons.
The name means "one who looks out", from the root Sachah (סכה) = "to behold". But it is a completely unused root, and the Samech (ס) always alerts us to foreign words - or to the Redactor playing tricks.
Soch (סך) = "a hut" or "booth" in Psalm 27:5 and 76:3,which leads us directly to the old mother-moon goddess once again; the Hey (ה) ending in Sukah (סכה) simply indicating the feminine. Given what we have discovered about the original divinity of the rest of the family, and given that she is the mother of Milkah, the Queen of Heaven, we would actually expect her to be precisely the goddess whom she has turned out to be. The Sukah (סכה) is the booth made of willows branches and palm fronds, used at her autumn harvest festival, coinciding with the autumn equinox; that festival in Yehudit being Chag Ha Sukot (חג הסוכות).
"Be mashcho ve rishto - בְּמָשְׁכוֹ בְרִשְׁתּוֹ - when he draws him up in his net", in Psalm 10:9 - is treated by some scholars as coming from the same root, but is in fact from Mashach - משך = "to draw out".
There is a town named Sukot (סֻכּוֹת) in the valley of the river Yarden (Jordan), in the tribal territory of Gad, according to Joshua 13:27, Judges 8:5 and 1 Kings 7:46. Genesis 33:17 identifies its origins with Ya'akov. Psalm 60:8 and 108:8 use the identical phrase in reference to Emek Ha Sukot (עמק הסוכות); and of course it was the name of the very important station in the wilderness (Exodus 12:37 and 13:20; Numbers 33:5 et al) where Mosheh gave the second reading of the Law before leaving his people.
What we can understand from this repeated name is that many villages began as little more than tent encampments for nomadic Bedou, presumably located at a convenient point of shade and water, and known as an equivalent of "Camp X" or "Hotel Y" - the Sukah in the valley of the Yarden, the Sukah by the oak tree near Mamre, the Sukah of the Beney Yishma-El on Mount Se'ir et cetera; when reed-, and then mud-huts were added for those who wished to become sedentary, a village gradually developed, but the Sukah part of the name was retained.
Sukot Benot (סכות-בנות), in 2 Kings 17:30, were huts used for idol-worship which "the men of Babylon" - probably the Shomronim (Samaritans) - brought to Kena'an in 586 BCE when they were placed there by their Assyrian conquerors. They were in fact hierodule booths, dedicated to the mother-moon goddess, and should be read as Sukot-Bamot (סכות-במות = "booths on high places") rather than the textual error of Sukot Benot, though an alternate reading, as Sukot-Banot, "the tents of the daughters", would infer the same meaning and may also be correct.
Thus Haran - the moon-god - has a daughter named Yiskah - the willow-goddess linked to the autumn moon - and a son named Lot or al-Lat, who in Islam is still identified with the vernal moon. Now look again at the story of Lot and his two daughters at Tso'ar after the destruction of Sedom, and ask if Lot was not originally female.
See also Amos 5:26, where for some reason many translators regard the Sukah as a tent rather than a booth, and the Masoretic pointing, for even less reason, decides to make it a Sichah, albeit pluralised as Sichut (סִכּוּת) on this occasion, which should anyway be Sichot; these errors are then exacerbated by regarding Sichut as some kind of a deity.
And for the interest of it there is a reference to the Sukiyim (סכיים), or troglodytes of Africa. in 2 Chronicles 12:3.
What we can understand from this repeated name is that many villages began as little more than tent encampments for nomadic Bedou, presumably located at a convenient point of shade and water, and known as an equivalent of "Camp X" or "Hotel Y" - the Sukah in the valley of the Yarden, the Sukah by the oak tree near Mamre, the Sukah of the Beney Yishma-El on Mount Se'ir et cetera; when reed-, and then mud-huts were added for those who wished to become sedentary, a village gradually developed, but the Sukah part of the name was retained.
Sukot Benot (סכות-בנות), in 2 Kings 17:30, were huts used for idol-worship which "the men of Babylon" - probably the Shomronim (Samaritans) - brought to Kena'an in 586 BCE when they were placed there by their Assyrian conquerors. They were in fact hierodule booths, dedicated to the mother-moon goddess, and should be read as Sukot-Bamot (סכות-במות = "booths on high places") rather than the textual error of Sukot Benot, though an alternate reading, as Sukot-Banot, "the tents of the daughters", would infer the same meaning and may also be correct.
Thus Haran - the moon-god - has a daughter named Yiskah - the willow-goddess linked to the autumn moon - and a son named Lot or al-Lat, who in Islam is still identified with the vernal moon. Now look again at the story of Lot and his two daughters at Tso'ar after the destruction of Sedom, and ask if Lot was not originally female.
See also Amos 5:26, where for some reason many translators regard the Sukah as a tent rather than a booth, and the Masoretic pointing, for even less reason, decides to make it a Sichah, albeit pluralised as Sichut (סִכּוּת) on this occasion, which should anyway be Sichot; these errors are then exacerbated by regarding Sichut as some kind of a deity.
And for the interest of it there is a reference to the Sukiyim (סכיים), or troglodytes of Africa. in 2 Chronicles 12:3.
Copyright © 2019 David Prashker
All rights reserved
The Argaman Press
No comments:
Post a Comment