Zevulun (Zebulon)

זבלון


Genesis 30:20: the tenth son of Ya'akov (Jacob), by Le'ah.

Joshua 19:10 gives its tribal borders.

Numbers 26:27 gives Zevuloni (זבולני) as the tribe (Zebulonites). We see this format throughout the Tanach; grammatically we might expect to see the regular plural form, which is a Yud/Mem-suphit (ים) ending, thereby Zevulonim (זבולנים), but apparently this was not how the names of tribes and peoples were rendered back then. The only tribe that is rendered differently is Yisra-El itself, for which Beney Yisra-El is the norm.

Judges 9:28 has a Zevul (זבל), an officer.

The name is usually taken to mean "a habitation", but in every instance of its Biblical use it is quite specifically the habitation of a god (1 Kings 8:13; 2 Chronicles 6:2; Psalm 49:15; Isaiah 63:15; Habakkuk 3:11). The root means "to make round", which describes the heavens perfectly as the habitation of the deity, and also the shape of the Gil-Gal, the "Stonehenge" of the Middle East: a circular temple comprised of twelve outer stones and up to one hundred and fifty inner stones. But which god?

The root is Zaval (זבל). The Tanach offers three alternate spellings for Zevulon - Zevulon (זבלון), Zvuloon (זבולן) and Zevulun (זבולון); with the Vav (ו) usually an added vocalisation - but in truth this is probably an issue of phonetics only, in that until well after the Redaction there was no vocalisation system for writing down Yehudit, save only the use of consonants such as Yud (י), Hey (ה), Ayin (ע), Aleph (א) and especially Vav (ו) to denote pronunciation. The only other word to come from the same root is Zevel (זבל), which are the round, costive goat droppings. A divine link to goat-droppings? Go to 1 Kings 16:31: "And it came to pass, as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Yerav-Am (Jeroboam) the son of Nevat, that he took to wife Jezebel, the daughter of Eth-Ba'al (אֶתְבַּעַל) king of Tsidon (Sidon), and went and served Ba'al, and worshipped him." 

Thus King Ach-Av (Ahab - אַחְאָב) at the time of Eli-Yahu (Elijah - אֵלִיָּהוּ). 

Jezebel in Yehudit is Iy-zevel (איזבל - the Aramaic form of Yah-Zevel, the consort of Ba'al-Zevul, who is probably the original that was later satirised as Ba'al-Zevuv, the "Lord of the Flies", though some scholars think it happened the other way around); whence the English Isabelle. 

Iy (אי) has several meanings: as an adverb it is used to mean "where" or occasionally "not" in the sense of "un..." (cf Iy-Chavod - אִיכָבוֹד - in 1 Samuel 4:21). Isaiah 13:22 and 34:14 use "iyyim (אִיִּים)" metaphorically to mean the howling of the jackal, but this is not repeated elsewhere. But primarily, and by extraordinary coincidence, Iy means an island, or any inhabited place - as, we are told, does Zaval, so the two are synonymous.

Eth-Ba'al in the Yehudit is rendered as אתבעל, the Et or Eth (את) being the denotion of the direct object, followed by Ha which is the definite article, so that the two words together simply mean "the" in the accusative. Jezebel was thus not the daughter of Eth-Ba'al, but of "et ha Ba'al", which is to say tghe daughter of Ba'al himself, usually the denotion of a High Priestess or a Sacred Queen; as the second half of the same verse (1 Kings 16:31) makes clear by giving the phrase in full: Et Ha Ba'al (את-הבעל). Why the amateurish cover-up? Because the Redactor is trying to create a national history, and is using the mytholgical tales from all the tribals cults as the only source he has; god-tales turned into human tales to artifice a linear chronology: this is true for most of the Tanach, up to the era of the Prophets.

And just as Et-Ba'al is really "et ha Ba'al", meaning simply the god, so Ach-Av tells us that he was both the brother (ach) and the father (av) of the god (cf the pantheons of Ashur, Bavel, Mitsrayim et al), and his daughter was the wife of the god of the underworld: Ba'alat Zevul, though that designation is never used.

Iy-Zevel and Zevulun are thus, in all likelihood, variations of the same name: because On as a suffix also means "place of habitation"; but Zevel here did not originally mean "habitation" at all, rather it acquired the meaning by error or as a way of concealing the shrine of the goat-goddess whose sacred island, known as Ziri and inhabited by wild goats, was located just off the coast of southern Levanon, adjacent to the port of Tsidon (Sidon). The development of this cult at the time of Ach-Av can then be dated as the time when the tribe of Zevulun first arose as a religious group. The link of Iy-Zevel to Et-Ba'al king of Tsidon as his daughter is an obvious mythological one with which we are well accustomed by now.

Much of this is confirmed by Ya'akov's blessing in Genesis 49:13: "And Zevulun shall dwell at the haven of the sea; and he shall be a haven [for ships]; and his border shall be as far as Tsidon. זבולן לחוף ימים ישכן והוא לחוף אנית וירכתו על-צידן. Zevulon le-chof yamim yishkon ve-hu le-chof aneet ve-yarchato al-Tsidon."

This confirms the Tsidon link, noted re Iy-Zevel above; but it also confirms that Zevulun was not a Yisra-Eli tribe at all, but Phoenician, as almost certainly were Asher and Yisaschar (Aneet, incidentally, being the name for the great merchant ships which the Phoenicians sent out from Tsur (Tyre) and Tsidon (Sidon). It also leaves open the question (see notes to TSIDON) whether Tsidon was named, as is generally accepted, from Tsay'id = "hunter", a slightly obscure reference to its fishing industry, or in fact from Tsi (צי), which means a ship, plus Dan (דן); Tsidon (צידן) thereby meaning "the ships of the Dana'ans". This is worth further exploration and would be useful information in explaining why the tribe of Dan moved from the Aza (Gaza) region to that of eastern Levanon (Lebanon), and why the Pelishtim (Philistines) - who were themselves Phoenician colonists from Crete - appear to have so much in common with the tribe of Dan. See notes to DAN and the essay "The Leprachauns of Palestine".

In my rendition of Ya'akov's blessing, above, I have placed the words "for ships" in square brackets; because this is how it is usually translated, even though the Yehudit text does not mention ships. In fact, the "haven" cannot mean a place of refuge for ships, since no one else had any military or merchant ships at sea at that epoch, so the Phoenicians needed no refuge for theirs. The tiny goat-island off the coast of Tsidon was, however, a sacred shrine, as I have also noted, and ancient law, including the Mosaic, provided for sanctuary for criminals and refugees as such shrines, on the grounds that they had entered a holy place and were literally clutching the horns of the altar. (Horns? The Beney Yisra-El? Oh, yes, indeed). So, again: the tiny goat-island of Ziri off the coast of Tsidon was a sacred shrine, and ancient law, including the Mosaic, provided for sanctuary for criminals and refugees at such places, on the grounds that they had entered a holy place and were literally clutching the horns of the altar. The "haven" should be understood as such.

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