TheBibleNet

Yegar Sahaduta

יגר שהדותה

Genesis 31:47 names it, in Aramaic, as the stone pillar set up by Ya'akov as a cairn of witness for his contract with Lavan; Ya'akov called the place Gal-Ed (גלד), which may or may not be the same place as Gil'ad; but Lavan called it Yegar-Sahaduta, which opens up a question about which languages did the different parts of the Abrahamic family speak; not a question that is ever raised in Tanach studies, commentaries or discussions, nor even overtly inferred; yet this verse tacitly infers it.

"Yagar" means "a hill: or "heap of stones: more likely a cromlech than a cairn; the latter a stone-based burial mound; the former a sacred mound or pillar, as in this case. Both of the links that I have given here will inform you, correctly, that the words "cromlech" and "cairn" are Celtic; what neither will tell you is that the same occurrences, by their own local names, can be found throughout the world, from Mali to Guatemala, from Brittany to Yegar-Sahaduta, whether like the one in Graubünden, Switzerland in the illustration above, or the Observatory in Colombia in the illustration below.

Gal-Ed likewise means "stone of witness"; Gal appears in Gil-Gal, the stone circles in the same manner as at Stonehenge (and the "Observatory", just north of Bogota in Colombia, which is why I have chosen the second illustration) that were erected as temples by the neolithic megalith cultures (Galgal = "wheel"; whence Golgolet = skull, which gives us the Golgotha, or more correctly Golgot-Yah, of Matthew 27:33).

Yagor came to mean "to fear" in later Yehudit, presumably from the notion of fear as reverence for a sacred place. Cf Job 3:25 and 9:28; Psalm 119:39. Also Deuteronomy 9:19 and 28:60; Jeremiah 22:25 and 39:17. To the best of my knowledge, no one uses this verb in contemporary Ivrit, preferring the root Pachad (פַּחַד).

Google Translate actually offers several words for "fear", with Yagor coming last on the list, and rendered incorrectly as a variant of the verb LAGUR = "to live", presenting it as a verb because it is presumably unable to find the connecting root (there isn't one because it wasn't originally Yehudit), and treating it as though it were Yehudit and not Aramaic. The others are: פַּחַד (pachad) = fear, fright, dismay, dread, terror, consternation; חֲשָׁשׁ (chashash) = fear, apprehension, anxiety, misgiving; אֵימָה (eymah) = terror, fear, dread, alarm, luridness, menace; בְּעָתָה (be'atah) = horror, panic, fear, consternation; מוֹרָא (mor'a) = fear, awe, reverence, fright, respect; דְחִילָה (dechilah - also an unused Aramaic root) = awe, fear, anxiety; דְאָגָה (de'agah) = concern, worry, care, anxiety, fear, solicitude; מְגוֹרָה; fear, fright, terror; יִראָה (yirah) = fear, awe, dread; לָגוּר (lagur) = to live, to dwell, to reside, to inhabit, to sojourn, to fear - and note that the word "fear" comes last in this list too, because the others are the correct meaning.

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Yavok (Jabbok)

יבק

The river Yavok (Jabbok), near Mount Gil'ad (Gilead) on the northern border of the Beney Amon (Ammonites), flowing into the river Yarden (Jordan), also called Wadi Zarqa = "blue river".

Genesis 32:23 (22 in the Yehudit); Numbers 21:24; Deuteronomy 2:37 and 3:16; Joshua 12:2; Judges 11:3, and many others.

The root, however, was probably Ya-avok (יאבק), with an additional Aleph, because there is no two-letter root to explain it as Yavok. This would give the root Avak (אבק), which means "dust"; though there is a second Avak (אבק), found in Genesis 32:25, and nowhere else. When Ya'akov wrestles with the unnamed night-spirit, the verb used, oddly in the Niphal/passive form, is Ne'avek (נאבק) - which makes for the splendidly poetic phrase Ya'akov ne'avek. It may be that this verb was used because wrestling in this manner on the ground throws up lots of dust, and therefore it is the same root, avak = dust; but that is a very distant possibility, and another root with another meaning is needed.

The place where this event happens is named Penu-El, which means "the face of El"; but the name is really a description of what he saw there rather than the name of the place itself. In fact it is clear that the events take place on the opposite side of the river Yarden from Machanayim, that Machanayim means "two camps" precisely because it is divided, like London by the Thames, or Buda and Pest by the Danube, in "two camps" by the river, and that the river in question is not the Yarden itself, but a tributary of the Yarden, namely the Yavok.

The other outstanding question about this episode is, who exactly did Ya'akov wrestle with (and note en passant the verbal pun on Ya'akov/יעקב and Yavok/יבק/יאקב)? The river-god of the Yavok may well turn out to be the answer, and Yavok would then mean "the stream of wrestling".

All of which then helps us answer the other question, hinted at above but not stated: why was it called Yavok by the Beney Yisra-El, but the Zarqa by everybody else?

By a strange irony of history, the river is indeed now Avak (אבק) - as dry as dust! Though like any wadi it comes back to life in the late autumn, when the first rains begin to fall. I can’t help but wonder if that were not also the case then, and if the wrestling-match - always linked to the choice and coronation of a king, and that event always connected to the new year, which in the Middle East fell in the autumn as it still does today - were not in some way connected to the rites of Shemini Atseret, or their ancient equivalent: the annual rain-petition ceremony. Why was Ya'akov wrestling, after all - other than the metaphorical inner wrestling that belongs to an age of post-Freudian psychology? It followed a land treaty with Lavan through which he acquired a kingdom, and all the detail of the events describe a coronation ritual of the priest-king who ruled the earthly kingdom of the fertility god and goddess, so prayers for rain are certainly appropriate if the ceremony took place in the Fall.

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Yavan

יון

Genesis 10:2: Properly Ionia, the region of Turkey around Smyrna which was established by Greek colonists from Attica who worshipped Io and called themselves Ionians before they set up their own domain, about 150 years after the end of the Trojan War. However, the word was used by the Beney Yisra-El for the whole of what we now think of Greece (see also Isaiah 66:19; Dan 8:21; Zechariah 9:13).

That region of Turkey was, and remains known as Anatolia, which takes its name from the fertility goddess Anat, allowing us thereby to connect Io and Anat in Greece and Turkey long before she became established (probably by the Hittite Anatolians) in Kena'an (Canaan).

Ezekiel 27:13 also mentions it, but the context suggests it is not Greece on this occasion but rather Yawan, a city of the Yemen.

The word also appears in Psalm 40:3 and 69:3; on these occasions it is the Yehudit word Yavan (יון) = clay rather than the Yehuditised Greek Ionia.

Worth noting - and see for this the notes to Yah-Io - the name of Yonah (יונה - Jonah), later the infamous Yisra-Eli prophet of Nineveh and the whale's belly (and even Nantucket). Yonah in Yehudit came to mean "a dove". In Chaldean the moon-god Ea was symbolised by a dove in the flood story of Utnapishtim (like No'ach, Utnapishtim sent out a dove to see if the waters had subsided; unlike him, he did not first send a raven). The dove was also sacred to Io, the moon-goddess after whom Ionia is named. Yahu, the earliest masculine form of the moon-god in Yehudit, means "exalted dove". And of course the dove is sacred to Eshet (Isis), to Mother Mary, to Diana - to all mother-goddesses - though the ancients were as inept as we are today when it comes to distinguishing the dove from its close relative, the boring old pigeon (click here).

References to doves in the sacred liturgy of Judaism are frequent, and suggest a continuing, if tacit, reverence for the mother-goddess. See especially the Song of Songs 1:15; 2:14; 4:1; 5:2; 6:9; but also Leviticus 5:7 where she is named among the tabooed creatures. This too needs explaining; the taboo was not as we imagine it today, a mere matter of hygiene or abnegation. Creatures were not eaten precisely because the god or goddess lived in them; they were the deity. Being taboo did not mean they could never be eaten; quite the contrary. On the festival of the deity, they were actively required to be eaten. Even the pig! Even the prawn!

The Argaman Press

Yaval

יבל

Genesis 4:20 names him as the son of Lamech (למך) by his first wife Adah; "he was the father of all who dwell in tents and tend cattle". His brother was Yuval (יובל), "the father of all who play the harp and organ"; or at least the Kinnor (כנור) and the Ugav (עוּגָב), for which see Jeremy Montague, "Musical Instruments of the Bible".

His half-brother, by Lamech's second wife Tsilah (צלה) was Tuval-Kayin (תובל קין), though that may well be an error. In Greek Tuval = Tabali = Tibareni, Anatolian tribesmen described by Herodotus as neighbours of the iron-working Chalybes; and Tuval Kayin is said to be the ancestor of metal-workers.

If Kayin is to be considered as the founder of the Keynim (Kenite) tribe, Tuval-Kayin may reasonably be considered as an off-shoot of that tribe. As with his half-brothers, the explanation of the name as founder of brass and iron smithing seems to be popular folk-lore rather than etymology - and as such much more credible. Are all three (Yaval, Tuval, Tuval-Kayin) really the same character, the confusion caused by tribal legends varying them?

The name means "to flow" and is linked to Bul (בול) and Yevul (יבול) for storm, Mabul (מבול) for flood; used poetically for walking.

But it also has other, more pertinent meanings elsewhere, especially in the Psalms. Keren Ha Yovel (קרן היבל) is the horn of jubilee - and indeed the English word jubilee comes, via the Latin jubilum, from Yovel. A more detailed explanation of the Jubilee in Torah is given in the essay on the Number Seven, including its link to Shavu'ot, and to Yehoshu'a (Joshua) at Yericho (Jericho).

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Yared, Yered, Yarden (Jordan)

ירד

Genesis 5:15 and 1 Chronicles 4:18 name him as the son of Mehalal-El (מהללאל); he fathered Chanoch (חנוך), or Enoch, at the age of 162, and lived to be 962; his other sons and daughters are neither named nor numbered.

The Chronicles text is one of the leading competitors for my special prize for "the worst redacted piece in the entire Tanach", though to be fair it isn't the Redactor who is culpable here, but a strange conspiracy of no-doubt-well-intentioned translators, Jewish, Christian and secular, in the centuries since, who have undertaken their own further redaction, and for reasons that make absolutely no sense. The text in Yehudit goes as follows:

VE ISHTO HA YEHUDIYAH YALDAH ET YERED AVI GEDOR

וְאִשְׁתּוֹ הַיְהֻדִיָּה יָלְדָה אֶת יֶרֶד אֲבִי גְדוֹר

which is really very plain:

"And his wife, who was from the tribe of Yehudah, bore Yered the father of Gedor."

The New International Version has no problem with this, simply preferring "gave birth to" where I have chosen "bore". The New Living Translation gets the meaning right, but is overly complex in expressing it: "He married a woman from Judah, who became the mother of Jered (the father of Gedor)..." English Standard Version is convoluted, and of course it too has Jered for Yered, but still correct: "And his Judahite wife bore Jered the father of Gedor...".

But elsewhere... The New American Standard Bible simply anachronises with "His Jewish wife bore Jered the father of Gedor...", ignoring, or unaware, that the concept "Jewish" is historically inapplicable before 70 CE - a mere seventeen hundred years after this event.

And then the King James: "And his wife Jehudijah bare Jered the father of Gedor..." Jehudijah? Is this sourced from one of the Jewish translations? Maybe it just borrowed Wycliffe, which has "Also Jehudijah, his wife, childed Jered, the father of Gedor..."

The Orthodox has: "And his isha Yehudiyah bore Yered avi Gedor" which is a new technique on me - translate every other word and transliterate the remainder. Bizarre! ("isha" means "wife" and "avi" means "father", but it's "Yehudiyah" which is the business here).

But that Orthodox text is quite recent compared with the 1917 JPS (Jewish Publication Society) edition, the one that serviced Soncino, Hertz and Plaut in their commentaries, which are now the main texts of Liberal, Reform and Conservative (United Synagogue) communities throughout the world; its version reads: "and his wife Hajehudijah bore Jered the father of Gedor..." Hajehudijah? Exactly the same in the Chabad text, Mechon-Mamre. Hajehudijah! What a splendid name. If ever I have another daughter I shall name her Hajehudijah, with the js pronounced like jam.

The name Yered means "descent". Christians may be interested to note that Yared is mentioned in Luke 3:37, and interestingly rendered as Yared, which is probably correct.

In one sense that is all there is to say. However, there is also the endlessly repeated question: why would anyone give a child such a name?

Genesis 4:17 offers a variation in the genealogy, giving Chanoch (Enoch) as a son of Kayin (Cain) and making Irad (עירד) Chanoch's son. Which version of the genealogy is correct? And which version of the name? Has the Ayin (ע) been dropped or added? See notes to Irad/Arad.

The river Yarden (Jordan - ירדן) shares a root with Yared. This is easily explained by the fact that rivers begin high up in hills and "descend" to the sea; all rivers are thus "Jordan", as in Celtic all rivers are "Avon" - all except the Thames and the Tamar anyway, for which see my notes to Tamar. The three major rivers of the Semitic world were the Tigris, the Euphrates and, though smaller and less significant, the Yarden; at the point where each obtains the plains, a city stands, sacred to the moon: Ur, Charan and Yericho (Jericho). The moon too "descends", in the waning period of every month.

By logic we ought to be able to find an equivalent moon-shrine in the heights from which these rivers spring, and if we could, we could safely wager that the notion of waxing or "ascent" would be incorporated in their names. But there are so many of these Ramot, or hill-shrines, we would need to sift through the entire database to locate the one we wanted; and besides, rivers spring from many sources, that conjoin at some later point. Presumably there were small shrines at every source. Not presumably; we know there were. And they were all sacred to the river-goddess and her water nymphs, surrounded by tree-gods etc etc.

The Argaman Press

Yamin

ימין

Genesis 46:10 and Exodus 6:15 name him as a son of Shim'on (Simeon), his siblings were Yemu-El (ימואל), Ohad (אהד), Yachin (יכין), Tsochar (צוחר) and Sha'ul (שאול), "the son of a Kena'ani woman".

Numbers 26:12/13 gives his tribe as the Yamini (ימיני - Jaminites), and a list of sons that echoes the Genesis and Exodus verses, but with Nemu-El instead of Yemu-El, and Ohad missing.

1 Chronicles 4:24 tells us that "the sons of Shim'on were Nemu-El (נְמוּאֵל) and Yamin, Yariv (יָרִיב), Zerach (זֶרַח), Sha'ul..."; for an explanation of this, see my notes to Tsochar.

For links with Bin-Yamin (Benjamin) and the Beney Jamun tribe, see my notes to Bin-Yamin.

Yamin = "right", but was also used for the southern quarter; given that Shim'on inhabited the southern quarter of Kena'an (Canaan), this name may not surprise us.

Nehemiah 8:7 has a Yamin who was one of the Beney Levi who went among the audience to help them understand what they were hearing, when Ezra first presented the newly redacted Torah (the Book of the Law ) to the newly created nation of Yehudah at the Water Gate.

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Yam ha-Melach

ים המלח

The Dead Sea is the English name, but it is not one of the several by which it is known in Biblical Yehudit or modern Ivrit.

Genesis 14:3 gives it explicitly as the name of what was once Emek Ha Sidim (עמק השדים), but is now Yam ha-Melach, "the Salt Sea", in the plain of the five cities destroyed at the time of Lot. Can we deduce from this that there was once a valley there, and that whatever happened to the Five Cities left behind a salt lake? And if yes, does that add weight to the speculation that what happened at Sedom was a massive volcanic eruption from deep beneath the earth?

See also Deuteronomy 3:17, which calls it "the Sea of Aravah, the Salt Sea - יָם הָעֲרָבָה יָם הַמֶּלַח", and, rather surprisingly, places it "tachat ashdot ha-Pisgah mizrachah - תַּחַת אַשְׁדֹּת הַפִּסְגָּה, מִזְרָחָה - under the slopes of Pisgah eastwards"; Pisgah being the mountain (properly the summit of the mountain, from pisgah = summit) where Mosheh went to die (Deuteronomy 34:1).

Which mountain? Most of what surrounds the Dead Sea is desert; on the western side there is that small hillock which King Herod once turned into a winter palace, and where the last Zealots of the Bar Kochba revolt committed mass suicide in 135 CE, and named Masada; the Dead Sea is certainly "eastwards" of this, but a hillock is not a mountain, and the top of Masada is a plateau, not a summit.

Deuteronomy 34:1 tells us explicitly that "Then Mosheh went up from the plains of Mo-Av to Mount Nevo, to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Yericho." This, however, is not east of the Dead Sea, but due north, so the text of Deuteronomy 3:17 is either in error, or referring to a different summit which does lie west of the Dead Sea, but alas there is none.

Numbers 34:12 likewise names it Yam ha-Melach, the Salt Sea.

In Psalm 60:2 and 2 Samuel 8:13 it is given as Gey Melach (גיא מלח) = "the valley of salt". The region of the Dead Sea has one of the highest concentrations of salt in the world (only Salt Lake City in Utah can compete, but even that doesn't have crystals like the ones in the illustration, above).

In addition to the pillar of salt into which Lot's wife was apparently transformed (Genesis 19:26), the region abounds in what are called in Yehudit "Netsiv Melach" (נציו מלח), "natural statues" and columns made of fossilised salt. So important was salt to the Kena'ani (Canaanite) economy that it was even used in the making of covenants. A Brit Melach (ברית מלח) involving the eating of salt is mentioned in Numbers 18:19, 2 Chronicles 13:5, and referred to in Leviticus 2:13 as being also an essential ingredient of meat offerings. What exactly a Covenant of Salt involved is unclear.

Jews today spill salt on their Sabbath challah, and claim, because they need an explanation but don't have one, that it makes the sweet bread slightly less pleasant, and this is a reminder of hard times suffered by Jews in days of yore; a slightly more literary answer than the traditional priestly evasion: "this is one of the divine mysteries that we are not meant to know".

Salt is essential to remove the sacred blood from meat; but there is no need for salt on grain, and the texts that speak of the Covenant of Salt are specific about grain. Salt is a good preservative - is it intended as a "symbolic" preservation of the covenant?

"Sharing salt" is a traditional Arabic expression of hospitality; could it be this?

So many worthy suggestions, all of them findable in the links I have added here. There is even the hypothesis that Melach should read Mal'ach, and that it is a Covenant with the Angel and not a Covenant of Salt at all; I shall not shame with a link to his article the otherwise distinguished Hebrew scholar who has made this suggestion, and who should know better than to mis-read Melach (מלח) for Mal'ach (מַלְאָך).

The Argaman Press