Adapted from "A Myrtle Among Reeds"
YHVH's pet-name for Yisra-El is not widely known. It occurs only four times in the scriptures, three of them in Mosheh's departing song and blessing before he hands over to his successor Yehoshu'a and departs for the summit of Mount Nevo and his death. The piece has all the cryptic, mythological flavour of an oracle, a form of language much more familiar in the writings of Prophets such as Yesha-Yahu (Isaiah); perhaps no coincidence then, perhaps even a clue to the accurate dating of both texts, that the fourth reference is from Yesha-Yahu, as probably was that terrible dystopia in Leviticus 26.
"For YHVH's portion is his people; Ya'akov is the lot of his inheritance. He found him in a desert land and in the waste-howling wilderness, he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. As an eagle stirs her nest, flutters over her young, spreads wide her wings, takes her young and bears them on her wings, so YHVH alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him. He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields, and he made him suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flintstone, butter of milch-cows, and milk of sheep with fat of lambs, rams of the breed of Bashan and goats with the fat of kidneys of wheat; and you drank the pure blood of the grape. But Yeshurun grew fat, and kicked - you are waxed fat, you have grown heavy, you are covered with flesh - and he forsook God who had made him, and lightly esteemed the rock of his salvation." (Deuteronomy 32:9-15)
This first is from Mosheh's song. The second and third are from his valedictory blessing:
"And he was king in Yeshurun when the heads of the people and the tribes of Yisra-El were gathered together." (Deuteronomy 33:5)
"There is none like the god of Yeshurun who rides the heavens to bring you help, and is the excellency of the heavens." (Deuteronomy 33:26)
"Thus says YHVH who made you, who formed you from the womb, and who will help you, 'Fear not, O Ya'akov, my servant, and you, Yeshurun, whom I have chosen." (Isaiah 44:2)
The Septuagint treats Yeshurun as an adjective and translates it to mean "beloved", which is pleasing, but surely incorrect - King David is the one whose name means "beloved", and his son Shelomoh (Solomon) as well, who was known as Yedid-Yah, "beloved of Yah", before he took Shelomoh for his king name. William Gesenius, the 19th century etymologist of Halle who knew more about the lexicography of the Yehudit, Aramaic, Chaldean and other ancient Semitic languages than any man before or since, was completely stumped by Yeshurun, noting simply that three of the Biblical references denote Yeshurun as a person, but one (Deuteronomy 33:5) as a place, from which he is able to draw no significant conclusion. In the end he treats Yeshurun simply as a diminutive of, a variation upon Yisra-El, a poetic synonym.
In terms of definition, the root appears to be "yashar", and "yashar" means "straight" or "upright", not that Ya'akov himself ever was, but it is how the "congregation of Ya'akov" is supposed to be. Yeshurun - the upright one. This is the preferred definition of the Rabbis.
Rabbi Nosson Scherman, on the subject of "speaking the truth in our hearts", tells the following anecdote:
Once, while praying and therefore not able to speak, Rav Safra was offered a fair price for something that he wished to sell. The buyer failed to comprehend that Rav Safra’s silence wasn’t a negotiating position but an act of devotion, and continued to auction himself upwards. But when Rav Safra finished praying he accepted not the final but the original bid, because in his heart he had already accepted the fairness of it.
A perfect - if in both senses a fabulous - definition of Yeshurun.
In the Tanach, the term Beney Yisra-El is used to denote all of Ya'akov's descendants and the land, but the prophets after the division of the kingdom refer to the northern part as Ephrayim, after a leader of that name rather than the tribe. Later it became Yerav-Am's (Jeroboam's) kingdom, with Shomron as its capital city. Poetically, Ephrayim was known as Yeshurun, and it is one of the favoured references of the school of Biblical Criticism in dating Deuteronomy as Second Temple, because Yeshurun is the favoured term of that book.
The significance of the name is thus not easy to deduce, especially as it only makes these few appearances. The first three letters of Yeshurun and Yisra-El are identical in appearance, though one is in fact a Sheen and the other a Seen.
In the Midrash, Rabbi Berekiah in the name of Rabbi Simon interpreted Yeshurun to mean the Patriarch Yisra-El (Genesis Rabbah 77:1)
Elsewhere (Babylonian Talmud Yoma 73b; see also Exodus Rabbah 38:9) Rabbi Aha bar Jacob notes that the breastplate of the High Priest contained the words "the tribes of Yeshurun", thus supplying the otherwise missing Yehudit letter tet (ט) in the word "tribes".
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