19:1 VA YETS'E HA GORAL HA SHENI LE SHIM'ON LE MATEH VENEY SHIM'ON LE MISHPECHOTAM VA YEHI NACHALATAM BETOCH NACHALAT BENEY YEHUDAH
וַיֵּצֵא הַגֹּורָל הַשֵּׁנִי לְשִׁמְעֹון לְמַטֵּה בְנֵי שִׁמְעֹון לְמִשְׁפְּחֹותָם וַיְהִי נַחֲלָתָם בְּתֹוךְ נַחֲלַת בְּנֵי יְהוּדָה
KJ: And the second lot came forth to Simeon, even for the tribe of the children of Simeon according to their families: and their inheritance was within the inheritance of the children of Judah.
BN: And the second lot came out for Shim'on, for the tribe of the Beney Shim'on, according to their clans; and their inheritance was within the inheritance of the Beney Yehudah.
But even with all this, why would Shim'on get its land inside Yehudah, landlocked like a Bantustan? Is it because, like Levi, he was in some way disinherited, as a consquence of the incident at Shechem - or if not fully disinherited, then subordinated to Yehudah, who is now the chief tribe politically, the protector of the Rachelite tribes? And is this reflected in its having been Shim'on who was the hostage in Mitsrayim (Egypt) when Bin-Yamin had been sent for? And did Shim'on get good land, historically important land, or simply the parts for which Yehudah had no real use, the beggar's-cup land so to speak? We shall see. Immediately in fact. Next verse.
But there will also be a second answer, in verse 9.
19:2 VA YEHI LAHEM BE NACHALATAM BE'ER SHEVA VE SHEVA U MOLADAH
וַיְהִי לָהֶם בְּנַחֲלָתָם בְּאֵר שֶׁבַע וְשֶׁבַע וּמֹולָדָה
BN: And they had in their inheritance Be'er Sheva, and Sheva, and Moladah.
BE'ER SHEVA: "Who gets the ancestral base?" was surely one of the big questions at the lottery. Chevron, which was Sarah's home and the burial-place of most of the patriarchs and matriarchs, has gone to Kalev ben Yephuneh, which is to say Yehudah, among the tribes. Next most important is Be'er Sheva, where Av-Ram fathered Yishma-El on Hagar, where Yitschak lived his entire life, where Esav and Ya'akov were born, and Ya'akov settled with his sons and daughter (minus Yoseph, but even he lived there for a few years) when he returned from Padan Aram, before going down to Mitsrayim; if the Beney Yisra-El had any ancestral roots at all in Kena'an, they were in Be'er Sheva. So for Shim'on, being inside Yehudah may have been problematic, but in the end he got Esav and Ya'akov's inheritance.
MOLADAH: In Joshua 15:26 we were told that Moladah was part of Yehudah's inheritance - and several other towns about to be listed as Shim'on's likewise: Chormah, El Tolad, Tsiklag, Ayin, Rimon, Eter, Ashan... so again we assume that we have to assume that they were originally taken by Yehoshu'a for himself, for Yehudah, but now he is giving up some to Shim'on; but keeping Shim'on politically under his control, by land-locking him?
MOLADAH: In Joshua 15:26 we were told that Moladah was part of Yehudah's inheritance - and several other towns about to be listed as Shim'on's likewise: Chormah, El Tolad, Tsiklag, Ayin, Rimon, Eter, Ashan... so again we assume that we have to assume that they were originally taken by Yehoshu'a for himself, for Yehudah, but now he is giving up some to Shim'on; but keeping Shim'on politically under his control, by land-locking him?
HOWEVER: MOLADAH means "birthplace" or "homeland" - a most symbolic name in this context (and a prompt for a PhD thesis on the historically significant differences, world-wide, between people who believe they have a motherland, which is a uterine space of warmth and protection, and people who believe they have a fatherland, and the father always wants to go out Ouranos-like and conquer and populate the Cosmos). I am strongly inclined to suggest that it wasn't a place at all, and that we are mistranslating the end of the verse; and Sheva likewise. That really it should read:
BN (alternate translation): And they had for their inheritance Be'er Sheva, both the "oath" and the "birthplace".
The "oath" in question being the Berit, the Covenant, the divine promise which is this inheritance.
SHEVA: Is this the town from which the Queen of Sheba came? She is generally thought to have come from Saba, in Southern Arabia, its people known to us today as the Sabaeans. But Saba is spelled and pronounced differently in Yehudit: the Seva'im (סבאים) with a Samech, whereas 1 Kings 10 definitely spells her with a Seen (שְׁבָ֗א). The oath that gave Be'er Sheva its name is recounted in Genesis 21, and specifically named as such at verse 31.
19:3 VE CHATSAR SHU'AL U VALAH VA ATSEM
וַחֲצַר שׁוּעָל וּבָלָה וָעָצֶם
KJ: And Hazarshual, and Balah, and Azem,
BN: And Chatsar Shu'al, and Balah, and Atsem;
CHATSAR SHU'AL: One place or two? It is not hyphenated in the Masoretic text, and nor is CHATSAR SUSAH in verse 5, about which we can ask the same question. Chatsar, as we have seen repeatedly, means "suburb", so it translates into English something like Bury or Stowe or Stead, regular Saxon, Angle and Viking prefixes and suffixes for the various kinds of settlements.
BALAH: Complex word, and well worth looking at Gesenius, who covers the full range, BALAH with a Hey Medugash and with a normal Hey, derivatives such as Bilhan and Bilhah, the probability that BALAH is an error for BA'ALAH, (see Joshua 15:29) and much more (but also see verse 8, below)
ATSEM: Which was mentioned alongside BA'ALAH in Joshua 15:29.
19:4 VE EL-TOLAD U VETUL VE CHARMAH
וְאֶלְתֹּולַד וּבְתוּל וְחָרְמָה
KJ: And Eltolad, and Bethul, and Hormah,BN: And El-Tolad, and Vetul, and Charmah;
EL-TOLAD: Moladah, two verses ago, came from the same root, suggesting "birth"; and here it is followed by VETUL, suggesting "virginity"; some very strange names for towns! though not so strange for zodiacal signs and stars and constellations.
See Joshua 15:30, where El-Tolad was given to Yehudah.
VETUL: Is it possible that this was not a "virgin" at all, but has a missing Aleph (א) from yet another baetylos, a stone dolmen, a Beit-El? Located right next door to BALAH as well, which is likely an error for BA'ALAH - and then: does "likely an error" get transformed into "a deliberate error"?
It does, also, open an interesting line of thought: that the word "betulah", which means "virgin", is connected to the "vestals" of the shrine, and the vestals were not necessarily virgins at all, despite the honorary title: they were hierodules who served the goddess at the feasts and festivals, coupling with the May King and then dedicating the produce to the Temple; but because she was performing this as a sacred act, her personal virginity was untainted, and therefore she was eligible for marriage when her time of service ended. All this was an abomination to the later Beney Yisra-El, and is why we get the word "zonah" (whore) where we should probably get the word "kadeshah" (hierodule), on many occasions.
CHARMAH: See Joshua 12:14 and 15:30.
19:5 VE TSIKLAG U VEIT HA MARKAVOT VA CHATSAR SUSAH
CHARMAH: See Joshua 12:14 and 15:30.
19:5 VE TSIKLAG U VEIT HA MARKAVOT VA CHATSAR SUSAH
וְצִקְלַג וּבֵית הַמַּרְכָּבֹות וַחֲצַר סוּסָה
KJ: And Ziklag, and Bethmarcaboth, and Hazarsusah,
BN: And Tsiklag, and Beit Ha Markavot, and Chatsar Susah;
TSIKLAG: Associated with King David, but by that time Shim'on was long vanished into history, and this area belonged to the Pelishtim, for whom David served as king in Tsiklag (1 Samuel 27). See Joshua 15:31.
BEIT MARKAVOT: Merkavot are chariots. So were these stables, or a shrine to a horse-god? Or perhaps the factory-town where the chariots were made.
CHATSAR SUSAH: The root means "white", and yields the name Shoshana (English Susan),which is regarded as the white lily (fascinating essay on the subject to be found here). But it is hugely problematic for Bible scholars, because Susa was also the winter capital of Medean (Achaemenid) Persia, and it was precisely from Susa that Zeru-Bavel, and later Ezra and Nechem-Yah (Nehemiah), were sent back to Yehudah to "restore" it. So was this a later re-naming - the town of Sousse in today's Tunisia was likewise named in honour of the Persians?
As far as the "chatsar" part is concerned, we have Chatsar Gadah in Joshua 15:27, and Chatsar Shu'al in verse 3, above. The word means "suburb" - we have witnessed it repeatedly as "chatsreyhen", for the larger towns; and will again, in the very next verse.
19:6 U VEIT LEVA'OT VE SHARUCHEN ARIM SHELOSH ESREH VE CHATSREYHEN
וּבֵית לְבָאֹות וְשָׁרוּחֶן עָרִים שְׁלֹשׁ עֶשְׂרֵה וְחַצְרֵיהֶן
BN: And Beit Leva'ot, and Sharuchen; thirteen cities and their suburbs;
BEIT LEVA'OT: Joshua 15:32 had Leva'ot without the Beit, the town rather than the shrine.
SHARUCHEN: See the link.
Thirteen? Does that work when the Chatsars are one, or when they are two? 13 is not a decan problem, because these are not the full list anyway; see below.
19:7 AYIN RIMON VA ETER VE ASHAN ARIM ARBA VE CHATSEREYHEN
עַיִן רִמֹּון וָעֶתֶר וְעָשָׁן עָרִים אַרְבַּע וְחַצְרֵיהֶן
BN: Ayin, Rimon, and Eter, and Ashan; four cities and their villages.
AYIN: Like Rimon, Ayin was given to Yehudah in 15:32.
RIMON: See the link. Note though the oddity that there is also a place named Eyn Rimon (עֵין רִמּוֹן) in Nehemiah 11:29; but then look back to verses 26-28 of the same chapter, because Nechem-Yah places it in exactly this location, naming most of the same towns. So are Ayin and Rimon two, or one?
ETER: See Joshua 15:42, and also 1 Chronicles 4:32.
ASHAN: ibid, and also 1 Chronicles 6:59.
19:8 VE CHOL HA CHATSERIM ASHER SEVIYVOT HE ARIM HA ELEH AD BA'ALAT BE'ER RA'MAT NEGEV ZOT NACHALAT MATEH VENEY SHIM'ON LE MISHPECHOTAM
וְכָל הַחֲצֵרִים אֲשֶׁר סְבִיבֹות הֶעָרִים הָאֵלֶּה עַד בַּעֲלַת בְּאֵר רָאמַת נֶגֶב זֹאת נַחֲלַת מַטֵּה בְנֵי שִׁמְעֹון לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָם
KJ: And all the villages that were round about these cities to Baalathbeer, Ramath of the south. This is the inheritance of the tribe of the children of Simeon according to their families.
BN: And all the villages surrounding these cities, as far as Ba'alat Be'er Ra'mat Negev. This is the inheritance of the tribe of the Beney Shim'on according to their clans.
BA'ALAT BE'ER RA'MAT NEGEV: My translation renders this as a single place, where it is at least two in most translations, three in others, and a town or towns, not a place. This needs explaining.
BA'ALAT BE'ER: BA'ALAT is a grammatical variation of BA'ALAH, for which see verse 3; "the goddess of the well", BA'ALAH being "goddess", but changed to BA'ALAT because that is how "of the" is done with Yehudit feminine singular nouns, BA'ALOT if it were feminine plural, BA'ALEY if it were masculine plural. The only oddity here, which my next note may help explain, is that there is no definite article: it should surely be BA'ALAT HA BE'ER - and that regardless of whether my overall translation is correct?
RA'MAT NEGEV: That Aleph (א) changes the meaning altogether. This is Ra'mah, not Ramah, for which see verse 29, nor Remet, for which see verse 21. And there is no conjunction between Ba'alat Be'er and Ra'mat Negev, suggesting that it is all the name of one single place. Might it even be Ra-Mat, a combination of two tribal gods, the Egyptian in Ra and the Kena'ani in Mat, or even perhaps the Egyptian Ma'at? Probably not, given that this is a Ba'alah; but the job of a translator-commentator is to consider all possibilities. BA'ALAT BE'ER RA'MAT NEGEV, taken as a single phrase, could mean "the goddess of the well of the desert antelope", a RE'EM being an Oryx in Arabic, and see my note at Numbers 23:22, which appears to give it the same meaning, as does Psalm 92:11; however Deuteronomy 33:17 suggests something rather more bullock-like, at least in the first part of the metaphor being used there for the glory of the divine blessing, though the second part is definitely the Re'em again, and an antelope. I mention this variant only because there is also another local variety of antelope, usually called the antelope-ox, and it is the one represented by the letter Aleph, in the original picture-words that formed the Ugaritic alphabet: and now go back to my note on ELEPH at Joshua 18:28.
Naming the water-source in this manner would fit very well alongside the nearby BE'ER LECHI RO'I, and numerous other desert watering places whose names are associated with the desert creatures who come regularly to drink in them.
19:9 ME CHEVEL BENEY YEHUDAH NACHALAT BENEY SHIM'ON KI HAYAH CHELEK BENEY YEHUDAH RAV MEHEM VA YINCHALU VENEY SHIM'ON BETOCH NACHALATAM
19:9 ME CHEVEL BENEY YEHUDAH NACHALAT BENEY SHIM'ON KI HAYAH CHELEK BENEY YEHUDAH RAV MEHEM VA YINCHALU VENEY SHIM'ON BETOCH NACHALATAM
מֵחֶבֶל בְּנֵי יְהוּדָה נַחֲלַת בְּנֵי שִׁמְעֹון כִּי הָיָה חֵלֶק בְּנֵי יְהוּדָה רַב מֵהֶם וַיִּנְחֲלוּ בְנֵי שִׁמְעֹון בְּתֹוךְ נַחֲלָתָם
BN: The inheritance of the Beney of Shim'on was taken out of the portion of the Beney Yehudah; for the share of the Beney Yehudah was too much for them, and so the Beney Shim'on had their inheritance within that inheritance.
The text is written by Yehudah, which slants this. Yehudah has an enormous tract of land, stretching deep into the Negev, of which it has most generously given a tiny oasis and some semi-desert grazing-land to Shim'on! And most of that is the desert where Yitschak spent his life trying, unsuccessfully, to maintain his father's wells. And most of that is very soon going to be taken over by the Pelishtim, the tribe of Shim'on disappearing into oblivion in the process.
pey break
19:10 VA YA'AL HA GORAL HA SHELISHI LIVNEY ZEVULUN LE MISHPECHOTAM VA YEHI GEVUL NACHALATAM AD SARID
KJ: And the third lot came up for the children of Zebulun according to their families: and the border of their inheritance was unto Sarid.
BN: And the third lot came up for the Beney Zevulun according to their clans: and the border of their inheritance went as far Sarid.
וַיַּעַל הַגֹּורָל הַשְּׁלִישִׁי לִבְנֵי זְבוּלֻן לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָם וַיְהִי גְּבוּל נַחֲלָתָם עַד שָׂרִיד
KJ: And the third lot came up for the children of Zebulun according to their families: and the border of their inheritance was unto Sarid.
BN: And the third lot came up for the Beney Zevulun according to their clans: and the border of their inheritance went as far Sarid.
ZEVULUN: See the linkSARID: See the link.
As you can see from the map (but you have to look carefully for the border-line, because all the writing on the immediate west of the Sea of Galilee is in Naphtali), the United States has just been conquered, and the land is to be shared equally among the tribes, by lot; and Yehudah just got Texas, and Zevulun just got Rhode Island.
19:11 VE ALAH GEVULAM LA YAMAH U MAR'ALAH U PHAG'A BE DABASHET U PHAG'A EL HA NACHAL ASHER AL PENEY YAKNE'AM
וְעָלָה גְבוּלָם לַיָּמָּה וּמַרְעֲלָה וּפָגַע בְּדַבָּשֶׁת וּפָגַע אֶל הַנַּחַל אֲשֶׁר עַל פְּנֵי יָקְנְעָם
KJ: And their border went up toward the sea, and Maralah, and reached to Dabbasheth, and reached to the river that is before Jokneam,BN: And their border extended westwards as far as Mar'alah, and reached as far as Dabashet, and extended beyond there to the river that runs through Yoknam...
YAMAH: the problem with using geographical areas as compass points for a region that is land-locked; literally "seawards", so this could mean west towards the Mediterranean Sea, or east towards the Sea of Galilee; though the next verse does have the border turning east again, so it has to be west here, which is the normal meaning of YAMAH.
LA YAMAH: yet another exemplar of what I have called "the Inconsistent Dative"; either the LA or the AH is needed, but not both.
MARALAH: Mar means "bitter", as in the Bitter Lakes of Mitsrayim (Egypt) which gave Mir-Yam (Miriam) her name, and the bitter tears of the mother-goddess, witnessing the ritual immolation of her son the corn-god, which gave Mount Mor-Yah (Mount Calvary) in Yeru-Shala'im its name, and also that of the mother-goddess herself, likewise Mor-Yah, in Latin Maria, in English Mary.
DABESHET: Well, we were promised a land of milk and honey, and here is the honey, from the root DEVASH. Probably this was an area of bee-hives; and the shape of the bee-hive is therefore the likely source of the other meaning of DABESHET, which is a hump, used for small hills and the backs of camels.
YAKNE'AM: Some versions give Yaknam. We already heard mention of it in Joshua 12:22, and my notes there address the variations. But that was Yakne'am of Karm-El, and Karm-El is in the tribal territory of Asher, so the pronunciation may be the same, but the geographical location is different - and the other one is the site of some important archaeological work, for which click here. On the other hand, click here, and a different group of scholars is certain that this was indeed the Levitical city Yakne'am in the tribe of Zevulun; so perhaps the region known as Karm-El stretched further east than the foothills of the mountain, but the region took its name from the mountain. As to this one in Zevulun, a river is mentioned, but not named; usually that means it is either so small that no one has bothered to name it, or so large there is no need to say: "a river that runs through Paris", for example. This one has to be the Kishon, the major river that runs across the Yazar-El (Jezreeel) Valley (for which see my note at Judges 6:33); the map here shows you the end of the word Karm-El on its left, and a corner of the Sea of Galilee on its right.
19:12 VE SHAV MI SARIYD KEDMAH MIZRACH HA SHEMESH AL GEVUL KISLOT TAVOR VE YATS'A EL HA DAVRAT VE ALAH YAPHIY'A
וְשָׁב מִשָּׂרִיד קֵדְמָה מִזְרַח הַשֶּׁמֶשׁ עַל גְּבוּל כִּסְלֹת תָּבֹר וְיָצָא אֶל הַדָּבְרַת וְעָלָה יָפִיעַ
KJ: And turned from Sarid eastward toward the sunrising unto the border of Chislothtabor, and then goeth out to Daberath, and goeth up to Japhia,
BN: And turned eastward at Sarid, toward the sunrise, as far as the border with Kislot Tavor, and then went down to Ha Davrat, and up again to Yaphiy'a;
SARIYD: Yakne'am was the Levitical city, and yet the name Sariyd suggests that it was too: a SARIYD is a person who has managed to escape a massacre or survive a natural disaster; cf Numbers 21:35 and 24:19, Deuteronomy 3:3, many others. Perhaps, on this occasion, it was the town itself that survived an onslaught - in which case we can add it to the growing list of names in these books which describe their condition: HA AI etc.
KISLOT TAVOR: A Kesil is a fool, according to any number of Proverbs (1:32, 10:1, 13:20,14:8...). There is a second root however, which gives either "loins" or "flanks" as you prefer, and given that these are the flanks of Mount Tavor, let us prefer the latter; though actually the KISLOT TAVOR, as per the link, is reckoned to be on the territory of Yisaschar, not Zevulun; which is why I have translated it as "the border with... ", rather than "of..." Kislot Tavor.
BUT - with TheBibleNet there is always a but, and it is almost Chanukah, which falls in the month of Kislev (כִּסְלֵו), which is the 9th month in the Yehudit calendar, and may or may not be connected to the same root: the closing Vav, which is Babylonian, being the cause of legitimate dispute. And the resolution of that dispute: both in Bavel (Babylon), and among the Beney Yisra-El, no question that the planet which we call Orion bore the name... Job 9:9, Amos 5:8... CHESIL (כְסִ֗יל)
Does this affect our translation of Kislot Tavor as "the hill-slopes of Mount Tavor"? Not in the slightest. But it does reinforce the argument that the map of Yisra-El was being drawn on the ground, through the descriptions brought back by Yehoshua's "messengers" (Mal'achim or "footmen") from their journeyings, but in synchronicity with the maps drawn up by the priests, who were studying the heavenly "messengers" (YHVH's Mal'achim or "angels" being the stars and planets).
HA DAVRAT: Have you noticed the number of towns in these last chapters that contain the definite article, where almost none have ever done so in the Tanach previously? Several times it has led us to wonder if they were even towns, rather than wells, or springs, or shrines, or sacred groves, and on this occasion "the pastureland", of which there was, and still is, plenty on the hillslopes of Mount Tavor.
BUT - with TheBibleNet there is always a but, and it is almost Chanukah, which falls in the month of Kislev (כִּסְלֵו), which is the 9th month in the Yehudit calendar, and may or may not be connected to the same root: the closing Vav, which is Babylonian, being the cause of legitimate dispute. And the resolution of that dispute: both in Bavel (Babylon), and among the Beney Yisra-El, no question that the planet which we call Orion bore the name... Job 9:9, Amos 5:8... CHESIL (כְסִ֗יל)
Does this affect our translation of Kislot Tavor as "the hill-slopes of Mount Tavor"? Not in the slightest. But it does reinforce the argument that the map of Yisra-El was being drawn on the ground, through the descriptions brought back by Yehoshua's "messengers" (Mal'achim or "footmen") from their journeyings, but in synchronicity with the maps drawn up by the priests, who were studying the heavenly "messengers" (YHVH's Mal'achim or "angels" being the stars and planets).
HA DAVRAT: Have you noticed the number of towns in these last chapters that contain the definite article, where almost none have ever done so in the Tanach previously? Several times it has led us to wonder if they were even towns, rather than wells, or springs, or shrines, or sacred groves, and on this occasion "the pastureland", of which there was, and still is, plenty on the hillslopes of Mount Tavor.
Though I cannot help but notice that the root of DAVRAT is DAVAR, which is the word of the deity, but here in the feminine, which infers a goddess rather than a male deity. I hope that suggestion hasn't given you the hump... but the goddess in question would have to be Devorah, and Devorah is both the goddess of the bee-hive shaped tumulus of the megalithic age, and of the bee-hives themselves (Devorah in modern Ivrit is a bumble-bee), the ones we just visited, at DABESHET, in verse 11. Very beautiful too, by all acconts, the goddess Devorah.
YAPHIY'A: Though it is far from radiantly clear how we get so easily from YAPHEH (יפה), which means "beautiful", to YAPHIY'A, which means "splendid", because they are actually two different roots, the one here having a final-letter Ayin (ע). My guess, hinted at in my wording, is that the root for YAPHIY'A means "to shine brightly", and that it was precisely that beautiful sunny yellow of the bumble bee that made the idea sting. YAPHEH is the word most commonly used today, but both can be found throughout these scriptures: YAPHIY'A with a final Ayin in the Book of Job, which is Aramaean or possibly Edomite, and therefore suggests that this might have been the Babylonian dialect: cf Job 3:4 and 10:3; Yechezke-El also uses it, once, but Yechezke-El was among the exiles in Babylon when he did so, cf Ezekiel 28:7 and 17 (which actually uses both in the same sentence). There are also occurrences in the Psalms, 50:2 (which likewise uses both in the same sentence), 80:2 and 94:1, but all three appear to give the root an entirely different meaning: "appear" - which of course is what a sun-god does when he shines". One usage in Deuteronomy, 33:2, which fully endorses my explanation of the Psalms.
YAPHIY'A: Though it is far from radiantly clear how we get so easily from YAPHEH (יפה), which means "beautiful", to YAPHIY'A, which means "splendid", because they are actually two different roots, the one here having a final-letter Ayin (ע). My guess, hinted at in my wording, is that the root for YAPHIY'A means "to shine brightly", and that it was precisely that beautiful sunny yellow of the bumble bee that made the idea sting. YAPHEH is the word most commonly used today, but both can be found throughout these scriptures: YAPHIY'A with a final Ayin in the Book of Job, which is Aramaean or possibly Edomite, and therefore suggests that this might have been the Babylonian dialect: cf Job 3:4 and 10:3; Yechezke-El also uses it, once, but Yechezke-El was among the exiles in Babylon when he did so, cf Ezekiel 28:7 and 17 (which actually uses both in the same sentence). There are also occurrences in the Psalms, 50:2 (which likewise uses both in the same sentence), 80:2 and 94:1, but all three appear to give the root an entirely different meaning: "appear" - which of course is what a sun-god does when he shines". One usage in Deuteronomy, 33:2, which fully endorses my explanation of the Psalms.
The word is also used for two men, one in Joshua 10:3, the other in 2 Samuel 5:15.
Why does the KJ translator change tenses in mid-sentence (and not for the first time)?
19:13 U MI SHAM AVAR KEDMAH MIZRACHAH GITAH CHEPHER ITAH KATSIN VE YATS'A RIMON HA METO'AR HA NE'AH
Why does the KJ translator change tenses in mid-sentence (and not for the first time)?
19:13 U MI SHAM AVAR KEDMAH MIZRACHAH GITAH CHEPHER ITAH KATSIN VE YATS'A RIMON HA METO'AR HA NE'AH
וּמִשָּׁם עָבַר קֵדְמָה מִזְרָחָה גִּתָּה חֵפֶר עִתָּה קָצִין וְיָצָא רִמֹּון הַמְּתֹאָר הַנֵּעָה
KJ: And from thence passeth on along on the east to Gittahhepher, to Ittahkazin, and goeth out to Remmonmethoar to Neah,
BN: And from there continued eastwards to Gat Chepher, Et Katsin, and down to Rimon, the turning-point for Ne'ah;
GITAH CHEPHER: Gitah being GAT = an oil or wine press, though in feminine here, as most of the place-names appear to be in Zevulun; + CHEPHER, for which see my note to Joshua 12:17, which inter alia wonders if the Chepher mentioned there might have been Gat Chepher, the birthplace of the whaleman Yonah (Jonah) - for which see 2 Kings 14:25. Probably not is the answer there, whereas here it almost certainly is the same place, with a properly correct dative ending on the noun, which is Gat.
ITAH KATSIN: And yet again, that inconsistent dative, correct on both occasions in this verse. No question that Gat has become Gitah because the border goes "to" Gat; and now it is going "to" --- Katsin, which means the town's name should be Et Katsin, not Itah Katsin. A Katsin, incidentally, was indeed a magistrate or judge, which is the definition most Bible dictionaries offer; but Yisra-El was not yet sufficiently established to have magistrates and judges, and Joshua 10:24, like Judges 11:6 and 11 a few years hence, use the word to mean a "military commander", which suggests that Et Katsin was an important garrison town, and/or military barracks, which later developed, like the castrae of the Roman world, into fully-fledged towns.
RIMON HA METO'AR: For Rimon, see my notes to 15:32. Also 1 Chronicles 6:69. Is this a town named Rimon Ha Meto'ar, or are we being given a description of the geography of the border? In London, there is a lovely spot just off Trafalgar Square, where The Strand begins, and known as Charing Cross. The Cross was put up in the Middle Ages, but what was the Charing? Yes, it became a village, but when the Danish Vikings first sailed up the Thames, looking for a place to land, they found a stretch that was towpathable (a Strand in Danish being a towpath along a river or by the sea), and it happened to be at the point where the north-south flowing river slowed almost to a standstill, because it turned almost 90⁰ east at that point - and such a turn, in Danish, was a caering, which became Charing. I suspect something of the same order is happening here; whence my translation.
How would it work here? In Yehudit, the root TA'AR denotes the drawing of a line, whether in map-making (see Joshua 15:9, 18:14) or in creating beauty (Yaf'e To'ar is used to describe somebody who is "beautiful of form"; as in Ya'akov's first impression of Rachel in Genesis 29:17); here it comes with a prefictual Mem (מ), and the construction To'ar, telling us that this is not a noun at all, but the Pi'el (intensive) form of the verb; Meto'ar translates into Danish as caering. The Ha is therefore not a definite article but a preposition: "which".
NE'AH: There is actually a person named Noah, or No'ah (not be confused with No'ach, the Ark-man), in Numbers 26:33, and just two chapters ago at Joshua 17:3; and if I said "person", it was to give you time to click the link and discover for yourself, not so much that the person was female, but that she was one of Tselaphchad's five daughters - whose significance in all these "inheritance" allocations cannot be understated. And now, as part of the inheritance of Zevulun, a town that bears her name. Hmm! And now that I come to think of it, wasn't there a Beit Chaglah too, in Joshua 15:6. I'm sure I mentioned the connection at the time. Do all of Tselaphchad's daughters have towns, as well as inheritance rights?
NE'AH: There is actually a person named Noah, or No'ah (not be confused with No'ach, the Ark-man), in Numbers 26:33, and just two chapters ago at Joshua 17:3; and if I said "person", it was to give you time to click the link and discover for yourself, not so much that the person was female, but that she was one of Tselaphchad's five daughters - whose significance in all these "inheritance" allocations cannot be understated. And now, as part of the inheritance of Zevulun, a town that bears her name. Hmm! And now that I come to think of it, wasn't there a Beit Chaglah too, in Joshua 15:6. I'm sure I mentioned the connection at the time. Do all of Tselaphchad's daughters have towns, as well as inheritance rights?
The root suggests motion, whether of the earthquake sort that may be the source of the name here, or the more mechanical sort that gives us the modern word MANO'A (מנוע) for an engine.
See also NE'I-EL at verse 27.
19:14 VE NASAV OTO HA GEVUL MI TSEPHON CHANATON VE HAYU TOTS'OTAV GEY YIPHTACH-EL
19:14 VE NASAV OTO HA GEVUL MI TSEPHON CHANATON VE HAYU TOTS'OTAV GEY YIPHTACH-EL
וְנָסַב אֹתֹו הַגְּבוּל מִצְּפֹון חַנָּתֹן וְהָיוּ תֹּצְאֹתָיו גֵּי יִפְתַּח אֵל
KJ: And the border compasseth it on the north side to Hannathon: and the outgoings thereof are in the valley of Jiphthahel,
BN: And the border went around on the north side of Chanaton, and egressed in the Valley of Yiphtach-El;
CHANATON: Don't you just love "Hannathon" as the KJ's rendering - I have a Hannah for a daughter, and she has been known to run half-marathons, so I guess I'm biased. Chanaton, please, with a Chet (ח) not a Hey (ה), though they look remarkably similar; if it was a Hey, we would have to wonder if this wasn't Ha Naton... but it isn't, so we don't.
And for the serious scholars among you, who have already spotted this... I wasn't simply playing daddy and being sloppy. Hannah in Yehudit is... Chanah, with a Chet (ח) not a Hey (ה), though they look remarkably similar. Hannah, Anna and Thank You - the three Graces (have you ever wondered that? Grace is Gratis in Latin, which leads to the gratuity we leave as a thank-you with the bill. But not in a Christian restaurant. There the Gratuity is the Grace after Meals. An Amen, not a tip.)
Can we then translate Chanaton as Graceland? (But if we do, I guess we will have to write the name of the god who lives there as El-Vis).
YIPHTACH-EL (two separate links): Standard Yehudit texts hyphenate Yiphtach-El, where normally names with god or goddess prefixes and suffixies are unified as if they were a whole name; this corroborates one of the principal arguments of this commentary. And given the mythological nature of Yiphtach's (Jephtha's) story (or which see Judges 11), how interesting to see him placed among the gods here. Click this link for another interesting fact, that Yiphtach-El's geographic allocation, as per these verses, ties in with Yotapata, the town where Joseph ben Mattityahu was commander... and you can look up the rest of that tale of treachery for yourself.
19:15 VE KATAT VE NAHALAL VE SHIMRON VE YID'ALAH U VEIT LACHEM ARIM SHTEYM ESREH VE CHATSREYHEN
וְקַטָּת וְנַהֲלָל וְשִׁמְרֹון וְיִדְאֲלָה וּבֵית לָחֶם עָרִים שְׁתֵּים עֶשְׂרֵה וְחַצְרֵיהֶן
BN: And Katat, and Nahalal, and Shimron, and Yid'alah, and Beit Lachem: twelve cities with their suburbs.
KATAT: See the link.
NAHALAL: And after the Grace, the Hallel - there are simply too many places with these cosmological and/or liturgical connections for it to be just a coincidence. And it sends me back to Katat, an otherwise unknown root in Yehudit, and wonder if there isn't a letter missing, a Reysh (ר) would be the most obvious, rendering it as Ketoret (קטרת), the incense used in the ceremonies of prayer and sacrifice.
SHIMRON: SHAMAR is the root for watching and guarding, so a SHIMRON (elsewhere we also have SHOMRON, or Samaria) would be a watch-tower, like a Mitspeh and a Migdal, but more obviously for security purposes than observation of the heavens.
YIDALAH: See the link, but ignore most of it - we are in the tribal territory of Zevulun, which is nowhere near Shomron, and even further from Beit Lechem; unless thereare towns by those names in Zevulun as well.
BEIT LACHEM: Or Beit Lechem, because it is not obvious why the Masoretic pointer chose this way and not that one. It must, anyway, be a different Beit Lechem (Bethlehem) from the one associated with David and Jesus and especially Tammuz, and could help explain why the one in Yehudah was called Beit Lechem Ephratah ("the shrine of the corn god of the Euphrates" - which was a sobriquet for Tammuz), partly because of the Babylonian connection, partly to distinguish the two (or more); in the same way there are two Frankfurts in Germany, one specifically am Main, the other an der Oder.
SHTEYM ESREH: Yet again the twelve.
19:16 ZOT NACHALAT BENEY ZEVULUN LE MISHPECHOTAM HE ARIM HA ELEH VE CHATSREYHEN
19:16 ZOT NACHALAT BENEY ZEVULUN LE MISHPECHOTAM HE ARIM HA ELEH VE CHATSREYHEN
זֹאת נַחֲלַת בְּנֵי זְבוּלֻן לְמִשְׁפְּחֹותָם הֶעָרִים הָאֵלֶּה וְחַצְרֵיהֶן
BN: This is the inheritance of the Beney Zevulun, according to their clans, these cities with their suburbs.
pey break
19:17 LE YISASCHAR YATS'A HA GORAL HA REVIYI LIVNEY YISASCHAR LE MISHPECHOTAM
לְיִשָּׂשכָר יָצָא הַגֹּורָל הָרְבִיעִי לִבְנֵי יִשָּׂשכָר לְמִשְׁפְּחֹותָם
BN: And the fourth lot came out for Yisaschar, for the Beney Yisaschar, according to their clans.
YISASCHAR: See the link.
19:18 VA YEHI GEVULAM YIZRE-ELAH VE HA KESULOT VE SHUNEM
וַיְהִי גְּבוּלָם יִזְרְעֶאלָה וְהַכְּסוּלֹת וְשׁוּנֵם
BN: And their border ran towards Yizre-El, and Kesulot, and Shunem;
YIZRE-EL: Jezreel. See my note to Joshua 15:56.
KESULOT: The feminine plural of Chesil? Verse 12 had Kislot Tavor; perhaps these are the hill-slopes on the other side of the mountain.
SHUNEM: David's Avi-Shag came from Shunem (1 Kings 1).
19:19 VA CHAPHARAYIM VE SHI'ON VA ANACHARAT
וַחֲפָרַיִם וְשִׁיאֹן וַאֲנָחֲרַת
KJ: And Hapharaim, and Shion, and Anaharath,
BN: And Chapharayim, and Shi'on, and Anacharat;
CHAPHARAYIM: I have commented on this use of the multiple plural with Tsemarayim at Joshua 18:22. Some scholars think that SHUNEM might be an error for SHUNAYIM, which would translate as "Twin Peaks" if that were the case, from SHEN = "tooth", used metaphorically for angular hilltops and mountain summits.
SHI'ON: Yisaschar is nowhere near Mount Chermon, but it is an oddity that one of the names for that mountain, in Deuteronomy 4:48, is Si'on, spelt unpointed exactly as Shi'on is spelled here. And if it is Shi'on, then it must come from the root SHO (שוא) which occurs in Psalm 35:17 as "destruction" or "ruin", though even there it probably ought to be rendered, as it is on numerous other occasions, too many to list, as "iniquity", "wickedness", "lies" et al (Job 11:11, Isaiah 5:18...) From destruction to holocaust is only the distance of a feminine ending, SHO'AH (שואה).
ANACHARAT: No one has a clue what this name means. We could try breaking it down, into Ana and Charat, the former being a way of saying "please", though usually it is rendered as Na, not the full Ana; Charat occures in Exodus 32:16 for the writing of YHVH "engraved on the tablets"; which would make one more for our list of the cosmological and the liturgical. Or we could read it as an attempt by the Ezraic scribe to hide its true name, perhaps Anatot - but Anatot gets named on many another occasion, so this is unlikely.
The other possibility is that the initial Aleph (א) is Aramaic (the first language of the people writing this down), and the remainder, in Yehudit, simply NACHARAT, which would root in... now if it were NAHARAT with a Hey (ה), it would root in NAHAR = "river", and we could presume it was on the Kishon... but it is NACHAR with a Chet (ח), and that root (cf Jeremiah 8:16, Job 39:20) is a snorting sound, the sort associated with horses - so maybe there was a stud-farm on the hills.
19:20 VE HA RABIT VE KISHYON VE AVETS
19:20 VE HA RABIT VE KISHYON VE AVETS
וְהָרַבִּית וְקִשְׁיֹון וָאָבֶץ
KJ: And Rabbith, and Kishion, and Abez,
BN: And Ha Rabit, and Kishyon, and Avets;
HA RABIT: Yet again we have some towns named with a definite article, and others not. In England we have "The Chalfonts", in New York "The Hamptons", but these are always compound villages, and so the name is in the plural. Not so here. Or is it? Regional dialects are regional dialects, and just as we are about to question whether Kishyon is really Kiyshon, so we need to wonder if RABIT should not be RABOT or RABAT, and then see TSIDON RABAH at verse 28, below.
KISHYON: See my notes on this at Joshua 21:28, where all translators agree that Kiyshon, at least on that occasion, is intended as the river, or a town beqaring the same name, located on that river, the problem lying in the reversal of Yud and the Sheen (קשיון - קישון).
AVETS: See the link.
19:21 VE REMET VE EYN GANIM VE EYN CHADAH U VEIT PATSETS
וְרֶמֶת וְעֵין גַּנִּים וְעֵין חַדָּה וּבֵית פַּצֵּץ
BN: And Remet, and Eyn Ganim, and Eyn Chadah, and Beit Patsets;
REMET: Or possibly RAMOT, and either way a variation of RAMAH. High ground.
EYN GANIM: "Spring Gardens".
EYN CHADAH: "The Well of Happiness". I am unclear why BibleHub, the link here, thinks it means "fast-flowing". CHADAH appears in Exodus 18:9, Psalm 21:7 and Job 3:6/7, the first two with the meaning of positive rejoicing, the latter, and no surprise there, in the negative.
BEIT PATSETS: 1 Chronicles 24:15 has HA PITSETS (הַפִּצֵּ֖ץ), which sounds like the name of a town, but is in fact the name of a person - one of the descendants of Aharon the first High Priest, for whom lots were drawn by King David to determine who served in the Mishmarot - the 24 groups of priests (2 x 12) who ministered in the Temple - and when: so probably it should be HAPHITSETS, and not HA PITSETS. As to the meaning, no one has a clue.
19:22 U PHAG'A HA GEVUL BE TAVOR VE SHACHATSUMAH U VEIT SHEMESH VE HAYU TOTS'OT GEVULAM HA YARDEN ARIM SHESH ESREH VE CHATSREYHEN
וּפָגַע הַגְּבוּל בְּתָבֹור [וְשַׁחֲצוּמָה כ] (וְשַׁחֲצִימָה ק) וּבֵית שֶׁמֶשׁ וְהָיוּ תֹּצְאֹות גְּבוּלָם הַיַּרְדֵּן עָרִים שֵׁשׁ עֶשְׂרֵה וְחַצְרֵיהֶן
BN: And the border extended as far as Tavor, and Shachatsumah, and Beit Shemesh; and the terminus of their border was at the Yarden: sixteen cities with their villages.
TAVOR: See the link, and more notes here.
SHACHATSUMAH: Shach is surely a Persian word, meaning "king" - as in Shach Mat, "the King is Dead", which becomes "Checkmate" in English. The sheer number of letters tells us that this cannot be a single word in Yehudit, but is either a hyphenated or a compound: SHACHAT TSUMAH "sounds" like it would make sense (or SHACHAT TSIMAH, following the parenthesis), but that would require a Tav rather than a Tsade.
Gesenius follows an entirely different route, reckoning both the parenthesis and the original are wrong, and that it should be SHACHATSAYIM, claiming from the Talmud (though alas he doesn't quote his source) that SHACHATS is a "high place", in the geographical rather than the religious sense; but then goes on to insist that SHACHATS is another word for "lion", and cites Job 28:8 and 41:26 to endorse this - the only issue being that Job is an Aramaean or possibly Edomite text, translated into a very Aramaic Yehudit.
BEIT SHEMESH: Not to be confused with Eyn Shemesh, in Joshua 15:7 and 18:17; this is the Beit Shemesh mentioned in 15:10;a sun-shrine.
19:23 ZOT NACHALAT MATEH VENEY YISASCHAR LE MISHPECHOTAM HE ARIM VE CHATSREYHEN
BEIT SHEMESH: Not to be confused with Eyn Shemesh, in Joshua 15:7 and 18:17; this is the Beit Shemesh mentioned in 15:10;a sun-shrine.
19:23 ZOT NACHALAT MATEH VENEY YISASCHAR LE MISHPECHOTAM HE ARIM VE CHATSREYHEN
זֹאת נַחֲלַת מַטֵּה בְנֵי יִשָּׂשכָר לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָם הֶעָרִים וְחַצְרֵיהֶן
KJ: This is the inheritance of the tribe of the children of Issachar according to their families, the cities and their villages.
BN: This is the inheritance of the tribe of the Beney Yisaschar, according to their clans, their cities and their villages.
pey break
19:24 VA YETS'E HA GORAL HA CHAMIYSHI LE MATEH VENEY ASHER LE MISHPECHOTAM
וַיֵּצֵא הַגֹּורָל הַחֲמִישִׁי לְמַטֵּה בְנֵי אָשֵׁר לְמִשְׁפְּחֹותָם
KJ: And the fifth lot came out for the tribe of the children of Asher according to their families.
BN: And the fifth lot came out for the tribe of the Beney Asher, according to their clans.
ASHER: See the link. Note two oddities on the map (which is accurate to the Bible account): a) a block of land along the coast. from just north of Mount Carmel all the way to Tsur (Tyre), which is held by the King of Tsur, and denies Asher any access to the coast; b) the fact that Asher presumes to have any land at all inside the kingdom of Tsur, let alone extending all the way to Tsidon (Sidon).
19:25 VA YEHI GEVULAM CHELKAT VA CHALI VA VETEN VE ACH-SHAPH
וַיְהִי גְּבוּלָם חֶלְקַת וַחֲלִי וָבֶטֶן וְאַכְשָׁף
BN: And their border was Chelkat, and Chali, and Beten, and Ach-Shaph;
CHELKAT: See my earlier note on this at Joshua 11:17: is it a town, or a mountain pass?
CHALI: Choleh ought to mean "sick", from the same root that gives Machalah for a disease. But there is a second root, which gives "a necklace" in Proverbs 25:12, and Song of Songs 7:1 (7:2 in some versions) has CHALA'IM (חֲלָאִ֔ים), with an Aleph (א), the multiple plural once again, indicating "jewels". A town as a metaphorical "jewel"? Why not? Or a town that specialises in the crafts of silversmithing etc. Even more why not? Despite the map showing no access to the coast, if there are going to be connections to the Mediterranean, trading with other lands, imported goods and skills, etc, Asher is where they are most likely to be found. Osher too, the Egyptian earth-god, whose body was put out to sea by his uncle Set, and made its way across the eastern Mediterranean, where his sister Eshet (Isis) came in search of it, and found it, in fourteen parts, just a little north of here, but on the Lebanese coast, near Byblos.
BETEN: Is that not a stomach? It most certainly is. And is it the stomach that has the sickness, or is it the stomach that is just below the bejewelled neck? I cannot imagine a town named "Stomach", so there has to be another meaning... and guess what, there is? Though it still locates in the same part of the body; for women anyway. The womb... see Genesis 25:23, Judges 16:17, Psalm 22:10, many others. So a maternity shrine, ancient equivalent of a maternity ward in a hopsital, priestesses functioning as midwives. I wonder if they dealt with other forms of sickness here too, or maybe they sent those patients up to the road to Chali.
ACH-SHAPH: One word or two? See Joshua 11:1 and 12:20.
19:26 VE ALA-MELECH VE AM'AD U MISH'AL U PHAG'A BE CHARMEL HA YAMAH U VE SHIYCHOR LIVNAT
וְאַלַמֶּלֶךְ וְעַמְעָד וּמִשְׁאָל וּפָגַע בְּכַרְמֶל הַיָּמָּה וּבְשִׁיחֹור לִבְנָת
BN: And Ala-Melech, and Amad, and Mish'al; and it extended westward to Karm-El, and to Shichor Livnat;
ALA-MELECH: Why is this not El-Melech? The original text came without pointing, so this is a decision by the Masoretes, not the Ezraics - and what knowledge did they have, that we don't, to infer this variant? Is it simply a matter of regional dialect. From El to Ala is not actually terribly far, in the realms of the gods; and would be even nearer, if we spelled it, as I suspect it was originally spelled, al-Lah. "El, or al-Lah, is King." Oh yes, long, long before Islam - see the link.
AMAD: A column, for a shrine or temple, would be an Amud; a person standing in court as a witness would be an Amod. Anything that stands upright, literally as well as metaphorically.
U MISH'AL: Why is this not Mish-El? Probably for the same reason as ALA-MELECH, above. Or, if the U is a conjunction and the MI a prepositional prefix (we have "to" several times, so why not "from"?), why is this not Mi She'al, or even Mi She'ol? I think the answer lies with the two towns named above, and the seeming fact that every named group appears to have something cosmological and/or liturgical in common. So we know we are standing upright in a shrine, but are we being asked (She'al) as witnesses, or are we doing the asking - a MASH'AL is a prayer or a petition: cf Psalms 20:6 and 37:4.
CHARMEL: Why is this not Charm-El? Unlike Ala-Melech and Mish'al, there is no Aleph (א), so we cannot automatically see the name El here; cf Rachel, Ya'akov's wife. But I have said "automatically", and there are reasons to think that it might indeed be Karm-El: a) KARAM means "noble" or "generous" in Arabic, and in this part of Yisra-El, as we have already seen repeatedly, the Aramaic dialect, which is the source of Arabic, appears to be predominant, so a manor house owned by a rich aristocrat could very well be a Karm-El; b) KEREM in Yehudit is a vineyard (Exodus 22:4, Deuteronomy 20:6, 28:30...), quite possibly because the grape, and the wine it produces, and the wine that is therefore used as part of liturgy, is reckoned to be the most "noble" of all the juice-bearing fruits. Everything in those days was dedicated to a god or goddess, so a vineyard honouring El, the local Kena'ani father-god, would be a Karm-El, not a Karmel.
In fact it is not really Charmel either, but Karmel ot Karm-El; the Kaf (כ) is softened on this occasion because of the prefix BE.
SHICHOR LIVNAT: See my notes to Shichor in Joshua 13:3, though this is not the Shichor referred to there. Livnat means "whiteness", as in Lavan (Laban) and Ha Levanon (Lebanon). It is usually connected with the moon and the moon-goddess (sometimes a moon-god), though if this were on Mount Chermon rather than the Mediterranean coast, it might well be the snow that was intended.
SHICHOR LIVNAT: See my notes to Shichor in Joshua 13:3, though this is not the Shichor referred to there. Livnat means "whiteness", as in Lavan (Laban) and Ha Levanon (Lebanon). It is usually connected with the moon and the moon-goddess (sometimes a moon-god), though if this were on Mount Chermon rather than the Mediterranean coast, it might well be the snow that was intended.
But this is Shichor Livnat, and scholars down the ages have been unable to resist a recognition of the word SHACHUR (שחור) here, which means "black", leading to questioning whether the mother-goddess in these parts might not have had a rather more African colour to her skin; the same question asked over the name Yisaschar, Issachar - Yah Shachur.
19:27 VE SHAV MIZRACH HA SHEMESH BEIT DAGON U PHAG'A BIZVULUN U VE GEY YIPHTACH-EL TSAPHONAH BEIT HA EMEK U NE'I-EL VE YATS'A EL KAVUL MI SMOL
וְשָׁב מִזְרַח הַשֶּׁמֶשׁ בֵּית דָּגֹן וּפָגַע בִּזְבֻלוּן וּבְגֵי יִפְתַּח־אֵל צָפֹונָה בֵּית הָעֵמֶק וּנְעִיאֵל וְיָצָא אֶל כָּבוּל מִשְּׂמֹאל
BN: And then it turned east, towards Beit Dagon, reaching as far as Zevulun, and the valley of Yiphtach-El on the north side of Beit Ha Emek, and Ne'i-El, and its terminus was on the left hand side of Kavul;
BEIT DAGON: See Joshua 15:41. As per my note there, Dagon was the corn-god of the Pelishtim (Philistines), and the word DAGAN in Yehudit means "corn".
YIPHTACH-EL: On this occasion I have left in the hyphen, which appears in all Masoretic texts, to confirm the point about these EL-ending. See my notes at verse 14, above.
BEIT HA EMEK: "The house of the valley".
NE'I-EL: Somewhat surprisingly, given that a Yud followed by an Aleph implies a compound word, the Masoretic text does not hyphenate it. But go back to verse 13, and you will see NO'AH, which comes from the same root as NE'I-EL. My notes there apply here as well.
KAVUL: The same as the town in Afghanistan? Only etymologically - the name simply means "emptiness", and is yet one more for our list of towns named for what happened to them: destroyed, ruins, emptiness... see SARIYD at verse 12, SHI'ON at verse 19...
MI SMOL: Unusual for these "maps" to speak of left and right.
19:28 VE EVRON U RECHOV VE CHAMON VE KANAH AD TSIDON RABAH
19:28 VE EVRON U RECHOV VE CHAMON VE KANAH AD TSIDON RABAH
וְעֶבְרֹן וּרְחֹב וְחַמֹּון וְקָנָה עַד צִידֹון רַבָּה
KJ: And Hebron, and Rehob, and Hammon, and Kanah, even unto great Zidon
BN: And Evron, and Rechov, and Chamon, and Kanah, even unto great Tsidon
EVRON: Many English versions render this as Hebron, but the Yehudit for Chevron and Evron are completely different. Sloppy translators! There is a Kibbutz Evron, in the area that was Biblically the territory of the Beney Asher, and today is the Mateh Asher Regional Council, just south of Nahariya. As to its meaning, we cannot ignore the presence of the root AVAR, from which IVRIM = Hebrews, though it probably has more to do with geograpical crossings-over, in this region of hills and valleys and small streams.
RECHOV: In today's Israel, a RECHOV is a street, for the same reason that Broadway is named Broadway. In Biblical times, where streets were little more than lanes and alleys, there was only one "broad place", and that was the main square, just inside the main city gate. And actually, Biblically, anything that was broad and wide could have the adjective RACHAV attached, as per Genesis 34:21 (land), Isaiah 33:21 (river), Psalm 104:25 (sea).
BUT! There is also RACHAV, the famed "harlot" of Yericho, for whom see the link here, rather than the one in the previous paragraph; and see especially the reference to Psalm 87:4, which links her with neighbouring Tsur. And given that her brother-spouse, her twin-"dragon", the corn-god Dagon, has his shrine in the immediate vicinity...
CHAMON: Hot springs. Baden-Baden.
KANAH: Earlier we had a town which the scholars associated with Cana (John 2:1-11), where Jesus wined up the water in ... That was clearly an error, and so too would this be, as there is no evidence that Jesus ever travelled this far north-west. It is nonetheless a better candidate, because at least the name matches. We also saw a Brook of Kanah in Joshua 16:8 and 17:9. The question is: does this come from the root that gives LIKNOT, "to buy" - and if so, what that would mean in this context - or does it connect, yet again with the vegetation-god; KAYIN or Cain in the Genesis 4 tale, who was a farmer who brought corn etc for his sacrifices; KANEH being a reed that grows in marshland (Isaiah 36:6 and 42:3), possibly bulrushes, but more likely calamus, or some type of bamboo-grass; and which becomes the "dragon" himself, (the crocodile actually) in Psalm 68:31? (See also Matthew 11:7 wherethe Greek text has KALAMOS)
TSIDON: Surprising to find the borders of Asher going as far north as Tsidon. But Tsidon is an important reference, connecting Asher even more strongly with the Osiris-Adonis myths, in contrast with the David or the Av-Raham stories, which are linked with the Babylonian Tammuz or Phoenician Ba'al versions.
The map was taking us, I believe, along the southern border, and eastward, because that is where it connects to Zevulun; but suddenly we are in the north, and indeed the extreme north-west.
19:29 VE SHAV HA GEVUL HA RAMAH VE AD IR MIVTSAR TSUR VE SHAV HA GEVUL CHOSAH VA YIHEYU TOTS'OTAV HA YAMAH ME CHEVEL ACHZIYVAH
CHAMON: Hot springs. Baden-Baden.
KANAH: Earlier we had a town which the scholars associated with Cana (John 2:1-11), where Jesus wined up the water in ... That was clearly an error, and so too would this be, as there is no evidence that Jesus ever travelled this far north-west. It is nonetheless a better candidate, because at least the name matches. We also saw a Brook of Kanah in Joshua 16:8 and 17:9. The question is: does this come from the root that gives LIKNOT, "to buy" - and if so, what that would mean in this context - or does it connect, yet again with the vegetation-god; KAYIN or Cain in the Genesis 4 tale, who was a farmer who brought corn etc for his sacrifices; KANEH being a reed that grows in marshland (Isaiah 36:6 and 42:3), possibly bulrushes, but more likely calamus, or some type of bamboo-grass; and which becomes the "dragon" himself, (the crocodile actually) in Psalm 68:31? (See also Matthew 11:7 wherethe Greek text has KALAMOS)
TSIDON: Surprising to find the borders of Asher going as far north as Tsidon. But Tsidon is an important reference, connecting Asher even more strongly with the Osiris-Adonis myths, in contrast with the David or the Av-Raham stories, which are linked with the Babylonian Tammuz or Phoenician Ba'al versions.
The map was taking us, I believe, along the southern border, and eastward, because that is where it connects to Zevulun; but suddenly we are in the north, and indeed the extreme north-west.
19:29 VE SHAV HA GEVUL HA RAMAH VE AD IR MIVTSAR TSUR VE SHAV HA GEVUL CHOSAH VA YIHEYU TOTS'OTAV HA YAMAH ME CHEVEL ACHZIYVAH
וְשָׁב הַגְּבוּל הָרָמָה וְעַד עִיר מִבְצַר צֹר וְשָׁב הַגְּבוּל חֹסָה [וְיִהְיוּ כ] (וְהָיוּ ק) תֹצְאֹתָיו הַיָּמָּה מֵחֶבֶל אַכְזִיבָה
BN: And then the border turns to Ha Ramah, and to the fortress-city of Tsur; and the coast turns to Chosah; and the terminus is at the sea, on the coast at Achziv.
HA RAMAH: Any hill could be called a Ramah, any hillside town likewise, and there were several in Kena'an, and several variations on the word, just in this chapter. Ram means "high" or "great", as in Av-Ram the patriarch. But is this Ramah, or Ha Ramah - the grammar (yet another of our inconsistent datives!) could allow it to be either. See verse 36 which is definitely Ha Ramah.
TSUR: Tyre. The map is now coming south again.
CHOSAH: Was this already a refuge-city, before the idea caught on with the Beney Yisra-El and they designated their own ones? The name certainly means "flight" or "refuge", and would be used today for somebody seeking asylum. Judges 9:15, Isaiah 30:2, and many others use it in that sense; several Psalms (57:2, 61:5 et al) use it for seeking refuge from the complexities of life in prayer and the divine.
ACHZIV: Achziv is about a mile inside today's Israeli border with the Lebanon, on the coast at Ras en-Naqura. See my notes to Joshua 15:55; this Achziv is the first of the two links referred to there.
19:30 VE UMAH VA APHEK U RECHOV ARIM ESRIM U SHTAYIM VE CHATSEREYHEN
וְעֻמָה וַאֲפֵק וּרְחֹב עָרִים עֶשְׂרִים וּשְׁתַּיִם וְחַצְרֵיהֶן
BN: Umah also, and Aphek, and Rechov: twenty-two cities with their villages.
UMAH: A congregation or community, in the Arabic, though generally it is phoneticised as Ummah - أمة - I am confident that it is the same word, however. The Yehudit here is rooted in AM, which means "people", and is used for the "nation of Israel" (Am Yisra-El).
APHEK: Is this a second Aphek? Or have we come a long way south? See Joshua 12:18, 13:4, which my note there suggests was different from 12:18, whereas 15:53 is 12:18 again.
RECHOV: A different town, but the same name as the one in verse 28, above.
19:31 ZOT NACHALAT MATEH VENEY ASHER LE MISHPECHOTAM HE ARIM HA ELEH VE CHATSREYHEN
זֹאת נַחֲלַת מַטֵּה בְנֵי אָשֵׁר לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָם הֶעָרִים הָאֵלֶּה וְחַצְרֵיהֶן
BN: This is the inheritance of the tribe of the Beney Asher according to their clans, these cities with their villages.
Note that Asher receives a part of his share in what is now Lebanon, with all its Phoenician and Osiric associations, and despite the statement earlier that it had not been conquered; it is highly unlikely that Asher conquered any territory north of what is now the Israel-Lebanon border, and debateable how much it conquered south of that border. References in 2 Samuel 5:11, 1 Kings 5:1 and 1 Chronicles 14:1 suggest that there was a treaty with the kingdom of Tsur (Tyre) at the time of King Hiram (Hu-Ram?), and that Hiram was the provider of both architects, engineers and timber for the construction of the Solomonic Temple. The Book of Kings (1:16:31ff) also tells of the marriage of I-Zevel (Jezebel), the daughter of King Et-Ba'al (Ethba'al) of Tsur, to the Yisra-Eli King Achav (Ahab), and of her reintroduction of the worship of Ba'al and Asherah into Yisra-El, replacing YHVH. These are probably as close as Yisra-El ever came to holding territory in Lebanon.
And that is it; shorter even than Yisaschar; virtually everything that we are ever going to learn about the tribe of Asher, its history, its culture, its religion, anything. Eight verses!
pey break
19:32 LIVNEY NAPHTALI YATS'A HA GORAL HA SHISHI LIVNEY NAPHTALI LE MISHPECHOTAM
לִבְנֵי נַפְתָּלִי יָצָא הַגֹּורָל הַשִּׁשִּׁי לִבְנֵי נַפְתָּלִי לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָם
KJ: The sixth lot came out to the children of Naphtali, even for the children of Naphtali according to their families
BN: The sixth lot came out for the Beney Naphtali, for the Beney Naphtali according to their clans.
NAPHTALI: See the link. A map of Naphtali can be found at verse 24, above.
19:33 VA YEHI GEVULAM ME CHELEPH ME ELON BE TSA'ANANIM VA ADAMI HA NEKEV VE YAVNE-EL AD LAKUM VA YEHI TOTS'OTAV HA YARDEN
וַיְהִי גְבוּלָם מֵחֵלֶף מֵאֵלֹון בְּצַעֲנַנִּים וַאֲדָמִי הַנֶּקֶב וְיַבְנְאֵל עַד לַקּוּם וַיְהִי תֹצְאֹתָיו הַיַּרְדֵּן
BN: And their border ran from Cheleph, from Elon in Tsa'ananim, and Adami Ha Nekev and Yavne-El, at which point it turned; and its terminus was at the Yarden.
CHELEPH: A Cheleph is a crossing-point - is it possible they had customs and passport control equivalents in those days, between tribes?
ELON: I have linked this to BibleHub for the explanation given there, because Elon does indeed connect with Allon, but Allon is nevertheless not what the traditional pointing suggests. An Elon is an oak tree, and very much regarded as divine, perhaps because of its capacity to live for longer than Methuselah, perhaps because of the amazing twists and contortions of its unpollarded branches, perhaps because of the variety of progeny it produces, scarlet and kerm and acorns and leaves and mistletoe...
And given that an Elon is an oak tree, and therefore regarded as sacred, is it more likely that the town here was ELON BE TSA'ANANIM, which is to say a town and its region, or ELON followed by BETSA'ANANIM, these being two towns? Most Christian translations prefer the latter; most Jewish ones the former.
TSA'ANANIM: Zaanannim in most English versions, because English always seems to treat the Tsade (צ) as thought it were a Zayin (ז). There is a town named Tso'an, which uses the same letters as here, which is Tanis in Lower Egypt (Ṣān al-Ḥajar al-Qibliyyah today); obviously not the town in this verse, but confirmation of the name, which is useful. There is also a root TSA'AN, which as far as I can tell makes just one appearance in the Tanach, in Isaiah 33:20, where it speaks of Tsi'on and Yeru-Shala'im as "a tent that does not wander" - in other words a fixed, sedentary society, no longer nomadic, even in the Diasporal let alone the Bedou sense of that term. So perhaps there was a caravanserai, a stopping-place for camel-trains and wandering shepherds, a place to lodge the night, be fed and watered, and around it there slowly grew up a town. A town named Sedentary. Why not? What, after all, do the words "stead" and "stowe" mean in English - click here?
BETSA'ANANIM: However, as noted above, most Yehudit versions make the BE a part of the name, rather than the prefix "to" or "at". A root for this would either need four letters, which is uncommon, or an explanation of the ending as a variation on the multiple plural, which is possible. There is no such four letter root; is there then a three letter root to accompany that multiple plural? Yes - BETS'A, for "cutting in pieces", or simply "breaking", as in Amos 9:1 where the Prophet "saw the Lord standing by the altar, and he said: 'Strike the tops of the pillars so that they may shake the thresholds and break them [וּבְצַ֙עַם֙] on all their heads." And many other occurrences as well - Psalm 10:3, Joel 2:8; and the sense of something already torn or broken - rape, spoilage in war - in Judges 5:19, Jeremiah 51:13; and things torn off that shouldn't be, but metaphorically, such as embezzlement and tax evasion, in Exodus 18:21, 1 Samuel 8:3 and Habbakuk 2:9.
So either version is equally viable, etymologically.
ADAMI: Yet another town with that name, or a variation thereof (click here for Admah, which is yet another example). The root, forgive the pun, is Adamah = earth, a development from DAM = blood; but it is precisely the earth, the soil, the pasture and grazing land, that is significant here, and the reason why I tend to favour the developed caravanserai of Tsa'ananim as the name of the previous town. Adamah will appear in its own right in verse 36.
HA NEKEV: And once more we have to ask: is this one place, or two? Adami and Ha Nekev, two separate towns; or Adami Ha Nekev? It all depends on the meaning of Nekev, and in fact there are several (the word for a female, NEKEVAH, stems from one of these; and "making things very clear" ditto, in Genesis 30:28; and naming things, Isaiah 62:2). So many seemingly different meanings! But if we go back to the root of the root, we can cut through, we can bore our way down, we can hollow out, an explanation that joins all of these, and simultaneously confirms that this was Adami Ha Nekev, one town, down in a gorge or a very deep valley (cf Haggai 1:6, Habbakuk 3:14, and even the boring of a ring-hole into the nose of Liv-Yatan, in Job 40:24).
YAVNE-EL Again hyphenated! See my notes to Joshua 15:11.
LAKUM: Is that a town, or a direction descriptor? LAKUM means "to get up", so this is surely the border making a turn at that point (see my note on Rimon Ha Meto'ar at verse 13).
19:34 VE SHAV HA GEVUL YAMAH AZNOT TAVOR VE YATSA MI SHAM CHUKOKAH U PHAGA BI ZEVULUN MI NEGEV U VE ASHER PAGA MI YAM U VI YEHUDAH HA YARDEN MIZRACH HAHEMESH
וְשָׁב הַגְּבוּל יָמָּה אַזְנֹות תָּבֹור וְיָצָא מִשָּׁם חוּקֹקָה וּפָגַע בִּזְבֻלוּן מִנֶּגֶב וּבְאָשֵׁר פָּגַע מִיָּם וּבִיהוּדָה הַיַּרְדֵּן מִזְרַח הַשָּׁמֶשׁ
BN: And then the border turned westward to Aznot Tavor, and thence to Chukok, reaching Zevulun on the south side, reaching Asher on the west side, and Yehudah on the east of the Yarden.
The phrasing makes it sound like a Biblical version of BBC Travel!
VE SHAV: To turn back, literally; but how does a border "turn back"? Presumably a very narrow stretch of land, coming to a point on the inland that is so close to the coast (of the Sea of Galilee in this case), or to a mountain, that it is little more than a U-turn - and the reason for going no further inland, on this occasion, turns out to be the latter - Mount Tavor itself, blocking the way.
AZNOT TAVOR: "The ears of Mount Tavor." Once more the appearance of two places, which turn out to be just one. Like its "loins" in verse 12, a splendidly Wordsworthian way of describing natural geographical features. There is another occasion of the same metaphor, in 1 Chronicles 7:24, which has Ephrayim's grand-daughter She'erah (surely yet another variant of Sarah-Sarai-Asherah), who built Lower and Upper Beit Choron (Joshua 10:10, 16:3, 18:13) and Uzen She'erah.
CHUKOK: See 1 Chronicles 6:60 (for some bizarre reason, it's 6:75 in some Christian versions). Psalm 74:11 uses the same word perfectly correctly to mean "bosom"; I say "perfectly correctly" only because the Masoretic scholars have long questioned it, wanting to say CHEYK instead. Either way, alongside the ears and loins of Mount Tavor, we now have its breast. It won't be long before we can envisage the entire mountain in human form - and place gods on its summit.
YEHUDAH: There has to have been a town named Yehudah at this point; the tribal territory of Yehudah is a long way south. And why not? The word meant "praise" long before it became a person's name, and then a tribe, a country, a religion.
19:35 VE AREY MIVTSAR HA TSIDIM TSER VE CHAMAT RAKAT VE CHINARET
וְעָרֵי מִבְצָר הַצִּדִּים צֵר וְחַמַּת רַקַּת וְכִנָּרֶת
BN: And the fenced cities are Tsidim, Tser, and Chamat, Rakat, and Chinaret;
AREY MIVTSAR: We have seen this distinction between walled and fenced cities with the variations of GADER, which means "fence" - see Geder in Joshua 12:13, Gederah, and Gederotayim in 15:36, Gederot in 15:41. Some translations prefer to render MIVTSAR as "fortified"; and this is correct: simply that the fortifications are wooden, not stone (cf Isaiah 25:12); and I guess we know that from the English too: a fort, like the ones the American pioneers established as they headed west, was always wooden, never stone.
TSIDIM: More of our body-parts, the flanks this time. A TSID is a side, and yields the Lebanese town of Tsidon as much as it does Tsidim here. However, there is an interesting side-thought here: the word Tsid tends to be used for the left side (1 Samuel 20:25, Psalm 91:7), and a different word for the right side; and from this we have a Yehudit equivalent of "gauche" in the French and "sinister" in the Latin: gauche is not as wicked as sinister, but both are tending towards that point of the inclination spectrum, the Yetser Ha Ra, and the word ends up as a synonym for ha-Satan, the Adversary (Daniel 7:25, Judges 2:3), who presumably was left-handed. And which word functions for the right side, which is also the right hand side, the good side on which the Beloved Son sits on the throne beside his father? The very word that also gives us our next town: Tsar.
TSER: Continuing from TSIDIM, above, TSAR can also be found as an "adversary" in Job 16:9, Deuteronomy 32:27, Psalm 81:15 and many others. So we have the sense that these fenced towns, which come below the breast (Chukok in verse 34), are providing both the left and right flanks, and our geographical map of Yisra-El, or at least of Naphtali, which we had begun to recognise was also a cosmological mirror, turns out to be a human shape, albeit only a poetic human shape,a metaphor of a human shape, but a human shape nonetheless - and of course that human shape is in the image and the likeness of the deity.
CHAMAT: See Numbers 34:8 and Joshua 13:5. Cham means hot (as with CHAMON in verse 28, above), and this town got its name from the hot water springs which you can still visit, next time you are in Tveryah (Tiberias), because the two are neighbours.
RAKAT: The word means "shore", and the shore in question is that of the Sea of Galilee. The early Talmudic Rabbis, many of whom spent time at Rabbi Akiva's home (24,000 students, according to the legends, but five principal disciples, Judah bar Ilai, Rabbi Meir, Rabbi Eleazar ben Shammua, Jose ben Halafta and Shimon bar Yochai) which was not far from here at Ziphron (today's Zafrân; see Numbers 34:9), reckoned that Rakat was the village that was developed in honour of the Emperor Tiberius, and given his name: Tveryah (טבריה) in Yehudit, Tiberias in English.
CHINARET: Many English translations give Kinneret, but the spelling is different. Kineret was the lake itself, the Sea of Galilee; Chinaret a village on the lake, later Ginosar for the lake and Genaseret for the village.
19:36 VE ADAMAH VE HA RAMAH VE CHATSOR
וַאֲדָמָה וְהָרָמָה וְחָצֹור
KJ: And Adamah, and Ramah, and Hazor,
BN: And Adamah, and Ha Ramah, and Chatsor;
ADAMAH: see verse 33, above.
HA RAMAH: So many variations - but with so much high ground, it is, I suppose, inevitable, that towns will be called by that name. See verses 8, 21 and 29.
CHATSOR: See Joshua 11:1 and 10-13, 12:19; also 15:3 for Chetsron. In Arabic, CHATSAR is the middle stage between a fort and a castra, a town that has a defensive wall, and made of stone, but without the battlements and guard-towers and ramparts etc of a fully-fledged castle or major city. In Yehudit, any enclosure could be a CHATSER, from a sheepfold to the garden fence, though we can find examples of the word for a hamlet, a village, a town, the courtyard of the Temple, even a stable at verse 5, above. Any form of enclosure. And then, probably a later use of the word, there is the colour green, which is usually YAROK, but CHATSIR gets used, mostly for enclosed spaces like paddocks and pastures - this latter, I think, much as the same as the word "green" in English, which golfers use quite specifically, even though the fairways are the same colour, and villages use, even though the surrounding countryside, and the park on the other side of the church, and the rector's front garden, are likewise of the same colour. And CHATSREYHEN, throughout these maps, for those other enclosed areas, the suburbs - for which, actually, ghettos would be a more accurate translation, the full Italian word being borghetto, not ghetto, and a person who lives in a French borghetto would be a bourgeois, in an English or German one a Burger.
19:37 VE KEDESH VE EDRE'I VE EYN CHATSOR
וְקֶדֶשׁ וְאֶדְרֶעִי וְעֵין חָצֹור
KJ: And Kedesh, and Edrei, and Enhazor,
BN: And Kedesh, and Edre'i, and Eyn Chatsor;
KEDESH: The name means "set apart", but the word has come to mean "sacred" or "holy", because these latter are metaphorically "set apart" from the profane world of everyday and everywere. The name came up repeatedly in the Exodus stories, giving us the impression that one of the sources of the "40-year journey" was an account of the annual pilgrimage around the principal water-shrines of the Sinai desert (eg Kadesh Barne'a ). Several towns in Kena'an bear the name, including one by Mount Karm-El (Joshua 12:22) and another in Yehudah (15:23); but this is Kadesh Naphtali, which by its very name denotes it as the principal place of worship in the tribal territory; it is also one of the major archeological sites in modern Israel (click here). The name will recur in Joshua 20:7, when it is designated as one of the refuge cities, though the archeology suggests it had already been such, as well as (perhaps because of this) a major burial site, complete with both tumuli and sarcophagi, from very ancient times.
EDRE'I: See Joshua 12:4 and 13:31, though that is not this Edre'i.
EYN CHATSOR: The spring or well of Chatsor. Given the number of times the word CHATSOR has come up, and the number of meanings-uses that it has (see my note above), we cannot presume that this spring or well was anywhere near any specific village, though it could perfectly well be the main water-source for any one of several. The equivalent in English is the word "well" - Shadwell, Tunbridge Wells, Camberwell Green, Wells (in Somerset), Clerkenwell... the list goes on and on.
19:38 VE YIR'ON U MIGDAL-EL CHAREM U VEIT ANAT U VEIT SHAMESH ARIM TESHA ESREH VECHATSREYHEN
וְיִרְאֹון וּמִגְדַּל־אֵל חֳרֵם וּבֵית עֲנָת וּבֵית שָׁמֶשׁ עָרִים תְּשַׁע עֶשְׂרֵה וְחַצְרֵיהֶן
BN: And Yir'on, and Migdal-El, Charem, and Beit Anat, and Beit Shemesh; nineteen cities with their villages.
YIR'ON: Like KEDESH, a designation of the holy, the root being YAR'E, which is understood as meaning "fear" but used - far too frequently to need references - specifically for YAR'AT ELOHIM, the fear of the gods.
MIGDAL-EL: Note that on this occasion the Masoretic text does come with a hyphen, suffixing the god-name. A Migdal is a tower, and sometimes the towers were for the military look-outs or the city sentries, and sometimes for the observation of the heavens - Mitspeh the other word that interchanges, though we also had SHIMRON at verse 15. Here, with the addition of EL, the father-god of the Beney Kena'an, clearly the latter, though it could perfectly well have been used for both.
CHAREM: First Kedesh, then Yir'on, and now Charem - we have come across the Cherem repeatedly in the Book of Joshua, "excommunication" in its more recent usage, the sense of something "dedicated" or "devoted", but for "destruction" - see my notes to Karmi, and also Joshua 2:10, 6:17 ff, 7:1 and 11 ff... numerous others.
BEIT ANAT: Is Beit Anat a variant on Beit Anatot, where Yirme-Yah's (Jeremiah's) father was the high priest (Jeremiah 32); later Bethany? Yes, but it is not that Beit Anat, which was in the tribal inheritance of Bin-Yamin, much further south. Anat was the wife of Ba'al and there are bound to have been many shrines in her name that grew into towns. See also Joshua 15:59.
BEIT SHAMESH: Or Beit Shemesh? Try googling Beit Shamesh, and it will insist you have your spelling wrong, and then take you to a million sites about Beit Shemesh. But Beit Shemesh was on the border of Yehudah and Dan, before Dan moved north, and this is a town in Naphtali, way further north. SHAMASH, SHEMESH, SHIMSHON who we know as SAMSON, TAMMUZ in the word's Chaldean form... the sun, and the sun-god.
19:39 ZOT NACHALAT MATEH VENEY NAPHTALI LE MISHPECHOTAM HE ARIM VE CHATSREYHEN
זֹאת נַחֲלַת מַטֵּה בְנֵי נַפְתָּלִי לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָם הֶעָרִים וְחַצְרֵיהֶן
BN: This is the inheritance of the tribe of the Beney Naphtali according to their clans, their cities and their villages.
pey break
19:40 LE MATEH VENEY DAN LE MISHPECHOTAM YATS'A HA GORAL HA SHEVIY'I
לְמַטֵּה בְנֵי דָן לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָם יָצָא הַגֹּורָל הַשְּׁבִיעִי
KJ: And the seventh lot came out for the tribe of the children of Dan according to their families.
BN: And the seventh lot came out for the tribe of the Beney Dan according to their clans.
19:41 VA YEHI GEVUL NACHALATAM TSARAH VE ESHTA'OL VE IR SHAMESH
וַיְהִי גְּבוּל נַחֲלָתָם צָרְעָה וְאֶשְׁתָּאֹול וְעִיר שָׁמֶשׁ
BN: And the border of their inheritance was Tsarah, and Eshta'ol, and Ir Shamesh;
TSARAH: Not to be confused with TSER in verse 35, above. See Joshua 15:33. But more importantly, see Judges 13:2, which tells us that Shimshon (Samson) was born here, and that he was a Danite, though everything else about his story suggests that he was not only one of the Pelishtim, but quite specifically their sun-god.
ESHTA'OL: Likewise, see Joshua 15:33.
IR SHAMESH: Beit Shamesh, Eyn Shemesh - yet again the confusion of endlessly repeated names and variations.
19:42 VE SHA'ALABIN VE AYALON VE YITLAH
וְשַׁעֲלַבִּין וְאַיָּלֹון וְיִתְלָה
BN: And Sha'alabin, and Ayalon, and Yitlah;
SHA'ALABIN: fox-territory, just north of Ayalon... except that SHA'AL on its own means "a hollow", and while SHU'AL, spelled this way, does indeed mean "a fox", ABIN is not a grammatical construction with which any teacher of Yehudit or Ivrit is yet familiar. 1 Samuel 9:4 has Sha'ul hunting for his father's lost donkeys around SHA'ALIM, which is a regular plural, and probably a deliberate word-game on Sha'ul (שאול) with an Aleph (א) and Sha'al (שעל) with an Ayin (ע).
Sha'albim, with a more regular last-letter Mem, though still no explanation of the penultimate Beit-Yud, appears in Judges 1:35 and 1 Kings 4:9, and the first of these is definitely the same place as in this verse.
I am tempted to suggest that the name was originally in the language of the Pelishtim, and quite probably had nothing to do with either foxes or hollows; and when it entered the Yehudit language, they simply regularised the ending.
AYALON: Where we witnessed what was either a lunar or a solar eclipse, or possibly the equinox, in Joshua 10:12, though the impression then was that we were very much further east than Danite territory, so perhaps this is a second Ayalon.
YITLAH: Not to be confused with TOL'A, the son of Yisaschar, whose name ends with an Ayin (ע), where this ends with a Hey (ה). The root here gives the sense of "hanging", and while it is also used for scaffolds and wardrobes, this is more like "Hanging Rock" in south Australia.
19:43 VE EYLON VE TIMNATAH VE EKRON
וְאֵילֹון וְתִמְנָתָה וְעֶקְרֹון
BN: And Eylon, and Timnatah, and Ekron;
EYLON: Eylon, unpointed, is indistinguishable from Ayalon in the previous verse, and both are the same as the Ayalon in Joshua 10:12. Why, then, is one Eylon, but the other two are Ayalon? I suspect that it should really be Elon here, and the fault lies in the Yud. But that can only be speculation.
TIMNATAH: Much previous discussion about Timna, with or without an Ayin (ע), with or without a Hey (ה), and the issue of the Inconsistent Dative; see Joshua 15:10 and 57, and 18:18 (and verse 50, below). This, however, is yet another town of the same name.
EKRON: See Joshua 13:3 and 15:11 and 45/46.
19:44 VE EL-TEKEH VE GIBTON U VA'ALAT
וְאֶלְתְּקֵה וְגִבְּתֹון וּבַעֲלָת
BN: And El-Tekeh, and Gibton, and Ba'alat;
EL-TEKEH: (See EL-TEKON at Joshua 15:59) A name functioning like a clue to a cryptic crossword: this can only be done by breaking it down into its possibles. So.
a) Is the El the god-name, attached as a prefix? This is how I have presented it, but it requires a meaningful verb. Return to a) in a moment.
b) Is there a meaningful root that we can trace here? Tav-Kaf-Heh (תקה) does not offer anything - Tav-Kaf-Aleph (תקא) would, the root suggesting "fear", and especially the taking of caution - might this be an error for that? Return to b) in a moment, if I don't have a better suggestion.
c) If there is no three-letter root, might the Tav be an indicator of the future tense (but it would be feminine if it were, and that wouldn't work with EL); in which case the root would have to be Nun-Kaf-Hey (נקה) - and yes, there is one. Used for "purity" and "innocence" on several occasions (Jeremiah 49:12, Psalm 19:13), used for somebody who has been "acquitted" or "released from punishment" (Numbers 5:19), or from a commitment such as an oath (Genesis 24:8). The word NAKI, meaning "clean", comes from the same root.
But is it the root that we are looking for? El-Tekeh - "the god purifies", "the god will declare who is innocent"? A town that provides a prison, a regional courthouse, and the equivalent of today's act of swearing on the Bible? Possibly. Scholars over 2000 years have not yet found a better hypothesis.
And if so, is there any connection between EL-TEKEH and EL-TEKON, and the town of TEKO'A (spelled with an Ayin, so there probably isn't), whence came the woman who sorted out the bereaved King David in 2 Samuel 14, when the world had ended because of the death of Av-Shalom; her role in that story certainly adds something to my hypothesis, if only the provision of a priestly feminine.
See also Joshua 21:23.
GIBTON: Another Geb name, for a man-made burial mound or tumulus; or simply another natural hill?
BA'ALAT: And if that was El a moment ago, we should not be surprised to find his son not far behind him. Another of the commonly used names, we have already encountered it as BA'ALAT BE'ER in the tribe of Shim'on at verse 8, and elsewhere (eg BA'ALAH in Joshua 15:29).
See also Joshua 21:23.
GIBTON: Another Geb name, for a man-made burial mound or tumulus; or simply another natural hill?
BA'ALAT: And if that was El a moment ago, we should not be surprised to find his son not far behind him. Another of the commonly used names, we have already encountered it as BA'ALAT BE'ER in the tribe of Shim'on at verse 8, and elsewhere (eg BA'ALAH in Joshua 15:29).
19:45 VI YEHUD U VENEY VERAK VE GAT RIMMON
וִיהֻד וּבְנֵי בְרַק וְגַת רִמֹּון
BN: And Yehud, and Beney Berak, and Gat Rimmon;
YEHUD: See my note on Yehudah at verse 34.
BENEY BERAK: In contemporary Israel, one of the absolute centres of absolute orthodoxy, though now they write it Bnei Brak.
GAT RIMMON: A Gat, as we have seen previously (Joshua 13:3 et al), is a press, for olives or oil rather than media stories. For the Rimmon (pomegranete) part of this, see my note at Joshua 15:32, though I didn't go into much detail there about the specific significance of the fruit: even the water-melon, which is a man-made hybrid, does not have the fertility of the pomegranete, which is an oviary inside a fruit. At Lebanese weddings, since ancient times the groom will stamp on a ripe pomegranete, and the seeds that spray out will hit everybody, superstitiously bestowing fertility on them; other cultures later reduced this to the mere throwing of the bride's bouquet, or in the Jewish culture to its replacement by a glass. It was because she ate a pomegranete that Persephone (Proserpine in the Roman version) was forced to spend the winter season in the Underworld - and no surprise either, not because eating the fruit was in any way original as a sin, but because any female with that level of regular ovulation belongs in the Underworld in Winter: it is where all dead matter goes to bio-degrade, turn into compost, and be available for the refructification of the earth come springtime (Christianity may have modified this understanding a little in the past two millennia, but this is how the ancients understood the Underworld: a place of very good, because very necessary, not very evil).
19:46 U MEY HA YARKON VE HA RAKON IM HA GEVUL MUL YAPHO
וּמֵי הַיַּרְקֹון וְהָרַקֹּון עִם הַגְּבוּל מוּל יָפֹו
KJ: And Mejarkon, and Rakkon, with the border before Japho.
BN: And Mey Ha Yarkon, and Rakon, with the border before Yapho.
MEY HA YARKON: Israel's "Green River", the main throughstream of modern Tel Aviv (the main throughstream of ancient Tel Aviv was the Tigris); sometimes written in tourist guides as Yarqon.
HA RAKON: The coincidence of names between Ha Rakon, which provides the source-spring, and Ha Yarkon, which is the river, leads me to wonder if Yarkon really does mean "Green River" - the root appears to be Yarak, which is the colour green. RAKAH means "thin", but it is used very specifically as the word for the temple, the lower case temple, the one at the bridge of the nose (Judges 4:21, 5:26: readers are advised that they may find these links disturbing and should only visit if they are 18+ and after 9pm), though some translators of Song of Songs (4:3 and 6:7) seem to think it is the cheek as well, or instead - not the links I have chosen (and I didn't need two links for the latter, but the second one also provides an additional reference to Rimmon, in its capacity as a pomegranete rather than a town).
YAPHO: Or YAFO, if you prefer. Modern Jaffa, the source of all those Israeli bananas and oranges; Joppa in the Christian texts, whence Yonah (Jonah) began his flight from responsibility.
19:47 VA YETS'E GEVUL BENEY DAN ME HEM VA YA'ALU VENEY DAN VA YILACHAMU IM LESHEM VA YILKEDU OTAH VA YAKU OTAH LE PHI CHEREV VA YIRSHU OTAH VA YESHVU VAH VA YIKRE'U LE LESHEM DAN KE SHEM DAN AVIHEM
וַיֵּצֵא גְבוּל בְּנֵי דָן מֵהֶם וַיַּעֲלוּ בְנֵי דָן וַיִּלָּחֲמוּ עִם לֶשֶׁם וַיִּלְכְּדוּ אֹותָהּ וַיַּכּוּ אֹותָהּ לְפִי חֶרֶב וַיִּרְשׁוּ אֹותָהּ וַיֵּשְׁבוּ בָהּ וַיִּקְרְאוּ לְלֶשֶׁם דָּן כְּשֵׁם דָּן אֲבִיהֶם
BN: But the borders of the Beney Dan proved too small for them; and so the Beney Dan went up to fight against Leshem, and took it, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and took possession of it, and dwelt there, and called Leshem Dan, after the name of Dan their father.
LESHEM: Where elsewhere (Judges 18) we are told that they moved to La'ish, and did so because, in verse 1, "the tribe of the Dani was seeking a place where they could settle, because, until that time, they had not managed to find a place where they could settle, anywhere among the tribes of Yisra-El." Judges 18:7 is where you will find the name as LA'ISH, not LESHEM.
As to that name-variation, is this the equivalent of Cambridge in middle English having been Grantebrycge in the Roman and the Norman eras, and then Cantabrensis in the Plantaganete, before it acquired its modern spelling and pronunciation? Or as Oxford began life as Oxenford, Bristol as Brigstowe? This link takes you to a map which shows the city of Dan, way up in the north, at the foot of Mount Chermon, precisely where La'ish is understood to have been located.
So is the account here a propagandistic way of avoiding the fact that Dan was kicked out by the Pelishtim, by pretending that they moved because the apartment was too small and anyway they wanted a house with a garden and a space to park the car?
There is also the possibility that Leshem and La'ish are not the same place at all - but if so, then where is Leshem, and if all the land was divided among the twelve tribes, by divinely supervised lottery, whose tribal land was Leshem in that, a) it never got mentioned in the tribal lists; and b) they were allowed to take it? Judges 18:29 is also quite clear that the city of Dan was previously La'ish, and not Leshem.
There is a strong case to be made for the Beney Dan having originally been colonisers from some part of the Ionian that was not yet Greece; and that Dan and the Virgilian Dana'ans/Dana'ids were the same people, linked by the Greek form of the name, which was Danaus. For more on this, see "The Leprachauns of Palestine".
19:48 ZOT NACHALAT MATEH VENEY DAN LE MISHPECHOTAM HE ARIM HA ELEH VE CHATSREYHEN
זֹאת נַחֲלַת מַטֵּה בְנֵי דָן לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָם הֶעָרִים הָאֵלֶּה וְחַצְרֵיהֶן
BN: This is the inheritance of the tribe of the Beney Dan according to their clans, these cities with their suburbs.
19:49 VA YECHALU LINCHOL ET HA ARETS LIGVULOTEYHA VA YITNU VENEY YISRA'EL NACHALAH LIYHOSHU'A BIN NUN BETOCHAM
וַיְכַלּוּ לִנְחֹל אֶת הָאָרֶץ לִגְבוּלֹתֶיהָ וַיִּתְּנוּ בְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל נַחֲלָה לִיהֹושֻׁעַ בִּן נוּן בְּתֹוכָם
KJ: When they had made an end of dividing the land for inheritance by their coasts, the children of Israel gave an inheritance to Joshua the son of Nun among them.
BN: When they had finished sharing out the land for inheritance, according to their borders, the Beney Yisra-El gave an inheritance to Yehoshu'a bin Nun from among themselves.
The inference is that he had no inheritance, but of course he did, with his tribe; the real meaning is that he was awarded some kind of honorarium, divinely approved of course, as the next verse confirms.
19:50 AL PI YHVH NATNU LO ET HA IR ASHER SHA'AL ET TIMNAT SERACH BE HAR EPHRAYIM VA YIVNEH ET HA IR VA YESHEV BAH
עַל פִּי יְהוָה נָתְנוּ לֹו אֶת הָעִיר אֲשֶׁר שָׁאָל אֶת תִּמְנַת סֶרַח בְּהַר אֶפְרָיִם וַיִּבְנֶה אֶת הָעִיר וַיֵּשֶׁב בָּהּ
BN (provisional): In the name of YHVH they gave him the city which he had requested, which was Timnat Serach on Mount Ephrayim; and he built that city, and lived in it.
TIMNAT SERACH: The city he chose tells us much about who he really was. But what does "he built the city" mean? That he rebuilt it after destroying it at conquest? Or literally from scratch? Or that he filled it with BANIM, children, which is to say "he populated it": it is an oddity of Yehudit that the verb for "to build" is used for both buildings and cities on the one hand, and offspring on the other.
As always, the answer lies in the etymology: A TIMNA - which we have discussed repeatedly in terms of its spelling (see my notes to Joshua 15:10 and 15:57, and to verse 43, above), but not its meaning - is not an existing place at all, but "a designated portion"; SERACH, rather like YITLAH in verse 2, is an outcrop that peaks in the flanks of a mountain, forming a plateau in the case of a Serach. The root of the root means "to pour out", and we find it used for flowing hair, spreading vines and tree-branches (Ezekiel 17:6), even for the overspill of a rodded curtain (Exodus 26:12). As per the first link to this note, TIMNAT SERACH translates best as "territory of the sun", and so this becomes a way of taking Yehoshu'a up into Yehudit Olympus or Valhalla, just as we saw Aharon (Numbers 20) and Mosheh (Deuteronomy 34) do previously.
Yehoshu'a will be buried here, in Joshua 24:30.
And note the fact - which takes us back to the Beney Yoseph two chapters ago - that he is a man of Yehudah, but he will finish his days in Ephrayim, which is the mountain that overlooks both of the Beney Yoseph, as well as Bin-Yamin.
BN (revised and extended translation): In the name of YHVH they gave him the spot that he had requested, which was a rather splendid piece of land on an overhang on Mount Ephrayim; and he built a palace there, and gradually a city grew up around it, and he spent his last years there.
19:51 ELEH HA NECHALOT ASHER NICHALU EL-AZAR HA KOHEN VIYHOSHU'A BIN NUN VE RA'SHEY HA AVOT LE MATOT BENEY YISRA-EL BE GORAL BE SHILOH LIPHNEY YHVH PETACH OHEL MO'ED VA YECHALU ME CHALEK ET HA ARETS
BN (revised and extended translation): In the name of YHVH they gave him the spot that he had requested, which was a rather splendid piece of land on an overhang on Mount Ephrayim; and he built a palace there, and gradually a city grew up around it, and he spent his last years there.
19:51 ELEH HA NECHALOT ASHER NICHALU EL-AZAR HA KOHEN VIYHOSHU'A BIN NUN VE RA'SHEY HA AVOT LE MATOT BENEY YISRA-EL BE GORAL BE SHILOH LIPHNEY YHVH PETACH OHEL MO'ED VA YECHALU ME CHALEK ET HA ARETS
אֵלֶּה הַנְּחָלֹת אֲשֶׁר נִחֲלוּ אֶלְעָזָר הַכֹּהֵן וִיהֹושֻׁעַ בִּן נוּן וְרָאשֵׁי הָאָבֹות לְמַטֹּות בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל בְּגֹורָל בְּשִׁלֹה לִפְנֵי יְהוָה פֶּתַח אֹהֶל מֹועֵד וַיְכַלּוּ מֵחַלֵּק אֶת הָאָרֶץ
BN: These are the inheritances which El-Azar the priest, and Yehoshu'a bin Nun, and the heads of the fathers of the tribes of the Beney Yisra-El, shared out by lot as an inheritance, in Shiloh, before YHVH, at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. So they finished sharing out the country.
Note the use of the word CHALEK, which we have encountered several times previously in this book, and in a variety of uses (see particularly Joshua 11:17 and 13:6).
pey break
No comments:
Post a Comment