Re: OT Biblical Hebrew names Re: A question and introduction

On Tue, 11 Jun 2002 13:30:05 -0500 Peter Clark <peter-clark@...>
writes:
>         Sometimes the names can be potentially important; for
> instance, Gideon's son.
> In Judges 8, the Israelites want to make Gideon king, but he
> refuses.
> However, he has a son, whom he names Abimelech, or, "My father is
> king."
> Hmm... Unfortunately, there's no indication by the text that
> "Abimelech" was
> an inappropriate name. The only other Abimelechs mentioned are two
> kings of
> Gerar (Gn. 20:1-18 and Gn. 26:1-33), a superscription to Ps. 34 in
> which the
> name Abimelech is given to Achish king of Gath, and a priest
> mentioned in 1
> Ch. 18:16, but this last one may be a scribal error for Ahimelech
> ("my
> brother is king") (cf. 2 Sa. 8:17). So, in sum, there's no
> indication that
> Gideon named his son deliberately "My father is king," no more than
> we might
> name a child Michael ("Who is like God?"). Still, considering that
> the text
> takes a dim view of Gideon's later years, it may be that the name
> gives some
> indication as to Gideon's leanings.
>         :Peter
-

I'm pretty sure that the prefix |avi-| in names refers to God.  I
remember reading a commentary on the names of the Chieftains of the
Tribes (the beginning of the Book of Numbers) that put forth the
(sensical) position that names with |av| "father", as well as |ahh|
"brother (or 'kinsman' as it translated it)" refer to God, just like the
names with |el|, various shortened forms of the tetragrammaton, and
|tzur| do.  According to that interpretation, the name |avimelekh| means
"God is king", which would make a good name for someone who refused the
kingship to name his son.  Gid`on could have been saying "you don't need
a king, you've already got God" or something like that.

And then of course there's the mysterious name |eliyahu| (Elijah), which
tautologically means "God is God"...

ObConlang:  the Rokbeigalm don't have names like this.  The
Judajca-speakers, on the other hand, most probably do.

-Stephen (Steg)
 "eili`alhhein'eil is a cool name."

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