Thread by @JamesBejon

THREAD: Thoughts on Gen. 38.5.

Oddly, not too many threads on Twitter have been devoted to Gen. 38.5’s ref. to the village/region ‘Chezib’.

What follows is an attempt to redress the (im)balance.

In vs. 5, Shelah is said to be born in ‘Chezib’--a name which resonates with the root K-Z-B = ‘to deceive’.

Relevant lexemes include:

* Aram. K-D-B,

* Arb. /kaḏaba/,

* Akk. /kazābu/,

* BH כזב = ‘to lie, deceive, trick’.

The same consonants can also have the sense ‘to fail, dry up, abate’ (cp. Arb. /kaḏaba/, MH כזב),

which is presumably why many Aramaic translations of Gen. 38.5 ‘render’ the name ‘Chezib’ as ‘Paskat’ (from Aram./Syr. P-S-Q = ‘to come to an end’).

Examples include:

* Ps. Jon.: והוה בפסקת כד ילידת יתיה.

* Neof.: והוה דפסקת מן דילדת יתיה.

* Pesh.: ܘܦܣܼܩܬ ܗܘܬ ܟܕ ܝܠܕܬܗ.

(P.S. Syriac fonts have gone weird on my browsers lately.)

Possibly the two senses of K-Z-B are conceptually/etymologically related: perhaps, say, a watersource came to be seen as ‘unreliable’ > ‘deceitful’ if it frequently ‘dried up’.

Either way, (at least) one of two things seems to follow:

a] Translators of the Hebrew Bible (sometimes) liked to preserve the semantic sense of place names, and/or

b] Place names sometimes acquired multiple names, which had a similar semantic sense.

Note: ‘Hazazon-Tamar’ (חַצְצוֹן תָּמָר) might be a case of a place with two names which were later combined,

since תָּמָר = ‘date palm’ while /ḥṣṣ/ = ‘palm fronds’.

Relevant lexemes inc. Mand. /ḥṣṣ/ = ‘to weave from palm fronds’, Aram./Syr./Arb. /ḥwṣ/ = ‘palm frond’, Arb. /ḥuṣṣ/ = ‘reed hut’, NAss./NBab. /ḫaṣāṣu/ = ‘to erect a reed hut’, /ḫuṣṣu/ = ‘a kind of reed hut’ (found in GNs).

Interestingly, both of the senses of /K-Z-B/ discussed above are also present in the name ‘Shelah’ (the person who is said to have been born in Chezib).

For a nice example of the sense ‘to deceive’, one can consider 2 Kgs. 4,

where the roots Š-L-Y and K-Z-B interchange:

the Shunammite paraphrases her initial statement (אל תְּכַזֵּב (בי = ‘Do not deceive me!’ as לא תַשְׁלֶה אתי (cp. 2 Kgs. 4.16 w. 28; cp. also Ass. /salāʔu/ = ‘to deceive’).

Meanwhile, Syr./JAram. Š-L-Y often has the sense ‘to cease, be absent’.

So, to sum up:

in Gen. 38.5, we have two names, both of which bring to mind the concepts of ‘deception’ and ‘failure, cessation’ (of a resource),

and both of which resonate with Gen. 38’s events.

Deception takes place (on multiple levels), and the line of Judah almost ‘dries up’ as a result.

As for the geographical details of Chezib:

the village/region Chezib (כזיב) seems likely to be the same place as ‘Achzib’ (אכזיב),

since both are implied to be in the vicinity of Socoh, Adullam, and Timnah in the Shephelah, near the valley of Elah (Gen. 38.1, Josh. 15.35, 44, 1 Sam. 17.1, 2 Chr. 11.7, 28.18, Mic. 1.15).

It may also be the same place as ‘Cozeba’ (כזבא), where Shelah’s descendants later settled (1 Chr. 4.22),

esp. since 1 Chr. 4.22’s ‘Cozeba’ is said to have been the village where the king’s potters resided,

and ‘Socoh’ is one of the four villages inscribed on the /lmlk/ jars as their place of origin (Lipschits 2012).

An aside: Mic. 1.14 plays on the relationship between אכזיב and ‘deception’; specifically, it says,

‘the houses of Achzib (בָּתֵּי אַכְזִיב) (?) will be a deceitful (thing) for the kings of Israel’, the sig. of which is not clear to me.

Might בָּתֵּי here refer to the royal ‘houses/guilds’ of potters mentioned in 1 Chr. 4.22?

Or even to ‘jars’ given OPers. /bāta/!? (??)

In any case, the consonants כזב are preserved nearby in the name of a spring (‘Ein el-Kizbe’),

which was situated just off the (ancient Roman) road, which ran through the region and was apparently built on top of an earlier track/route (Zissu & Gass 2012).

It therefore seems plausible (to me) to associate the spring ‘Ein el-Kizbe’ with ‘the entrance fo Enaim’ (עינים = ‘springs’) where Tamar waited for Judah on the roadside (vs. 14).

Meanwhile, slightly further away lay the village ‘Adullam’ (so Eusebius; cp. also Josh. 15.35, 44, Mic. 1.14-15, and above),

which accounts for the presence of ‘Hirah the Adullamite’ in our story.

The end.