Are the Ebla Tablets Relevant to Biblical Research?

054

At a November 1979 gathering of science writers in Palo Alto, California, sponsored by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing, Robert Biggs, Professor of Assyriology at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, is reported as having said: “In my opinion, parallels with the Bible are quite out of the question at this stage … The initial proposal to associate it [Eblaite] with Hebrew should not be accepted. All the more so when you consider that the two languages are separated by more than 1,000 years. Why should they be similar?”¹ More recently Biggs concluded an article on “The Ebla Tablets: An Interim Perspective” with this assessment: “Ebla has indeed opened up whole new vistas. I would stress again, however, that in my opinion the Ebla tablets will have no special [his italics] relevance for our understanding of the Old Testament.”²

That new vistas are being opened up by these discoveries is surely true, but I cannot accept the second no-special-relevance part of Biggs’ evaluation. As a Biblical philologist, I am arriving at a totally different conclusion. The texts published thus far teem with philological and lexical data that will enable Hebraists to solve numerous perplexities in the Biblical text. At the same time the Hebrew Bible will correspondingly repay its debt by elucidating terms in the Ebla tablets. This process of mutual elucidation will challenge the ingenuity of scholars just as the cuneiform tablets from Ugarit have stimulated and conditioned Biblical research during the past half century.

Comparative study may prove beneficial both to the Ebla tablets and to the Biblical text in such areas as: the bilingual vocabularies from Ebla; Eblaite personal names; place names; divine names; and names of nether world characters.

What We Can Learn from the Bilingual Vocabularies

The Hebrew root hmt has traditionally been taken to mean “wrath” or “fury,” although on occasion this translation does not fit contextually.

From the bilingual Sumerian-Eblaite vocabularies, Professor Pettinato³ has cited the example of Sumerian SAL, “woman,” being translated by Eblaite i~-ma-tu. The Semitist will recognize in this Eblaite word the consonants or root hmt.^a

Thus Eblaite i~-ma-tu suggests that the Biblical consonants hmt can signify not only “wrath” but also “woman.” This clarifies a couple of previously obscure Biblical passages, such as the Revised Standard Version (RSV) translation of Proverbs 6:34: “jealousy makes a man furious (hmt).”

If Biblical hmt is identified with Eblaite i~-ma-tu, meaning “woman,” rather than “fury” or “wrath,” then hmt becomes the subject of the sentence. We then need to take a look at how the RSV translates the Hebrew verb “make jealous.”

The form of the Hebrew verb is called piel,^b that is, causative. The verb in Proverbs 6:34 is qin^e’aµh and means “to cause” or “incite jealousy.” Thus, with our new understanding of the noun hmt and the verb qin^e’aµh, the verse in Proverbs can now be rendered as, “If a woman incites her husband to jealousy.” Having recovered the subject of the feminine verb qin^e’aµh in verse 34, we can do likewise with the feminine verb tarbeh in the final colon,^c “(though) she offer an enormous (bribe).”

055

Thus, the entire passage now reads:

“If a woman incites her husband to jealousy, he will not spare [ ] on the day of vengeance. No payment will placate him, nor will he accept though she offer an enormous bribe.”

Verses 32–33, which precede the quoted verses, speak of the adulterer:

“He who commits adultery lacks sense, he who violates a woman destroys himself.
Blows and shame will he find, and his disgrace will never be wiped away.”

In my new translation verses 34–35, which follow the verses 32–33, describe the unfaithful wife. All four verses now fit together.

Many critics regard Psalm 76:11 in which the word hmt also appears, as corrupt, that is, that the original Hebrew has somehow been mangled in transmission. One is inclined to accept this judgment when reading some translations of this verse. For example, the recent New International Version proposes, “Surely your wrath against men brings you praise, and the survivors of your wrath are restrained.”⁴ The confusion is created by reading the twice-recurring hmt as “wrath.” Eblaite i~-ma-tu, “woman,” again supplies an alternative which shows that Psalm 76:11 may not be corrupt after all:

Indeed women, men will praise you.

The offspring of women will surround you.

H|mt, the first time it appears in the verse, is not the object of men’s praise. It is used as a vocative telling women that the Psalmist is addressing them. In the second half of the verse, the translation of hmt as “woman” changes the meaning of the rest of the verse to, “the offspring of women will surround you.”

In the previously quoted Proverbs 6:34, there is the sequence hmt gaµber, “woman, husband.” In Psalm 76:11, we find the juxtaposition hmt ’aµdaµm, “women, men.” These two sequences make it difficult to deny that hmt equals Eblaite i~-ma-tu. Clearly this use of hmt must be distinguished from the similarly written word for “wrath.”

The Sumerian word ezen, “feast,” is identified in the bilingual vocabularies from Ebla as the equivalent of Eblaite i-si~-ba-tu. This suggests that the Hebrew term sûabbat, “Sabbath,” also contains the notion of “feast” as well as that of the more traditional “repose.” Eblaite i-si~-ba-tu, however, may be an attempt to reproduce the consonants zbht, “feast, sacrifice.” In a quadrilingual vocabulary from 14th century B.C. Ugarit, Summerianezen is equated with da-ab-hy, “feast, sacrifice.” Phonetically this corresponds to the Hebrew zebah, this the “sacrifice, feast.” In either event, a new element is interposed in the core meaning of “sabbath.”

What We Can Learn from Personal Names at Ebla

More than 10,000 personal names are preserved in the Ebla tablets, of which about 1,500 have already been published. Certain rare and distinctive names in Genesis have, until now, had no counterparts outside the Bible. Their Eblaite counterparts may tell us something about the linguistic and cultural background of Genesis.

Apart from the Bible, the name Adam was previously found once in Old Akkadian and nowhere else. Now it appears as the name of one of Ebla’s 14 provincial governors, a-da-mu.

The name of Adam’s partner, Eve, knew no extra-Biblical counterpart until the recent publication of an economic tablet from Ebla, mentioning a certain ’a~-wa. The syllabic spelling ’a~-wa corresponds to the Biblical name hawwaµh, “Eve,” although not, I hasten to add, with the person.

The name of Lamech’s son Jabal (yaµbaµl), the founder of pastoral life, occurs only once in the Bible (in Genesis 4:20) and never outside the Bible until its appearance at Ebla as the personal name wa-ba-lum. Eblaite preserves the initial waw, which in Hebrew becomes ya-, so the identity of wa-ba-lum and yaµbaµl can readily be accepted. To illustrate this change of initial wa– to ya– or yoµ-, compare the Ebla personal name wa-na, which becomes yoµnaµh, “Jonah,” in Hebrew.

The name “Noah” comes from the root NWHË meaning “to rest.” Although this root is widely documented in other Semitic languages, it has never appeared either as a common noun or personal name until its appearance at Ebla in a geographical atlas. There we find the place name i-na-hËu^ki,^d “the Island of Repose.” Through normal phonetic changes na-hËu would become noµah, “repose,” Noah, in Hebrew. (One may note here that the Hebrew word for “ark” teµbaµh heretofore not found in a language other than Hebrew, occurs as ti-ba, “ark,” in a bilingual vocabulary from Ebla, as well as in personal and place names from Ebla. However, one should not conclude from the occurrence of both na-hËu, “repose,” the Hebrew equivalent of Noah, and ti-ba, “ark,” in Eblaite, that Noah’s ark has finally been discovered at Tell Mardikh/Ebla!)

The appearance of the name isû-má-il, at Ebla, which corresponds to the name of Abraham’s son Ishmael, does 056not immediately appear to merit special attention because it is a common formation in the ancient Near East. The name of Ishmael’s mother, Hagar, however, is not a run-of-the-mill form: it was previously documented only once outside the Bible. It now turns up twice at Ebla, as ’a~-gar and ’a~-ga-ru. Thus all three names—Abraham, Hagar and Ishmael—are mirrored in the Ebla personal names ab-ra-am, ’a~-gar, and isû-má-il. Surely this coincidence permits some inferences about the cultural background of the patriarchal stories.

After the death of Sarah, Abraham married Keturah (q^etûraµh in Hebrew [Genesis 25:1]). The name Keturah was not found again until it appeared as qu6-tu-ra in a recently published economic text from Ebla.⁵

One of Ishmael’s sons is Jetur, (Hebrew y^etûr), a name which appears many centuries later as the place name Iturea in Luke 3:1. A place name which Pettinato⁶ reads NI-du-ur^ki may also be read i~-tu-ur^ki or ya~-tu-ur^ki because the Sumerian sign NI also has the syllabic values i~– and ya~-. Thus this Eblaite place name can be identified with the Biblical name Jetur (y^etûr).

Heretofore uncited outside the Bible, the name of Jacob’s handmaid Bilhah (Genesis 29:29) occurs in the Ebla tablets written bil-’a~ and bil-a-a.

According to Genesis 36:4 the son born to Esau and Adah was called Eliphaz, a strange name meaning “My God is pure gold.” One of Job’s friends is also called Eliphaz (Job 2:11). Although the name is unusual because of the sentiment it expresses, it has instructive analogues in the Ebla place name gú-pa-zu^ki, “the Voice is pure gold.” Here gú, known elsewhere only from Ugaritic, is the deified Voice.

Another Eblaite personal name, comprised of three elements, is sa-ab-za-ir-ma-lik, “Shining gold is Malik.” Malik is an Eblaite god. Thus the same form is followed here as in the Biblical name Eliphaz: “My God is pure gold” and “Shining gold is the (god) Malik.” The Eblaite name uses sa-ab (Hebrew zaµhaµb) for gold, instead of the Ugaritic-Phoenician term for gold hËrs. This further underscores the links joining Eblaite to Hebrew, in which language zaµhaµb is the ordinary term for “gold.” The use of haµrûs for gold is limited to a few Biblical poetic texts. Since metallurgy was one of the major industries in Ebla, proper names reflecting a concern with gold should come as no surprise. But the link between the Eblaite usage of the terms for gold and the Hebrew usage is interesting.

What We Can Learn from Place Names at Ebla

Surely the most stunning place name yielded by the Ebla tablets is é-da-bar^ki, “the Temple of the Word.” (The sign transliterated é means “house, temple”; da-bar means word). We immediately recognize that here the Word is deified. The Canaanite background to the opening of John’s Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word” may be seen at Ebla.

A key term in Hebrew (more than 1400 Biblical occurrences) is daµbaµr, “word.” This term enables one to interpret the Eblaite toponym^e é-da-bar^ki as “Temple of the Word.” Similarly, a theological toponym like é-ba-ri-um^ki can be interpreted as “Temple of the Creator,” and ba-ra-guŒ as “the Voice has created.” The opening verses of Genesis, it will be recalled, ascribe creation to God’s word, that is, to his voice: “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). (See also Psalm 33:6, “By Yahweh’s word (daµbaµr) were the heavens made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.”)

Genesis 4:17 reports that Enoch was born when his father Cain was building a city. To mark this happy event, Cain named the city after his son. The Bible does not tell us the name of the city. Was it called hanoµk, 057“Epoch”? Or did it perhaps take the feminine form hanukkaµh, since cities are generally feminine? Although the Biblical text does not tell us the city name, Eblaite ’a~-nu-ka-at^ki, literally “Dedication,” suggests the second alternative, hanukkaµh. This term is still preserved in the Greek of John 10:22 as the feast of ta egkainia and in English as the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, the festival of dedication during which Jews to this day annually rededicate themselves to the Temple.

The coastal cities most frequently mentioned in the Ebla tablets are gub-lu^ki, “Byblos,” on the north Lebanese coast and i-ya~-pu^ki, “Jaffa by the sea,” in which the initial i– can be identified with Hebrew-Phoenician ’î, “island, coast.” That Byblos should appear frequently in these third-millennium B.C. records is to be expected, since Egyptian accounts of this period make it clear that Byblos was a thriving port. But the prominence of a contemporaneous Jaffa comes as a pleasant surprise. The earliest previous appearance of Jaffa was in the list of Palestinian cities captured by Thut-mose III (c. 1490–1436 B.C.).

To the south-east of Jaffa lies Ekron, best known as one of the cities of the Philistine pentapolis. It occurs twice in the Ebla tablets as ’a~-ga-ru-nu^ki Ekron appears as Akkaron in the Septuagint^f, and as Amqarruna in Akkadian documents. One economic tablet from Ebla mentions a king of Ekron, so it must have been an important center.

The Geographical Atlas from Ebla lists the place i-si-nu^ki which, if identified with Biblical sîn, would designate Pelusium, the eastern frontier city of Egypt in the Nile delta. As in i-ya-pu^ki, “Jaffa by the sea,” the preformative (the initial i sign) in i-si-nu^ki indicates that Pelusium is on the coast.

If the frequently recurring place name lu-ub^ki equals Biblical lûb, “Libya,” we get some idea of how far south and west the Ebla commercial network reached. That central Palestine also fell within this network appears from the mention of mar-tá-na-ak^ki, “Exchange of Taanach,” in the Geographical Atlas for Ebla.⁷ Also in Ebla’s commercial relations network was Beth-shan, in the Jordan valley south of Lake Galilee, as we know from the repeated references to e~-za-an^ki in the economic texts from Ebla. Excavations at Beth-shan, during the 1920’s by Alan Rowe and others uncovered a large prosperous city from the third millennium B.C. Here is a good example of philology and archaeology corroborating each other’s findings.

What We Can Learn from Divine Names at Ebla

More than five hundred names and epithets^g of gods and goddesses worshipped by the Eblaites have been culled from proper names of Eblaites and from cultic texts. Eblaite names, like Biblical names, can be translated as sentences. The Biblical scholar exploiting this treasure trove will be in a position to sharpen the translation of innumerable Biblical verses whose meaning and allusive intent have not previously been grasped. The knowledge that the Eblaite god ^dkha-ba-dú^h, “Glory,” received offerings from members of the royal family during July–August alerts the Biblicist to instances in which “Glory” is used as a designation of Israel’s God. For example, the Psalm 66:2, sŒîmû kaµbôd t^ehillaµtô, which has been rendered by various circumlocutions in the past (the King James Version has “Make his praise glorious”), may now be rendered straightforwardly “Render Glory his praise!” “Glory” is used as an epithet for the Hebrew God. Grammatically, “Glory” and “his praise” in Psalm 66:2 form the double accusative object of the imperative sŒîmû, “Render!”⁸

Or consider Psalm 85:9 (10 in Hebrew). According to the King James Version, it reads:

Surely his salvation is nigh them that fear him,

That glory may dwell in our land.

The New English Bible renders kaµbôd glory, but still fails to understand the word’s true force as signifying God Himself:

Deliverance is near to those who worship him, so that glory may dwell in our land.

This passage’s true progression of thought now reveals itself with the help of the Eblaite reference as follows:

Truly near to those who fear him is his salvation, nay, Glory himself (kaµbôd) dwells in our land.

Proverbs 29:23 provides another example of the failure of modern translators to recognize that kaµbôd is God Himself and has led them to miss something. In Proverbs 29:23, modern translations miss the sharp antithesis and chiasmusⁱ in the passage, which may now be translated as follows:

A man’s pride brings him low,
058but the lowly of spirit Glory sustains.

The Hebrew poet has arranged the words in the grammatically chiastic pattern subject-verb-object // object-verb-subject. This “X” pattern can be reproduced only partially in an English rendition.⁹

The Eblaite personal name la-di~-a-at, “Belonging to knowledge,” honors the goddess of knowledge di~-a-at. This name became a common noun in Hebrew. By standard phonetic changes Eblaite di~-a-at became deµ‘ôt (knowledge) in Hebrew. In 1 Samuel 2:3, deµ‘ôt is used to express one of Yahweh’s attributes: ’el deµ‘ôt yhwh, “the God of knowledge is Yahweh.”

Many of the names of individual Canaanite deities have passed into Hebrew as common nouns that are frequently used to describe the God of Israel. The Ebla personal name ta-mi-mu, “Perfect,” is evidently a shortened form of *ta-mi-mu-i-lu^j, “Perfect is Il (god).” The concurrence of both di~-a-at and ta-mi-mu in Ebla may bear on the dispute about the phrase in Job 36:4, t^emîm deµ‘ôt ‘immaµk. Does this phrase refer to God, “The Perfect in knowledge is with you,” or does it refer to a man, “one perfect in knowledge is with you”? The Ebla material, in which these words are divinities or divine epithets, tends to support those who contend that the Biblical text is using divine appellatives in temin de‘ôt. The same argument can be made with respect to t^emîm deµ‘îm, “Perfect in knowledge,” in Job 37:16.

The Ebla place name la-di~-a^ki, “Belonging to Knowledge,” may refer to a university city (Ki being the determinative for a city). It provides background to the questions asked in Psalm 73:11, “How can God know? Is there knowledge (deµ‘aµh) in the Most High?”

The Hebrew root hdl has been taken to mean “to stop” or “to cease”; but it has also been translated “to be fat” or “to become fat.” Hannah’s prayer in 1 Samuel 2:5 uses the root hdl and translators have variously translated it “ceases” and “to become fat”—very different meanings. As we shall see, an Eblaite personal name helps to choose and elucidate the structure of this Biblical verse.

Consider two translations of the verse. The Revised Standard Version has:

Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread (lehem),
but those who were hungry have ceased (haµdeµlû) to hunger.

The recent translation and commentary of 1 Samuel in the Anchor Bible series by P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., adopts the following translation:

The sated have hired out for bread (lehem), while the hungry are fattened (haµdeµlû) on food.

The personal name a-du-ul-li-im occurs at Ebla. The name means “Fattened by Grain,” “Grain” being the name of a god. This name juxtaposes two roots that are used in the verse from Samuel—a-du-ul corresponds to hdl in the second colon and li-im corresponds to lehem (bread) in the first colon of the Biblical verse. The Eblaite name means “fattened by the god Grain. The meaning of Eblaite a-du-ul (Hebrew hdl) obviously means “fatten,” not “cease”, when juxtaposed to grain.

Moreover, we can now appreciate another aspect of the parallelism which permeates Hannah’s prayer: The Biblical poet uses “bread” in the first colon and “fatten” in the second. The Biblical place name bêt-lehem (Bethlehem) (“House of [the god] Grain), reflects the fact that this Canaanite god had a temple just south of Jerusalem in the city we call Bethlehem.

In the disputes over the way Job 22:12 should he rendered, help may be found in Eblaite names. The Revised Standard Version renders this verse:

Is not God high in the heavens?
See the highest stars, how lofty they are!

Names from Ebla suggest that a more accurate translation depends on the recognition in this verse of two ancient epithets for God. At Ebla the head of the pantheon was the god Dagan, whose name like that of Lehem (li-im), means “grain, wheat.” One of Dagan’s epithets is bemul-mul, “Master of the Stars.” The Sumerian MUL means “star.” In the verse from Job Biblical roµ’sû kôkaµbim was translated “highest stars.” Literally these two Hebrew words mean “head of the stars” which appears in the second colon quoted from Job as “highest stars.” In fact, roµ’sû kôkaµbim is a divine epithet, much like its Eblaite counter-part.

This divine epithet also brings to light the verbal balance between goµbah sûaµmaµyim, in the first colon of the verse, which is also a divine epithet. In the preceding translation this was translated “high in the heavens.” More accurately, it is a divine epithet—“the Lofty One of Heaven.” Thus, in the first colon we have goµbah sûaµmaµyim, “The Lofty One of Heaven,” and in the second colon roµ’sû kôkaµbim,—“The Chief of the Stars”—both epithets for God. A translation more sensitive to the original parallelism of the passage from Job would be:

Is not God the Lofty One of Heaven?
See the Chief of the Stars—truly sublime!

In the Old Testament the most common term for the realm of the dead is sû^e_’ôl, commonly transliterated Sheol 060in English. No satisfactory etymology has been found for this root, although some connection with the root sû’l, “to ask or inquire,” seems likely. Among the more than 1500 toponyms (place names) that have been published from Ebla, the city sûí-a-la^ki corresponds phonetically to Biblical sû^e_’ôl.^k Biblical sû^e_’ôl may go back to sûí-a-la^ki, a city possibly devastated so totally that it became synonymous with the lifeless abode of the dead, just as Gehenna (geµ’ hinnoµm), meaning the Hinnom Valley, is another Hebrew term for the netherworld deriving from the Hinnom Valley in Jerusalem, which was regarded as a place of abomination (2 Kings 23:10). A similar kind of tradition may be reflected in the Ebla toponym za-ra-mi-isû^ki, “Downpours of Fire,” a name recalling the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

An economic text from Ebla lists garments of 22 different fabrics for the mi-ti a-ba-da-nu, “the dead of Abaddan.” The term a-ba-da-nu corresponds phonetically to Hebrew ’abaddôn, “Perdition,” a poetic designation of the netherworld that appears only in Hebrew (e.g., Job 28:22 and Psalm 88:11–12) and in the Greek of Revelations as ’Abaddôn. Revelations 9:11 reads: “They had as king over them the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek, Apollyon.” Archaeological remains at Ugarit and elsewhere reveal that the living thought the dead to be in need of food and drink. This Ebla text indicates that the denizens of Abaddan also needed clothing or that the recently deceased were clothed before burial.

In one of the cultic texts from Ebla the goddess ^dsÆu-hËa receives an offering of 10 sheep in the sixth month (February–March). Read as Canaanite (rather than Sumerian), sÆu-hËa can be identified with Hebrew sûuhah, “pit,” which is synonym of sûahat “pit.” Sðahat often designates the netherworld in Hebrew poetry. Psalm 16:10 reads:

Since you will not put me in Sheol,
nor allow your devoted one to see the Pit (sûahat).

With the help of Eblaite, one can better understand the balance of the two terms for the regions of the deceased, Sheol and the Pit. Both have probable antecedents at Ebla-Sheol, as we have seen, in the city sûí-a-la^ki and the Pit in the name of the nether goddess ^dsûu-hËa, “Pit.”

This cursory survey of several aspects of Eblaite lexicography and nomenclature has attempted to bring out the cultural continuum in Canaan from the third millennium B.C. of the Ebla archive right into New Testament times—hence the use of “Bible” and not merely “Old Testament” in the title of this article. I have tried to show the advantages that will accrue both to Eblaite and to Biblical research from a comparative philological method. From this approach, the Canaanite character of the Eblaite language is coming into clearer focus. At present Eblaite’s closest kin appears to be not Ugaritic, but Biblical Hebrew. Should this hypothesis be sustained by subsequent studies, the relevance of Ebla to Biblical research may prove to be even greater than is suggested by this preliminary survey.

The large economic tablet TM.75.G.1591 registers 78 cities doing business with Ebla. One of them bears the attractive name dal-la-sú-gur^ki, probably signifying “The Gate Never Closed.” This lovely name recalls the prophecy regarding Jerusalem in Isaiah 60:11, “Your gates will always stand open; day or night they will never be closed.” May the minds of archaeologists, philologists, and Biblical scholars be described in similar terms as Ebla studies unfold.