B-Hebrew: The Biblical Hebrew Forum

“Amalek”: An Etymology (At Last!)

At Genesis 36: 12 we learn that Esau’s firstborn son Eliphaz had a concubine, Timna, who bore Eliphaz a son called “Amalek” : עמלק.

No university scholar has come up with an etymology for the name “Amalek” : עמלק. Hey guys, this is another 3,000-year-old Biblical mystery!

As negative background here, remember that firstborn sons always get the shaft, and rightly so, in the Patriarchal narratives: Haran, Lot, Ishmael, Esau, Reuben, Er, Manasseh. Here we have Esau, a firstborn son, and his firstborn son, Eliphaz, so that doesn’t bode well right off the bat. And we also know that the winning son’s birth mother must always be his father’s original main wife #1. That knocked out Ishmael and Joseph from being the winning son, not to mention the un-named sons of the minor wives and/or concubines of the Patriarchs, or for that matter the named sons of Abraham’s minor wife Keturah, or the named sons borne by the female servants of Leah and Rachel on their behalf. Amalek’s mother is a concubine, so that doesn’t bode well either. So we’ve got all sorts of negatives going here, even before we get to the etymology of this peculiar name “Amalek” : עמלק.

But enough of the preliminaries. Let’s get on with the etymology of “Amalek” : עמלק.

A. All the Usual Suspects -- Don’t Work

(1) “Amalek” : עמלק Is Not a West Semitic Name

There is no -qof suffix in Hebrew or other west Semitic language. So this is not a Hebrew name.

There may well be an intentional west Semitic pun here, though. If the root of this name is עמל, then עמל means in Hebrew: “mischief, toil, trouble”. See for example Genesis 41: 51: “And Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh: For God, said he, hath made me forget all my toil [עמלי], and all my father's house.” Amalek was fated to cause “mischief, toil, trouble” for the Hebrews, that’s for sure. And his mother was a Canaanite concubine (see #B below). And his father and his father’s father were both firstborn sons! Nothing but “trouble”/עמל here, with a capital T, as far as the eye can see. I view the עמל root of the name “Amalek” : עמלק as being a deliberate, negative west Semitic pun. But there’s no -Q ending in Hebrew, so this is not a west Semitic name.

(2) “Amalek” : עמלק Is Not a Hurrian-Based Hurrian Name

That final -Q sure looks like the standard Hurrian suffix -qi. But there’s no Hurrian common word similar to עמל, and there’s no attested Hurrian-based Hurrian name like עמלק. So this is not a Hurrian-based Hurrian name. Besides, per #B below, Amalek’s mother is not a Hurrian.

(3) “Amalek” : עמלק Is Not an Akkadian Name, or an Akkadian-Based Hurrian Name

Akkadian won’t work here. Akkadian has no ayin and no ghayin and only one heth, so עמלק doesn’t look Akkadian at all.

Thus we see that rounding up all the usual suspects won’t work for this particular name. What kind of a name is “Amalek” : עמלק?

B. Amalek’s Mother Timna: A Canaanite Concubine

I agree with the traditional view that “Timna” : תמנע is a west Semitic/Canaanite name. After all, one would not expect a Hurrian woman to be a concubine. By contrast, Eliphaz’s main wife is a high-class Hurrian woman, who gives her five sons fine Hurrian-based Hurrian names. Genesis 36: 10-11. How can Timna compete with that? (That’s a big clue, in fact, to what kind of a name “Amalek” : עמלק is.)

Hey guys, we can figure this out. “Amalek” : עמלק is not a west Semitic name, a Hurrian-based Hurrian name, an Akkadian name, or an Akkadian-based Hurrian name. And there’s no such thing as a west Semitic-based Hurrian name. So what’s left? That final -Q sure does look like the standard Hurrian suffix -qi. But what kind of a name is “Amalek” : עמלק?

All will be revealed in my next post on this thread. Another 3,000-year-old Biblical mystery is about to bite the dust.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois

We noted in my prior post that the mysterious name “Amalek” : עמלק is not a west Semitic name, a Hurrian-based Hurrian name, an Akkadian name, or an Akkadian-based Hurrian name. So then what kind of name is Amalek” : עמלק? How did Timna, a Semitic concubine, try to one-up her man’s Hurrian main wife, who had given five sons Hurrian-based Hurrian names?

The answer is that Timna chose for her son a Sanskrit-based Hurrian name, likely being the only Sanskrit-based name in the entire Bible. It is well-known that most of the kings of the Hurrian great power state of Mitanni in eastern Syria had either Sanskrit names or Sanskrit-based Hurrian names. Note also that Richard S. Hess, in listing Hurrian names in the Amarna Letters, lists 23 Hurrian-based Hurrian names, but 28 Sanskrit-based Hurrian names. “Amarna Personal Names” (1993), pp. 228, 223.

We start our linguistic analysis here with the following name attested at the Hurrian province of Nuzi: Ḫe-ma-al-la -- iš-tar. This is a woman’s name, the second half of which is obviously the goddess Ishtar, at p. 60 of Purves and Gelb, “Nuzi Personal Names” (1943). [Here is the Internet site where “Nuzi Personal Names” is reproduced in full. It takes about 30 seconds to load, but the wait is worth it: https://oi.uchicago.edu/sites/oi.uchica ... /oip57.pdf.]
In the extensive list of Hurrian elements and Akkadian elements in names at Nuzi, Gelb and Purves do not list ḫe-ma-al-la.
That’s because it’s a Sanskrit element. The Sanskrit word for “golden” is hemal. It works as both a man’s name and a woman’s name. Slightly simplifying the above Hurrian rendering of this Sanskrit word, and using the Hurrian theophoric suffix -qi instead of the above explicit reference to the goddess Ishtar, would result in: Ḫe-ma-la-qi.

How would that be rendered in Biblical Hebrew? We must remember that although the Hurrians had at least two, and perhaps three, kinds of heths, the Hurrians never distinguished those heths orthographically. Here, Sanskrit hemal would be expected to be rendered by the Hurrian ghayin-heth/ġ, because (i) the regular Hurrian heth, ḫ, is too strong, and (ii) Hurrian has no H. So the early Hebrews would view Ḫe-ma-la-qi as being: Ġe-ma-la-qi.

Using defective spelling, and with the Hebrew letter ע functioning as a ghayin/ġ (not an ayin), the expected Hebrew defective spelling of Ġe-ma-la-qi would be: עמלק.

Voila! We’ve got it. The expected Hebrew defective spelling of this Sanskrit-based Hurrian name is exactly what we see at Genesis 36: 12: עמלק.

That’s one more 3,000-year-old Bible mystery that just bit the dust.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois