Egyptian etymology to understand Job

by koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint lecturer for Avondale College

Australia

10 May 2010

Moses wrote Job during his long sojourn in Midian hiding from Thutmosis III and his anger concerning the killing of the Egyptian by manslaughter in a rage of anger. Moses lost everything, just like Job and finding himself licking his wounds, he composed this historical epic of Job, answering for himself the questions he harbored in his own mind.

There is no book of the Old Testament, as complicated as Job. The reason is that there are so many hapax legomena in this book. Even today, not all the words are clear to readers of the Bible.

A hapax legomenon is a word that appears only one time in the text and it is not easy to find its meaning or origin of meaning. There is no context to help the person allocating the meaning.

Scholars have not considered that Moses actually grew up in the Egyptian palace with Thutmosis III and under Hatshepsut. The famous astronomer Senenmut was his teacher. Hatshepsut had later a relationship with this teacher of his. Moses lived between 1518-1490 BCE in the palace. Just enough time to speak Egyptian fluently as well as Akkadian and of course the Hebrew tongue that he got from his mother between 1530-1518 BCE. The book of Job originated some time between 1490-1450 BCE in Midian. Middle Egyptian is the eighteenth dynasty form of Egyptian that will be helpful to discover meanings for the hapax in Job.

There is a difficult word in Job 32:10. Every word in this verse reads fine except the word dey. One need to understand here something about the results of the work of Alexander Militarev. In 2007 Alexander Militarev wrote an article in which he looked at the loanwords in Egyptian from Akkadian and in Akkadian from Egyptian (A. Militarev, "Akkadian-Egyptian Lexical Matches" in Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization no. 60, editors Leslie Schramer and Thomas G. Urban [Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2007], 27-42). Every word is made up of consonants and vowels and this combination is the root of the word, the carrier of its meaning. There are various possibilities:

a. Perfect situation

c1 or first consonant is followed by a V1 or vowel, another c2 followed by another V2 and finally by a c3. This is in Egyptian. In Akkadian is exactly the same sequence. If both are the following:

      c1 V1 c2 V2 c3  compared to    c1 V1 c2 V2 c3

we have a perfect comparison of two roots from two different languages.

b. Interchange of consonants

The meaning of two words are the same but one consonant differs:

    c1 V1 c7 V2 c3  compared to    c1 V1 c2 V2 c3

c. Elision of consonants

The meaning of two words in the two languages are exactly the same but one consonant is omitted:

  _____ V1 c2 V2 c3  compared to    c1 V1 c2 V2 c3

d. Metathesis of consonants

The meaning of two words in two languages are exactly the same but some consonants are in a different order or reverse order.

     c1 V1 c3 V2 c2  compared to    c1 V1 c2 V2 c3

e. Different Meanings

This is a case where they look exactly the same but have different meanings:

     c1 V1 c2 V2 c3  compared to    c1 V1 c2 V2 c3

f. Borderline cases

These are cases where both the form and the meaning are slightly different:

  _____ V1 c2 V2 c3  compared to    c1 V1 c2 V2 c3

       meaning A                        meaning B

The history of the language can renovate the doubtful cases and help to identify the cognate.

When H. L. Ginsberg came to Job 32:10, he doubted whether the word dey came from yada = to know. The KJV understanding in 1611 was that it came from yada and thus translated "also I will show my opinion".

Ginsberg suggested that the word dey is similar to that of the Targum of Job in the cave at Qumran and should rather be translated as dey = d'w = to call, word, expression.

The KJV translated:

Therefore I say: "Listen to me, I will also show my opinion"

Ginsberg translated:

Therefore I say: "Listen to me, I will be speaking, also I"

Our idea is that dey is coming from the Middle Egyptian word dw3 = praise. The phrase dw3 ntr means praise for god.

We translated then:

Therefore I say: "Listen to me, I will revive my praise, also I."