Out of Egypt, I am Called Yahweh

Previous articles have discussed evidence for multiple sources in the creation and flood stories. In the final version of these stories that appears in our bibles, the Bible’s editor (called the “redactor”) sometimes keeps the sources intact (as in the two separate creation tales) and other times interweaves them (as in the combined flood story). Scholars can identify the separate strands based on terminology, consistent themes, and narrative flow. One of the themes that sets one source apart from the other is when God’s name is revealed.

What’s in a Name?

According to the source known as the “Yahwist” or “J”, God revealed his name around the time of Adam’s grandson:

To Seth also a son was born, and he named him Enosh. At that time people began to invoke the name of YHWH.” (Gen 4:26)

Thereafter, the J source exclusively uses the name YHWH (usually translated as “the Lord” in modern bibles) in narration. That is why this source was named the “Yahwist.” Ancient Hebrew consisted of only consonants, so we don’t know for sure exactly how it was pronounced, but scholars believe it would have been “Yah-WEH” (accent on last syllable).

Other sources – the “Elohist” (E) and “Priestly” (P) – hold that the divine name YHWH was first revealed to Moses. Before Moses, God was known to the ancestors under different names. For example, in the P account of the covenant with Abram, we read,

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, YHWH appeared to Abram, and said to him, “I am El Shaddai.” (Gen 17:1)

The P source explains in this verse that Abram only knows the deity by the name El Shaddai (“God Almighty” in most English translations). But when YHWH speaks to Moses, the text reads:

God also spoke to Moses and said to him: “I am YHWH. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but by my name ‘YHWH’ I did not make myself known to them.” (Ex 6:2-3)

These verses are taken from the P version of the call of Moses (Ex 6:2-12). God’s commission to Moses to lead his people out of Egypt is a “triplet,” a story recounted in three sources: P, J, and E. The P version is isolated and intact, but the J and E versions are combined in an earlier passage (Ex 3:1-4:23). The E source predominates in this longer passage:

But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘YHWH, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ (Ex 3:13-15)

There’s a lot going on in this passage that doesn’t concern us at this point. The key thing to note is that, as in the P version, the ancestors knew the deity under different names but God first reveals his true name to Moses. Both E and P agree on this point: the name YHWH only came into use after the exodus from Egypt.

Could this be a clue that refugees from Egypt brought the worship of YHWH with them to Canaan?

Charlton Heston as Moses learns the name of God in the burning bush scene from Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 version of The Ten Commandments.

The Midianite Connection

In my last article, we saw that archaeology revealed the early Israelites were Canaanites, speaking a Canaanite dialect and practicing the Canaanite religion. In that religion, the main god was known as “El” (as in El Shaddai). Of the hundreds of city names in Canaan, many include the name El (for example, Beth-el, for “house of God”) but none include the name YHWH. Yet the worship of YHWH eventually became synonymous with Israel (etymology uncertain, perhaps means “God rules”).

How did Canaanites go from worshipping El to YHWH? Let’s go back to Exodus 3-4 and the commission of Moses. Other than Moses being told God’s true name, we also have the indication of where this occurred:

Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. (Ex 3:1)

Both J and E tie Moses to Midian, even going so far to say that Moses’ father-in-law was a Midianite priest. Both also locate God’s mountain (called Sinai in J and Horeb in E) in or near Midian. It is reasonable then to look for the origins of the cult of YHWH in Midian. (Midian was located east of the Gulf of Aqaba, south of present-day Jordan, in what would now be the extreme northwest corner of Saudi Arabia.)

We also have Egyptian texts from the 14th-13th centuries BCE that mention semi-nomads called the “Shasu of yhw3” who were located in the general vicinity of Midian. Egyptologists derive the name “Shasu” from an Egyptian verb meaning “to wander.” The Egyptian hieroglyphs transliterated as “yhw3” would probably have been pronounced “Yahu” and is strangely similar to the name of Israel’s God, YHWH. It may have been a place name or it could have been their patron god.

The pieces seem to fit together. Let’s say you have a small group who escape from Egypt – perhaps captured Canaanites or Midianites who had been enslaved – and, on their way to eventually settling in the hill country of Canaan, they pass through Midian. When they finally arrive in the central hill country, they bring with them their story of deliverance from Egypt and attribute their freedom to the god they followed in Midian, who they now call Yahweh.

Certainly the Midianite connection is strong, but so are the Egyptian connections. There are Egyptian details in the story that may go back to the original story told by those who escaped Egypt. We’ll look at those in the next article.

We are Family

Chapter 10 of Genesis has been called the “Table of Nations,” consists of almost nothing but a list of 70 names (some of them repeated), and is a strong contender for one of the most boring parts of the Bible. The purpose of Gen 10 is to list the descendants of Noah’s three sons – Shem, Ham and Japheth – to show how the tribes, nations and peoples surrounding Israel derive from them. It is a mixture of a monotonous enumeration of names from the Priestly (P) source along with more names and scraps of narration from the Yahwist (J) source.

While scholars cannot identify every single name mentioned in Gen 10, they have been able to identify enough to get a rough idea of the lay of the land. As you can see in the accompanying map, the descendants of Japheth are the peoples to the north of Israel in Europe and Asia Minor. Ham’s descendants populate the northern-most parts of Africa and the area immediately surrounding the land of Canaan. The peoples descending from Shem occupy the lands of Mesopotamia and Arabia. These far-flung areas encompassed the known world in Solomon’s day (10th century BCE) but, for the modern reader, fail to take into account the Indian subcontinent, China and other Far Eastern nations, and the indigenous peoples of Australia and the Americas. The great flood is dated by biblical literalists to 2350 BCE, so all of these migrations and racial diversity would have had to take place since that time.

A rough approximation of where the various peoples mentioned in Gen 11 would have been located in the ancient world.

The literary genre may be that of a genealogy, but the names are not really individuals; they are the names of tribes and regions. In some instances, the writer doesn’t even pretend to provide the name of an individual. In v. 15, J states that Canaan is the father of Sidon (one of the ancient cities of Phoenicia) and Heth (representing the Hittites), as well as the father of several Canaanite tribes (Jebusites, Amorites, Girgashites, and Hivites). And, as if that wasn’t enough, Canaan was also the ancestor of the inhabitants of five Phoenician cities (Arkites, Sinites, etc.).

As mentioned above, there is some duplication of names due to different traditions in the two sources. According to P Lud (assumed to be a reference to inhabitants of Lydia in Asia Minor) are descended from Shem (v. 22), but according to J the Ludites are descended from Ham (v. 13). According to P Havilah and Sheba are descended from Ham (v 7), but J has them descended from Shem (vv. 28-29). It’s all quite confusing.

Presented graphically, the mind-numbing list of names is a little easier to digest.

The backbone of the Table of Nations is provided by P. He lists the sons of Noah in reverse order, from youngest to oldest. P announces the sons of Japheth, Ham or Shem and then selectively names some grandsons. The passage citing the sons of Japheth (10:2-5) is pure P. P ends each genealogical list with a formulaic conclusion: “These are the descendants of Japheth/Ham/Seth in their lands, with their own language, by their families, in their nations.” A similar formula concludes the chapter.

The list of Ham’s sons (vv. 6-20) is longer because it includes a lengthy addition (vv. 8-19) from the J source. This insertion breaks the monotony by providing us with a few lines (vv. 8-12) describing Nimrod, a mighty warrior and hunter and also the founder of the kingdom of Babel in Shinar (Babylonia) which expanded into Assyria and led to the building of Nineveh. Scholars are not in agreement as to whether the figure of Nimrod can be identified with either a mythological god or hero (like Gilgamesh) or some historical figure. Perhaps he just stands as the representative of the Babylonian nation. It is a bit odd, though, that Nimrod is included in the Hamite list but is said to have established a kingdom in Babylonia which is a Sethite region.

Two brief verses (13-14) relate the origins of the Philistines and the rest of the first J insertion (vv. 15-19) lists various tribes in the land of Canaan and its vicinity. While the division of peoples and nations appears to be along ethnic lines, there are curiosities. The Philistines were of Aegean origins, so they should be listed with Japheth’s descendants, not Ham’s. And the Canaanites were ethnically Semitic, so by all rights they should be counted among the descendants of Shem. Scholars believe that because the Canaanites were under the political control Egypt, the P source listed them as sons of Ham.

Shem is introduced at the ancestor of Eber (v. 21), who we will later see in Gen 11 is the ancestor of Abraham. Without the link to Eber provided by J, we would not know from reading P’s genealogy where to place Israel among Noah’s sons. In a J insertion (v. 26) we further learn that Eber is the father of Peleg during whose lifetime “the earth was divided” (Hebrew palag). This would have been about a hundred years after the flood event and seems to be a reference to the confusion of languages and scattering of peoples across the earth in the following episode of the Tower of Babel (11:1-9). That the descendants of Shem are to be found in Mesopotamia is consistent with the Bible’s claim that Abraham’s home town is Haran (or Ur, depending on the source).

The purpose of the Table of Nations seems to be rather straightforward. The biblical authors are demonstrating that all the known tribes, nations and ethnicities derive from the family of Noah. Therefore, all people are part of an extended family. But the rest of the OT stands diametrically opposed to this notion. Canaanites are not considered “cousins” of Israel, but abominations that needed to be driven out of the Promised Land or exterminated. Perhaps the writer is recalling an older tradition that acknowledged the ties between Canaanite and Israelite civilizations. In fact, archeologists cannot distinguish between Canaanite and Israelite culture; the two blend seamlessly from one into the other. 

Either that or the writer is speaking to his audience, an audience that is returning from exile in Babylon to the Promised Land, much as Abraham made that journey. When Abraham arrived in Canaan, he peacefully co-existed with the tribes there. The returning exiles would also arrive to find the land occupied by descendants of the Canaanites. Perhaps the writer wanted to remind his audience that they, too, could peacefully co-exist with the inhabitants if they remembered that they are all descendants of Noah.

Damned Ham

Okay, let’s say you and your family just survived a global cataclysm. What’s the first thing you do? Well, according to the Bible, it’s to get stinking drunk.

The first story the Bible recounts after the flood (Gen 9:20-27) is how Noah planted a vineyard, got drunk on wine, and lay naked in his tent:

Noah, a man of the soil, was the first to plant a vineyard.
He drank some of the wine and became drunk, and he lay uncovered in his tent.
And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside.
Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father; their faces were turned away, and they did not see their father’s nakedness.
When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him,
he said, “Cursed be Canaan; lowest of slaves shall he be to his brothers.”
And he said, “Blessed be YHWH, the God of Shem; and let Canaan be his slave.
May God make space for Japheth, and let him live in the tents of Shem; and let Canaan be his slave.”

There are some odd aspects of this passage. How does it relate to what’s happened previously?

Back in Gen 5:29, it was said that Lamech named his son Noah because “Out of the ground that YHWH has cursed this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the toil of our hands.” Thus Noah’s name is related to his role as the first winemaker (“wine to gladden the heart”, Ps 104:15) and not as the hero of the flood. Because of the mention of the name YHWH and the callback to the cursing of the ground in 3:17-19, this verse has been considered the one verse from the Yahwist (J) in all of Gen 5. Verse 29 seems to have been originally connected to 9:20-27 (another J passage) but got separated when the flood narrative was inserted. The description of Noah as the founder of viticulture is consistent with J’s list of the founders of cities, nomads, musicians, and metalworkers in 4:17-25.

Many commentators have wondered as to the nature of Ham’s crime that earned him such condemnation from Noah. Some have speculated if “saw the nakedness of his father” was a euphemism for something much worse. But the words can be taken literally and make perfect sense. While a husband and wife can be naked and not feel shame – as was the case of Adam and Eve – public nudity in the OT was seen as shameful. If a son was to see his father lying helplessly drunk and naked, the appropriate action was for the child to cover the genitals of the parent. Instead, Ham left Noah uncovered and told his brothers, thus publicizing Noah’s shame. We can speculate that Ham felt disgust or contempt for his father lying in that state, but that is reading more into the story than is there. Shem and Japheth, for their part, did what was expected of a good son.

"The Drunkenness of Noah" by Andre Sacchi (1599-1661). Seeing the look on Ham's face, I could see why Noah would curse him.

What’s odd is that Ham is introduced as “the father of Canaan” and, when Noah finally sobers up, he curses Canaan, not Ham. Ham is also referred to as Noah’s “youngest” son. This has led some biblical scholars to wonder if originally the story named Shem, Japheth and Canaan as Noah’s son. According to this theory, Canaan was changed to Ham in order to make the story consistent with the tradition that Noah’s sons were named Shem, Ham and Japheth. It is also equally possible that the story always concerned the sin of Ham and it was well-known that Ham was the father of Canaan (10:6). Just as Noah was dishonored by his son, he curses Ham’s son. It was only a later redactor who identified Ham as “the father of Canaan” for readers who were not clear on the genealogical connection.

The whole point of the story is the cursing of Ham/Canaan. The last two verses (which I placed in italics) is a secondary addition. Perhaps the redactor felt that if Canaan was cursed, Shem and Japheth needed to be blessed. But in v. 26 it is not Shem but YHWH who is blessed. YHWH is referred to as “the God of Shem” and since YHWH is only the God of Israel, Shem is identified with Israel. Biblical scholars declare that this is an etiological story of how Canaan came to be slaves to Israel. The problem with that theory is that in the rest of the OT, God tells Israel to either drive out or exterminate the Canaanites, never to make them their slaves.

The last verse is a play on the name Japheth (japt = “may he make large”). But who is Japheth? And why would he be dwelling in Seth’s tents? According to Gen 10:2-5, Japheth’s descendants were people to the north of Israel, but that comes from the Priestly writer. J may have had the Philistines in mind, for all we know. And perhaps the subject of v. 27a (“may God make space for Japheth”) is also the same subject of 27b (“and let him live in the tents of Shem”), in which case it would be a continuation of the blessing of YHWH in v. 26.

My final comment concerns the triple affirmation that Canaan is to be the lowest slave to Seth. In his primeval history, J continues to describe broken relationships and their consequences. In Gen 2-3, we had the broken relationship between the first couple and God and how it led to an inequality between husband and wife. In Gen 4, we have the broken relationship between brothers and how it led to Cain being outcast. Finally, here in Gen 9, we have a broken relationship between father and son and how it led to the son becoming slave to his brothers. Slavery was a reality in the ancient world but the author understands that it is not part of God’s original plan. Therefore, slavery must be punishment for some primordial sin. J is not challenging the institution. It exists in his world and he tries to explain how it came about.

Begin the Begats

There is much in the story of Cain and Abel to perplex a casual reader of the Bible. First, when YHWH sentences Cain to exile in the land of Nod, Cain complains in Gen 4:14c, “Anyone who meets me may kill me!” According to the story, there is no one else in the world beside his mother and father, so why should Cain fear that he will be hunted down and killed? A couple of verses later, in 4:17, we read that Cain “knew his wife,” she bore him a son (Enoch), and he built a city which he named after his son. Where did his wife come from? And how could there be enough people in the world, let alone the “land of Nod,” that a city would be needed to hold them all?

Based on clues like these, biblical scholars speculate that the story of Cain and Abel was once an independent story that was attached to the story of Adam and Eve. The story of Cain and Abel presupposes that there were more people in the world than just Adam and Eve and their two sons. Unless there were neighbors around to witness the deed, why else would Cain be concerned about taking Abel out into the field to kill him? And why else would he be concerned about his safety when he was expelled from the community? It also explains how he was able to find a wife and need to build a city.

There’s another clue in the genealogies in Gen 4 and 5. Gen 4:17-24 gives a list of Cain’s descendants: Enoch, Irad, Mehujael, Methusahael, Lamech. The closing verses list the three sons of Lamech: Jabal, Jubal and Tubal-cain (and one daughter, Naamah). Vv. 25-26 describe the birth of Seth to replace Abel, and the birth of Seth’s son, Enosh (which means “man” in Hebrew).

The Cain Family tree according to Gen 4:17-24

Gen 5:1-32 begins with Adam begetting Seth and proceeds to Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, and Noah. Noah, it is noted, had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth. The name of the Seth line is eerily similar to the Cain line. Both genealogies end with the naming of 3 sons instead of the usual one. Biblical scholars believe that we have two traditions citing the line of descent from Adam, one through Cain and one through Seth.

The writing styles differ, too. The genealogy in Gen 5 follows a strict formula, just like the creation story in Gen 1 followed a strict formula. Biblical scholars attribute Gen 1 and 5 to the “Priestly” writer (or “P”) because of his interest in priestly matters like legal codes, genealogies and rituals. The genealogy in Gen 5 cites the name of the father, states he was X number of years old when he begat his first son, he lived Y number of years after that, and then after living X+Y years, he died. This formula is not broken except for Enoch who, instead of dying, was “taken by God.” If we only read Gen 5, we would have no indication that Cain, rather than Seth, was Adam’s firstborn son.

Compare this to the genealogy in 4:17-26 and it is a bit more free-form. We get details about the various accomplishments of the individuals mentioned: Cain built the first city, Lamech took two wives, Jabal was the ancestor of tent-dwellers, Jubal of musicians, and Tubal-cain of blacksmiths. A couple of wives and a daughter are also named. This genealogy is showing us how civilization and technology spread in the primeval period. Also, violence as Lamech brags about how he takes extreme vengeance on any who slights him in the least way. Lamech’s story prepares us for the increasing amount of sinfulness in the world that will lead God to want to destroy it in a great flood. Scholars attribute the author of this genealogy in Gen 4 (along with Gen 2-3) to the “Yahwist” writer (or “J”), who gets his name from his consistent use of the name YHWH for God.

Another difference between the two is that J’s genealogy does not provide ages for the various ancestors. P’s genealogy provides precise numbers and, using those numbers and others like them, we could calculate a date around 4000 BCE for the creation of the world. The problem for chronologists is that the numbers of years separating Adam from Noah are different depending on whether you consult the Hebrew Masoretic Text (1656 years), the Greek Septuagint (2242) or the Samaritan Pentateuch (1307). It quickly becomes apparent that the ages were not in the original text, but were added later.

It is also apparent that there is a desired number each tradition is aiming for and the ages are adjusted to meet that pre-determined date. One proposal, for example, is that the total of the years from the creation of earth to the dedication of the second temple in Jerusalem is 3600 according to the MT. When you consider that the Bible was edited during the Babylonian Captivity and the Babylonians used a base-60 mathematical system, 3600 is 60 x 60, a nice round symbolic number in base-60. Perhaps the numbers are different in the SP because they were counting to founding of the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim. We don’t really know for sure, other than that the numbers were definitely manipulated for some symbolic purpose.

The genealogies are considered by many to be some of the “boring” parts of the Bible, but there are some interesting aspects to them. Once you know where to look.