H4124

• {"n":"Genesis 19:37","s":"She called his name Moab. The name echoes me'av, from a father, memorializing how he was conceived.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=genesis-19-37","r":"Genesis 19:37","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"Every version reads Moab as a bare proper name, transliterated, with no built-in meaning visible to an English reader at all."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"Imagine a family naming a child born under scandalous circumstances something that sounds, to everyone who ever hears it, like a quiet confession of exactly what happened. That is what Moab does in Hebrew, a permanent, audible reminder built into a nation's own name."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Moab, mo'av, closely resembles me'av, from a father, a near-pun rather than a formally marked possessive construction, unlike his half-brother's name, Ben-ammi, son of my people, given to the second daughter's son in the very next verse, which does mark the relationship explicitly. Both names function as the daughters' own memorial of the incestuous circumstances of their sons' births, embedded permanently in the names of the nations, Moab and Ammon, that descend from them."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"English Moab is simply a place-name and a people-name with no internal meaning an English reader can access, so the built-in, self-incriminating pun Genesis records is invisible unless a reader is told what the Hebrew consonants echo."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"When Genesis names a nation's ancestor at a morally loaded moment in the narrative, check whether the name itself is doing commentary. The naming device Genesis has already used for Cain, Noah, Peleg, and Japheth continues here, aimed at explaining two neighboring nations' origins rather than a single Israelite ancestor."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"Moab as a transliterated proper name is not contested. The pun is a matter of Hebrew sound that no English rendering of the name itself can carry, unlike Ben-ammi the following verse, whose meaning, son of my people, is stated as an explicit possessive rather than merely echoed."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u05de\u05d5\u05b9\u05d0\u05b8\u05d1 Moab (cf. \u05de\u05b5\u05d0\u05b8\u05d1 me'av, from a father) \u00b7 H4124"}],"src":["Ben-ammi, son of my people, as the explicitly marked parallel name in the next verse: Genesis 19:38","The mo'av\/me'av resemblance: standard treatment in Genesis commentaries and Hebrew name studies"]}