Jacob in the Bible Encyclopedia - ISBE
I. Name.
1. Form and Distribution:
ya`aqobh (5 times ya`aqowbh); Iakob, is in form a verb in
the Qal imperfect, 3rd masculine singular. Like some 50
other Hebrew names of this same form, it has no subject for
the verb expressed. But there are a number of independent
indications that Jacob belongs to that large class of names
consisting of a verb with some Divine name or title (in this
case 'El) as the subject, from which the common abbreviated
form is derived by omitting the subject. (a) In Babylonian
documents of the period of the Patriarchs, there occur such
personal names as Ja-ku-bi, Ja-ku-ub-ilu (the former
doubtless an abbreviation of the latter), and Aq-bu-u
(compare Aq-bi-a-hu), according to Hilprecht a syncopated
form for A-qu(?)-bu(-u), like Aq-bi-ili alongside of A-qa-
bi-ili; all of which may be associated with the same root
`aqabh, as appears in Jacob (see H. Ranke, Early Babylonian
Personal Names, 1905, with annotations by Professor
Hilprecht as editor, especially pp. 67, 113, 98 and 4). (b)
In the list of places in Israel conquered by the Pharaoh
Thutmose III appears a certain J'qb'r, which in Egyptian
characters represents the Semitic letters ya`aqobh-'el, and
which therefore seems to show that in the earlier half of
the 15th century BC (so Petrie, Breasted) there was a place
(not a tribe; see W. M. Muller, Asien und Europa, 162 ff) in
Central Israel that bore a name in some way connected with
"Jacob." Moreover, a Pharaoh of the Hyksos period bears a
name that looks like ya`aqobh-'el (Spiegelberg,
Orientalische Literaturzeitung, VII, 130). (c) In the Jewish
tractate Pirqe Abhoth, iii.l, we read of a Jew named
'Aqabhyah, which is a name composed of the same verbal root
as that in Jacob, together with the Divine name Yahu (i.e.
Yahweh) in its common abbreviated form. It should be noted
that the personal names `Aqqubh and Ya`aqobhah (accent on
the penult) also occur in the Old Testament, the former
borne by no less than 4 different persons; also that in the
Palmyrene inscriptions we find a person named `ath`aqobh, a
name in which this same verb `aqabh is preceded by the name
of the god `Ate, just as in `Aqabhyah it is followed by the
name Yahu...
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