I. Name

ḥērem occurs 29 times in the OT (Lohfink 1982:193–195, for distribution) and has been variously translated ‘ban’, ‘excommunication’, ‘taboo’, ‘a consecrated or contaminated object/person’. It appears in Jewish Aramaic as ḥirmāʾ, in Syriac as ḥermāʾ, and in Arabic as ḥaram, meaning ‘a consecrated and prohibited area’. (Note also Arab. ḥarı̄m ‘wife’, ‘harem’, Nabataean mḥrmh ‘sanctuary’, Sabaean mḥrm ‘sanctuary, temple’.) Grammatically, Brekelmans (1959:43–47) understo…