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I. Name The divine name Chemosh has the phonological forms ‘ kam(m)iṯ’ and ‘ kam(m)uṯ’—the first one being attested in Eblaitic d Ka-mi/mɩ́-iš, in the geographical name Karkamiš ‘quay of Kamiš’, and in כמישׁ Jer. 48.7 (Müller 1980), the other one in a couple of Semitic languages like Neo-Assyrian, Moabite, and perhaps in Ugaritic. The duplication of consonants would neither be indicated in Eblaitic cuneiform script nor in Ugaritic and Moabite. Both forms, qattil ( parris) as a substantival participle of B-stem ( GAG § 55:20aII) and qattul ( parrus) as a verbal adjective of D.-stem, ma…

I. Name The basic meaning of the verbal root šqr, attested inter alia in Hebrew, Old Aramaic, Jewish Aramaic, and Syriac is: ‘to deceive, act perfidiously’, with corresponding nominal derivations (cf. HALAT s.v. šeqer), not ‘to lie’, as has been established by Klopfenstein (1964; cf. Klopfenstein 1976:1010). In combination with the word rûaḥ, ‘spirit’, šeqer can personify the notion of falsehood in the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew qitl-nominal-formation šeqer ‘falsehood, deceit, perfidy’ is often used in regard to false prophecy: the adversaries of Jeremiah ‘p…

I. Name The divine name Malik, once probably the absolute state of Mal(i)kum, must originally have been an epithet meaning ‘prince, king’ or ‘advisor, counsellor’, signifying an aspect of another god, perhaps Dagan, the chief god of Ebla and of the old North-Semites. Consequently, we find it in cuneiform script with and without determinative, the latter especially when it is a theophoric element of a personal name. Since Old Babylonian times, Malik and Malku(m) were used with case endings and in the plural forms Mālikū and Malkū. The character of the formation as an absolute s…