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I. Name The story of the unnamed daughter of Jephthah is told in Judges. 11. Jephthah vows that, if Yahweh will give him victory over the Ammonites, he will offer up to Yahweh the one who first comes out to meet him when he returns home (v 31). This turns out to be his unnamed daughter. Jephthah’s daughter accepts the consequences of her father’s vow, but asks that she and her female companions be permitted to go into the mountains so that they can lament. Her father grants this request and, at the end of two months, she returns home and her father offers her up as a holocaust sacrifice ( ʿōlâ) to Yahw…

I. Name The MT makes no direct reference to the goddess Anat, though several scholars have proposed interpretations and conjectural emendations that would create references or allusions to her in the biblical text. As the MT stands, however, her name appears unequivocally only as a component of one personal and one place name, Shamgar ben Anat ( Judg. 3.31) and Beth Anat ( Josh. 19.38 and Judg. 1.33) respectively. Her name might also be evidenced in the place names Anathoth and Beth Anot and the personal name Anathoth. In Ugaritic Anat’s name is written ʿnt, and in Akkadian (which cannot…

I. Name The proper name ‘Satan’ is an Anglicization of the Hebrew common noun śāṭān. The noun śāṭān has been related etymologically to a variety of geminate, third weak and hollow verbs in Hebrew and in the cognate languages. These proposals include verbs meaning ‘to stray’ (Ar. šṭṭ, Heb. śṭh, Eth. šṭy, Akk. šâṭu 1 and Syr. sṭʾ), ‘to revolt/fall away’ (Aram. swṭ, Mandaean swṭ and Heb. swṭ), ‘to be unjust’ (Ar. šṭṭ), ‘to burn’ (Syr. swṭ and Ar. šyṭ) and ‘to seduce’ (Eth. šṭy and Heb. śṭh). These proposals require discounting the nûn of the noun śāṭān as p…