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I. Name As used in two passages of the OT, Heb. ברד, vocalized as bārād, has been interpreted as the name of an ancient deity of the Canaanite pantheon. In some texts from Tell Mardikh-Ebla of the third millennium bced Baradu (madu) occurs as a divine name. Etymologically, both biblical bārād and Eblaitic Baradu (madu) are to be related to the Semitic root *brd and to be explained as “(big) Chill”. II. Identity The Eblaitic god Baradu madu has been explained by G. Pettinato as a divinized form of the Euphrates ( [Milan 1979] 268). Since the name of this river occurs in the…

I. Name In Isa. 26.20 the term חבי ( ḥăbî) is usually considered a Qal imperative (aramaizing: חבי = חבה) and translated ‘hide thyself’. Gordon (1985 & 1986) has proposed to understand it as a divine name, Haby, and to interpret this character as the forerunner of the Devil: lēk ʿammî bōʾ baḥădārêkā ûsĕgōr dĕlātĕ(y)kā baʿădekā ḥăbî kimʿaṭ-regaʿ ʿad-yaʿăbo(w)r-zāʿam, “Go, my people, enter into your chambers, and shut your door behind you, until Haby, the Wrath, in a little while will have passed”. Haby would occur also in Hab. 3.4, where חביוֹן is considered by Go…

I. Name Reseph occurs as ršp in Ugaritic, Phoenician, and Aramaic, as rešep in Hebrew (8 times), as ra-sa-ap at Ebla and in Akkadian, and as r-š-p(-w) in Egyptian. It is the name of one of the most popular West-Semitic gods, venerated in Syria, Palestine and Egypt. The etymology of the name is still very uncertain. It is often assumed that it is related to a root *ršp (?) with the basic meaning “to light, to set on fire” or “to burn” (cf. e.g. Jud.-Aram. rišpâʾ “flames, lightning”). Yet also a derivation from roots such as *srp, *šrb (metathesis?), or even *rṣp can be considered, as wel…

I. Name Broken up, the word pair ‘mountains and valleys’ occurs in Mic. 1.4 in the context of a theophany: “and the mountains will melt under him, and the valleys will be cleft”. Until recently, the pair was thought to reflect the Ugaritic binominal deity *Mountains-and-Valleys (* ǵrm wʿmqt, *dḫur.sag.-meš u a-mu-tu[ m]). II. Identity The alleged Ugaritic divine pair *Mountains-and-Valleys, frequently compared with a similar pair Heaven-and-Earth ( arṣ wšmm, didim ùidim, šamû-erṣetum; see R. Borger, RA 63 [1969] 171), is based on a misreading of the texts. The pantheon list Ug…