אב

Forms

אָב (ʾāḇ) noun, masculine, plural אָבוֹת^[1][3] Construct אֲבִי, rarely אַב (Genesis 17:4–5), with suffixes אָבִי, אָבִיךָ, אָבִיו or אָבִיהוּ.^[4][5] Plural אָבוֹת, construct אֲבוֹת, with the feminine-looking ending also found in the Amarna letters and in Aramaic.^[4][6] The short form אַב is kept in names such as אַבְרָהָם.^[5][6]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Semitic *ʔabw- (“father”), a noun found in all the Semitic languages.^[3][7][8] The cognates include Akkadian abu,^[9] Ugaritic ảb,^[10] Phoenician ʾb, Aramaic אַבָּא (ʾabbā), Classical Syriac ܐܰܒܳܐ (ʾaḇā), Arabic أَبٌ (ʾab), Sabaean ʾb and Ge'ez አብ (ʾab).^[5][4] HALOT, after Koehler, sees in it a word of baby talk, while Gesenius–Buhl calls its etymology unknown and lists the older attempts to find a root.^[4][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The noun is in every layer of the Bible, about 1,210 times, eleven of them in the archaic poems.^[1][11] In the Blessing of Jacob the dying patriarch calls his sons to yiśrāʾēl ʾăḇîḵem, “Israel your father” (Genesis 49:2), and reproaches Reuben because ʿālîṯā miškəḇê ʾāḇîḵā, “you went up onto your father's bed” (49:4).^[1] Davies records ⟨ʾb⟩ in a few fragmentary ostraca from Arad and Samaria.^[12][13]

Semantic evolution

Besides the father of a person, HALOT and BDB list the grandfather, the forefather of a family or a people (the “fathers” of Israel), the founder of a craft (Jabal, “father of those who dwell in tents”, Genesis 4:20), a protector or benefactor, a title of respect for a priest, a prophet or a king's adviser, and God as the father of Israel or of the king.^[4][5] The household was the bêṯ ʾāḇ, “father's house”, and the plural אָבוֹת came to mean the families or clans, especially in the late books.^[4][14] The Septuagint renders it by Ancient Greek πατήρ (patḗr).^[1]

In the Aramaic of Ezra and Daniel the cognate is Aramaic אַב (ʾaḇ).^[1] The emphatic form Aramaic אַבָּא (ʾabbā) passed into the Greek of the New Testament as Ancient Greek ἄββα (ábba),^[4] and through Latin into English abba.^[3] In Rabbinic and later Hebrew אָב also means a master or teacher, and as a prefix “chief, arch-”.^[15][16] Modern Hebrew אב (av) survives, beside the Aramaic loan אַבָּא, “dad”.^[3]

Timeline

• Archaic Hebrew poetry – yiśrāʾēl ʾăḇîḵem and miškəḇê ʾāḇîḵā in the Blessing of Jacob (Genesis 49:2, 4).^[11][1]
• Classical Biblical Hebrew – just over half of the biblical occurrences are in Genesis to Kings.^[1]
• Late Biblical Hebrew – the plural אֲבוֹתֵיהֶם is frequent in Chronicles.^[5]
• 3rd–2nd century BC – the Septuagint translates it as πατήρ.^[17][1]
• 2nd century BC – 2nd century AD – 685 occurrences in the Dead Sea Scrolls.^[18][19]

Meanings

Noun

1. a father.^[4][20]
2. a grandfather; a forefather, ancestor; in the plural, the forefathers of Israel.^[4][5]
3. the founder or first practitioner of a way of life or a craft.^[4][20]
4. a title of respect for a priest, a prophet or an adviser; a protector of the poor.^[4][5]
5. God as the father of Israel or of the king.^[4]
6. bêṯ ʾāḇ: a family, household, clan.^[4][14]

Descendants

• Modern Hebrew אב (av)^[3]

Usage notes

The page also holds אֵב (ʾēḇ), “fresh shoot, green growth”, twice in poetry (Job 8:12, Song of Songs 6:11).^[21][22] BDB and HALOT derive it from a root ʾbb rather than from ʾnb, comparing Arabic أَبٌّ “pasture”.^[22][21]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Clear Bible (2023–), MACULA Hebrew Linguistic Datasets (Westminster Leningrad Codex, with Greek alignment), github.com/Clear-Bible/macula-hebrew, CC BY 4.0
2. ^ Højgaard, Christian Canu; Naaijer, Martijn; Schorch, Stefan (2023), Text-Fabric Dataset of the Samaritan Pentateuch, Zenodo, doi:10.5281/zenodo.7734632
3. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Koehler, Ludwig; Baumgartner, Walter; Stamm, Johann Jakob (1994–2000), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, transl. and ed. M. E. J. Richardson, 5 vols, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. אָב
5. ^ a b c d e f g Brown, Francis; Driver, S. R.; Briggs, Charles A. (1906), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, with an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. אָב²
6. ^ a b c Gesenius, Wilhelm; Buhl, Frants (1915), Hebräisches und aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament, 17th ed., Leipzig: F. C. W. Vogel, p. s.v. אָב
7. ^ Huehnergard, John (2011), "Proto-Semitic Language and Culture" and "Semitic Roots", in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, p. s.v. ʾb
8. ^ Militarev, Alexander, et al., Semitic Etymology (database semet), The Tower of Babel (StarLing), starling.rinet.ru
9. ^ Black, Jeremy; George, Andrew; Postgate, Nicholas (2000), A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian, 2nd ed., Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, p. s.v. abu
10. ^ del Olmo Lete, Gregorio; Sanmartín, Joaquín (2015), A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language in the Alphabetic Tradition, 3rd ed., transl. W. G. E. Watson, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. ảb
11. ^ a b Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 69
12. ^ Davies, Graham I. (1991), Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Concordance, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 2.035.1
13. ^ Davies, Graham I. (1991), Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Concordance, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 3.309.1
14. ^ a b Tawil, Hayim ben Yosef (2009), An Akkadian Lexical Companion for Biblical Hebrew: Etymological-Semantic and Idiomatic Equivalents, Jersey City: Ktav, p. 1
15. ^ Klein, Ernest (1987), A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English, Jerusalem: Carta; Haifa: University of Haifa, p. s.v. אָב ᴵ
16. ^ Klein, Ernest (1987), A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English, Jerusalem: Carta; Haifa: University of Haifa, p. s.v. אַב◌
17. ^ Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 93
18. ^ Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 143
19. ^ Abegg, Martin G.; Jacobs, Jarod; Roorda, Dirk (2022), The Dead Sea Scrolls, Text-Fabric dataset, version 2.0.2, github.com/ETCBC/dss
20. ^ a b de Blois, Reinier, ed. (2000–), Semantic Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew, United Bible Societies, sdbh.org, p. s.v. אָב
21. ^ a b Koehler, Ludwig; Baumgartner, Walter; Stamm, Johann Jakob (1994–2000), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, transl. and ed. M. E. J. Richardson, 5 vols, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. אֵב
22. ^ a b Brown, Francis; Driver, S. R.; Briggs, Charles A. (1906), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, with an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. אֵב