אבן

Forms

אֶבֶן (ʾeḇen) noun, feminine, plural אֲבָנִים^[1][4] Pausal אָבֶן, with suffix אַבְנוֹ, plural אֲבָנִים, construct plural אַבְנֵי; feminine, once perhaps masculine (1 Samuel 17:40).^[5][6]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Semitic *ʔabn- (“stone”), one of the basic words of Proto-Semitic.^[4][7] The noun is kept in Akkadian abnu,^[8][9] Ugaritic ảbn,^[10] Phoenician ʾbn, Aramaic אֶבֶן (ʾeḇen), Classical Syriac ܐܲܒܢܵܐ (ʾaḇnā),^[11] Sabaean ʾbn and Ge'ez እብን (ʾəbn).^[6][5][7] Kogan notes where it was lost: the continental Modern South Arabian languages replaced it while Soqotri kept it, Arabic replaced it completely by Arabic حَجَر (ḥajar), and in Aramaic its loss is comparatively recent.^[7][12] Wiktionary carries it further back to Proto-Afroasiatic *ʔabun-, and Klein and Gesenius–Buhl compare an Egyptian word for alum, but neither link is argued in the Semitic dictionaries.^[4][13][14]

Earlier lexicographers looked for a verbal root behind the noun: Gesenius supposed an unused root meaning “to build”, comparing בָּנָה (bānâ, “to build”),^[15] and BDB quotes Delitzsch's “the sharp, projecting one” with a question mark.^[5] HALOT and Kogan give the noun with no verbal root.^[6][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word is common in every part of the Hebrew Bible: 272 times in the Hebrew text, and another eight times in the Aramaic of Ezra and Daniel.^[1] Three of these are in the poems that Sáenz-Badillos counts as the most archaic Hebrew, the Song of the Sea (Exodus 15) and the Blessing of Jacob (Genesis 49).^[16][1] In the Song of the Sea the Egyptians yārəḏû ḇiməṣôlōṯ kəmô-ʾāḇen “went down into the depths like a stone” (Exodus 15:5), and the nations stand “still as a stone” (15:16). The Blessing of Jacob calls God ʾeḇen yiśrāʾēl, “the Stone of Israel” (Genesis 49:24), a phrase HALOT lists among its special uses.^[6][1] These poems are not dated records: Sáenz-Badillos writes only that the archaic passages might go back to the 12th or 13th century BC.^[17]

Semantic evolution

HALOT sorts the biblical uses into the ordinary and the religious.^[6] A stone could be a single stone or a rock in the field, ore in the hills (Deuteronomy 8:9, “a land whose stones are iron”), a gem (ʾeḇen yəqārâ, matching Akkadian abnu aqartu), building stone, hewn or unhewn, a sling-stone, the stones used to stone a criminal, a plumb line (Isaiah 34:11) and a weight.^[6][5] The weight sense lies behind the ban on ʾeḇen wāʾāḇen (Deuteronomy 25:13), literally “a stone and a stone”, that is, two different weights, one large and one small, and behind the king's weight in 2 Samuel 14:26.^[6][1] Hailstones are “stones of hail” (Joshua 10:11), as Akkadian speaks of “stones of heaven”, and the tablets of the law are “tablets of stone” (Exodus 24:12).^[6] In religious use a stone was an altar, a cairn over a grave, a standing stone set up as a witness or memorial (Jacob's stone at Bethel, Genesis 28:18), and, in the prophets' polemic, an idol: gods of “wood and stone”.^[6] Figurative uses include a “heart of stone” (Ezekiel 11:19) and Nabal, who “became a stone” when struck by paralysis (1 Samuel 25:37).^[6][5]

The Septuagint renders it almost everywhere by Ancient Greek λίθος (líthos).^[1][18] The Dead Sea Scrolls use it 230 times, in biblical and non-biblical scrolls alike.^[19] In Rabbinic Hebrew ʾeḇen ṭôḇâ, “a good stone”, is a jewel,^[20] and Modern Hebrew אבן (éven) keeps all the main senses, adding “piece in a board game” as a semantic loan from German Stein.^[4]

Timeline

• Archaic Hebrew poetry – kəmô-ʾāḇen “like a stone” in the Song of the Sea (Exodus 15:5) and ʾeḇen yiśrāʾēl in the Blessing of Jacob (Genesis 49:24).^[16][1]
• Classical Biblical Hebrew – about half of the biblical occurrences are in Genesis to Kings, including the weight ʾeḇen wāʾāḇen of Deuteronomy 25:13.^[1][6]
• 3rd–2nd century BC – the Septuagint translates it as Ancient Greek λίθος (líthos).^[21][1]
• 2nd century BC – 2nd century AD – 230 occurrences in the Dead Sea Scrolls.^[22][19]

Meanings

Noun

1. a stone, a rock or a pebble; stones as a material, for building or for slinging.^[6][5]
2. ore; a stone containing metal.^[6]
3. a precious stone, a gem.^[6][23]
4. a stone used as a weight; a plummet.^[6][5]
5. a stone set up as an altar, a memorial or a boundary mark;^[6] (in polemic) an idol of stone.^[6]
6. (figurative) something hard or unfeeling: lēḇ hāʾeḇen “a heart of stone”.^[6]

Descendants

• Modern Hebrew אבן (éven)^[4]

Usage notes

The dual אָבְנַיִם (Exodus 1:16, Jeremiah 18:3), the potter's wheel and the birth-stool, is listed by BDB and HALOT as a separate noun, אֹבֶן, though Gesenius–Buhl reports the usual view that it is the same word for “stone”.^[24][6][25]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Clear Bible (2023–), MACULA Hebrew Linguistic Datasets (Westminster Leningrad Codex, with Greek alignment), github.com/Clear-Bible/macula-hebrew, CC BY 4.0
2. ^ 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
3. ^ Højgaard, Christian Canu; Naaijer, Martijn; Schorch, Stefan (2023), Text-Fabric Dataset of the Samaritan Pentateuch, Zenodo, doi:10.5281/zenodo.7734632
4. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
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. אֶבֶן
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s 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. אֶבֶן
7. ^ a b c d Kogan, Leonid (2015), Genealogical Classification of Semitic: The Lexical Isoglosses, Berlin: De Gruyter, p. 42
8. ^ Black, Jeremy; George, Andrew; Postgate, Nicholas (2000), A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian, 2nd ed., Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, p. s.v. abnu
9. ^ von Soden, Wolfram (1965–1981), Akkadisches Handwörterbuch, 3 vols, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, p. 6
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. ảbn
11. ^ Sokoloff, Michael (2009), A Syriac Lexicon, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns; Piscataway: Gorgias Press, p. 4
12. ^ Lane, Edward William (1863–1893), An Arabic-English Lexicon, 8 parts, London: Williams and Norgate, p. 517
13. ^ Klein, Ernest (1987), A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English, Jerusalem: Carta; Haifa: University of Haifa, p. s.v. אֶבֶן
14. ^ Gesenius, Wilhelm; Buhl, Frants (1915), Hebräisches und aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament, 17th ed., Leipzig: F. C. W. Vogel, p. s.v. אֶבֶן
15. ^ Gesenius, Wilhelm (1846), Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures, transl. Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, London: Samuel Bagster, p. s.v. אָבַן
16. ^ a b Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 69
17. ^ Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 48
18. ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. λίθος
19. ^ a b Abegg, Martin G.; Jacobs, Jarod; Roorda, Dirk (2022), The Dead Sea Scrolls, Text-Fabric dataset, version 2.0.2, github.com/ETCBC/dss
20. ^ Jastrow, Marcus (1886–1903), A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature, London: Luzac; New York: Putnam, p. s.v. אֶבֶן
21. ^ Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 93
22. ^ Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 143
23. ^ Holladay, William L. (1971), A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. אֶבֶן
24. ^ 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. אֹבֶן
25. ^ Gesenius, Wilhelm; Buhl, Frants (1915), Hebräisches und aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament, 17th ed., Leipzig: F. C. W. Vogel, p. s.v. אֹבֶן