In that regard, Egyptians personified the forces of nature important to the well being of the people and worshipped those forces as gods.  Over 2,000 years, Egyptian gods’ names and functions sometimes changed, but the correlation of natural forces with gods was a constant of Egyptian theology.  With that context, the wondrous events of the Book of Exodus are transformed from mere parlor tricks to demonstrations that God controls the force of nature the Egyptians ascribed to gods.  And as events unfold and the gods crumble, Egyptians become progressively disheartened and the Israelites grow ever more hopeful that God can and will free them.  Three examples demonstrate this proposition.

Aaron and Moses appear before Pharaoh, and Aaron’s staff becomes a “tannin” when thrown to the floor. “Tannin” means “crocodile” in Hebrew, though it is usually mistranslated as “serpent.” Egyptians and Israelites knew that the god Sobek, depicted as a man with the head of a crocodile, was Pharaoh’s personal god who symbolized Pharaoh’s power of life and death over his subjects.  By transforming Aaron’s staff into a crocodile that swallowed the staffs of Pharaoh’s courtiers, God demonstrated that Pharaoh’s days were numbered; Sobek could not help him. Sobek had been judged.

The Egyptian fertility goddess, Heqat, was depicted as a frog. Indeed, the name Heqat meant “frog.”  In the second plague, frogs proliferated, became an unbearable nuisance, died and stank until the Egyptians begged Moses to remove “Heqat” – goddess and frog.  Thus, Heqat was adjudged a mere human creation, not a controller of fertility.

The meaning of the fourth plague, “arov,” became obscure centuries ago. Some commentators translated it as “insects” while others as “a mixture of wild beasts.”  In early Hebrew, arov was pronounced “gharab,” a cognate of the Egyptian word “khpr” (and its variant “khrb”), which meant “scarab beetle” and also Scarab-god.  A scarab lays eggs in dung, which it forms into a ball and rolls into a hole in the riverbank. Eventually, the eggs hatch and scarabs emerge from the mud.  By analogy, Egyptians believed that Scarab-god rolled the sun across the sky by day like a dung ball, pushed it into a hole in the west at sunset, rolled it inside the earth at night, and pushed it out in the east at dawn to repeat the cycle.  In contrast to other gods, Scarab dwelt in the interior of the earth, not on or above it.  And Exodus alludes to Scarab-god’s dwelling place, stating: “Egypt’s buildings and even the ground they are on will fill up with scarabs … so that [Pharaoh] will know that I, God, am in the interior of the Earth.”  (Exodus 12:17-19.)

As discussed in The Exodus Haggadah, Israelites and Egyptians would readily have understood each plague, as well as the killing and eating of lambs and the drowning in the sea, as judgments against the gods of Egypt – demonstrations that Adonai controls the forces of nature ascribed to those gods, who control nothing and are nothing.  Yet uttering the gods’ names would honor them.  (Cf. obliterating Haman’s name at Purim.)  Thus, with one exception, the Book of Exodus mentions the gods obliquely, by their symbols or Hebrew names for the natural forces ascribed to those gods. The exception is the fourth plague, scarabs. Because scarabs do not occur in Canaan, Hebrew had no native word for scarab and the Book of Exodus used the actual name and address of the Egyptian Scarab-god, properly modified to fit Hebrew phonology.

The sound of an aleph is the same as the “catch” between the syllables “uh” and “oh” in the exclamation “uh oh!”  Likewise, American teenagers often substitute an aleph for a “T” at the end of a word.  (If you listen carefully to how your teenager pronounces the words “at home,” you may hear an aleph substituted for the “T.”)

But the ayin?  Hebrew grammar books dating back to the 1800s claim a person cannot pronounce an ayin unless trained to do so from an early age.  Nonsense.  While ayin is not a sound of Standard English, it is a common feature of certain speech defects, where ayin is substituted for the sound represented by the letter “L.”

When Tom Brokaw anchored NBC news, comedians poked fun of his inability to pronounce “L” properly.  His speech impediment was often described as “swallowing his L’s.”  (To this day, mimicking Brokaw saying “Lois Lane loves lizards” puts a smile on our face.)  In reality, Brokaw merely substituted the ayin sound for a Standard English “L.”

With Brokaw’s retirement, we are blissfully spared his atrocious diction.  But the voice-over artist for Samuel Adams beer commercials on radio and television regularly substitutes an ayin for an “L.”

So, if you can imitate Brokaw or Samuel Adams commericals, you can pronounce an ayin.  Who knew it was that simple?  As Bart Simpsonstein might say, “Ayin caramba!”

One interesting error concerns a reptile known in Hebrew as a tannin.  In Exodus Chapter 4, Moses and Aaron inform the Israelites that God will free them. In the next chapter, the pair tell Pharaoh to release the Israelites to serve God.  Sarcastically, Pharaoh asks, “Who is Adonai that I should obey him?  I don’t know Adonai and I won’t release the Israelites.”  He then  worsens the people’s burdens.  Moses and Aaron visit Pharaoh a second time, and Moses tells Aaron to throw down his staff, which turns into a tannin.  Unimpressed, Pharaoh’s magicians do the same, but Aaron’s tannin eats theirs.

The King James Version translates tannin as serpent, a large legless reptile.  Yet the related Arabic word means dragon, a large four-legged reptile, and the related Egyptian word, stnn, means raised up off the belly, a characteristic of a legged creature.   And elsewhere, tannin clearly means crocodile, a large four-legged reptile.  Of course, the King James translators had probably never seen a crocodile, and their mistranslation is “close enough for government work.”  But the mistranslation is not trivial.  It hides the significance of the entire event.

Specifically, each pharaoh bore the title “the Great Crocodile,” among others. The title referred to the ruler’s power of life and death over his subjects.  It also alluded to the god Sobek, patron of the pharaoh’s army and symbol of his authority, who was depicted as a man with a crocodile’s head.  Egyptians and Israelites would instantly have understood the transformation of Aaron’s staff into a crocodile as a direct challenge to Pharaoh’s authority and as a demonstration that Sobek, his patron, was powerless.  The eerie event discredited Sobek, in keeping with God’s promise to execute judgments on all the gods of Egypt.  As noted in The Exodus Haggadah, the remaining gods of the Egyptian pantheon are judged with each plague that follows.   But mistranslating tannin as serpent renders the event a mere parlor trick.

Several interesting sound correspondences exist between ancient Egyptian and the Semitic languages.  First, Egyptian never developed an “L” sound.  Therefore, the “L” of Semitic words corresponds to “N,” “R” or even “T” in Egyptian words.  Second, the “H” sound in the Semito-Hamitic ancestor language became “Sh” in Semitic languages while remaining “H” in Egyptian.  Finally, sounds made with the lips (labial sounds) such as “P,” “B,” and “M,” often seem to interchange across these related languages.

Knowing these sound correspondences, the relationships among Egyptian and Hebrew words become clear.  The Biblical Hebrew word hashmal (a shiny metal) corresponds to Egyptian hesmen (bronze).  Hebrew qinah and Egyptian qenuwy, both mean a lament. Hebrew hisheb and Egyptian hesheb both mean to count.  Hebrew yaqar (precious) and Egyptian yeqer (excellent) are nearly identical in meaning and spelling.  Finally, recalling that Hebrew “SH” interchanges with Egyptian “H,” Hebrew “T” interchanges with Egyptian “N,” and Hebrew “M” can interchange with Egyptian “P,” we see that Hebrew shalom corresponds to Egyptian hotep, with both words meaning “peace.”

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In that regard, when a baby is born, a doctor or midwife quickly looks at the baby’s genitalia and calls out “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!” to the curious parents.  The midwife does not look at the bed to determine the baby’s sex.  Yet translations of Exodus state that the midwives looked at the birthing stool, not the baby’s anatomy, to determine its sex: “When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, ye shall look upon the birthstool: if it be a son, then ye shall kill him; but if it be a daughter, then she shall live.” (Exodus 1:16, JPS translation, 1917.)  The midwives’ purported behavior runs counter to common sense, rendering the translation look upon the birthstool suspect.

The word translated as birthstool is אָבְנָיִם (’ovnayim).  It is usually translated as “birth stones” because its root, aleph-bet-nun, can pertain to stone and because Egyptian woman are said to have placed each foot on a flat brick while giving birth.  But in Hebrew, the root aleph-bet-nun also pertains to reproduction: banim means sons, i.e., male offspring, and banot means daughters, i.e., female offspring.  Moreover, the Hebrew suffix -ayim in the word ’ovnayim is the common plural for body parts, suggesting that ’ovnayim refers to a body part, not a birthstool.  Classical Arabic lends support to this notion: the root aleph-bet-nun almost pertains to offspring and birth.  In Akkadian, that root pertains to organs, such as abunnatu, (“navel”), where the birth cord attaches to a newborn.  Finally, the obvious body part a midwife would inspect to determine a baby’s sex is its genitalia.  Thus, a more reasonable translation of Exodus 1:16 might be:  “When you midwife the Hebrew women and look at the [baby’s] genitalia, if it’s a boy, kill him.  If it’s a girl, she can live.”

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Many Hebrew names are in fact statements: Yisra’el (He-Wrestles-with-God) is one example. So viewing Y-H-W-H as a statement comports with Hebrew usage.  Further, Exodus 3:14 provides evidence that God’s name is a statement.  There, Moses asks how he should answer Israelites who want to know the name of the God who sent him.  God responds, “E-H-Y-H,” which means I AM: “Tell the Israelites this: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” In other words, at least one of God’s names is a form of the verb to be.

In Hebrew, all forms of the verb to be derive from the root H-W-H.  In the simple conjugation, the root letters change slightly: the W becomes a Y, to yield the form E-H-Y-H of Exodus 3:14. But in the intensive conjugation, all letters of the root remain unchanged, i.e., the W remains and does not change to a Y.  And just as the name E-H-Y-H is a verb in the simple conjugation meaning I AM, the form Y-H-W-H may be a verb in the intensive conjugation meaning “HE CAUSES TO BE.”  In other words, the divine name Y-H-W-H seems to be a statement that God brings into existence all that is.

The hypothesis can be tested. In Exodus, each Plague demonstrates that God is the cause of each force of nature that Egyptians ascribed to their gods. The statement that Egyptians will know “I am Y-H-W-H when I turn the Nile into blood” makes no sense if Y-H-W-H means “Bob.” But if our hypothesis is correct, it is consistent with the demonstrative purpose of the Plagues: By turning the Nile to blood, God will certainly cause the Egyptians to “know that I am He Who Causes to Be”– God, and not the river-god Hapi. And by causing frogs to proliferate, God certainly demonstrates that God causes fertility, not the fertility-goddess Heqat.

The ancient Egyptians considered themselves vastly superior to the surrounding nations, who were seen as unworthy barbarians.  Egyptian cities and places reflected this chauvinistic attitude in their
names.  Typical Egyptian place names consisted of two elements, the first of which was pr, meaning house of.  The second element was the name of a deity or pharaoh, an earthly god.  For example, the city-name, Pr-Atum meant House of [the deity] Atum. The city-name Pr-Raamses meant House of the Pharaoh Raamses.  One can surmise that Egyptians took pride living in the reflected glory of the gods and kings after whom their cities were named.  Perhaps for similar reasons, early Americans named cities after monarchs and God: Princeton (the Prince’s town), Jamestown (King James’ town), and Providence Town (town of Divine Providence).

Seen in this context, nicknaming Egypt the House of Slaves was a galling rebuke to rulers who fancied that they dwelt among gods and kings.  And for this same reason, the epithet must have provided encouragement to the Israelite slaves who, on the eve of their flight to freedom, now dared to speak truth to power.

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