Puns Based Upon a
Backwards Reading
Sometimes a pun is formed by reversing
the letters of the name in its entirety. This proves once again the extent of
the poetic license enjoyed by the biblical writer when creating his MNDs.
[1] Gen 6:8 provides an example of a
pun that runs backwards:
ונח מצא חן בעיני יהוה
Not Noah (nḥ) found
grace (ḥn) in the eyes of the Lord.
. . .
[2] Gen 38:7 is another example:
ויהי ער בכור יהודה
רע בעיני יהוה וימתהו יהוה
And Er (‘r), Judah’s
firstborn, was wicked (r’)
in the sight of the Lord; and the Lord slew him.
Read backwards, the person’s name
offers a definition of his character.
[3] In the following example from Ex
31:2-3 (cf. also 35:30-31), the grandfather’s name is the object for this kind
of pun:
ראה קראתי בשׁם בצלאל
בן־אורי בן־חור למטה יהודה
ואמלא אתו רוח אלהים
בחכמה ובתבונה ובדעת ובכל־מלאכה
See, I have called by name Bezalel the
son of Uri, the son of
Hur (ḥwr), of the tribe of Judah. And I have filled him with
the spirit (rwḥ) of God, in wisdom, and in understanding and
in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship.
In this text, the grandfather’s name,
reversed, constitutes the quality bestowed upon the grandson by the Lord.
[4] Sometimes the name, read
backwards, is hidden within a longer word that serves as a pun; such as is the
case in Gen 4:4:
והבל הביא גם־הוא
מבכרות צאנו ומחלבהן. . .
And Abel (hbl), he also
brought of the firstlings of
his flock and of the fat thereof (w-m-ḥlbhn).
The word wmḥlbhn (ומחלבהן)
contains within itself the name of hbl (הבל), reversed. Since, as
Tur-Sinai remarks, wmḥlbhn seems to be bother redundant and grammatically
odd, the correlation between Abe’s name and his act must be deliberate. The MND
is strengthened by the alliteration of the constants h, b (ה, ב). (Moshe
Garsiel, Biblical Names: Literary
Study of Midrashic Derivations and Puns [trans. Phyllis Hackett; Jerusalem:
Bar-Ilan University, 1991], 91-92)
