Hebrew Ghost
Words ‘ôb
Hebrew has this second word for ghost,
‘ôb, the etymology of which is also unknown, and about which there has
also been an utter flurry of inconclusive discussion. The difficulty is conveyed
by consulting the trusty Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament of
Messrs Brown, Driver and Briggs, published in Oxford in 1953, where four meanings
are attributed to one and the same word:
1. Skin bottle
2. Necromancer
3. Ghost
4. Necromancy
Ignoring the bottle, it seems
improbable to me that one extraordinarily loose noun in any language could mean
ghost, ghost-raiser, and the art of ghost-raising all at once. That the Hebrew ‘ôb
means ‘ghost’, parallel to Babylonian eṭemmu, is incontrovertible in,
for example, Isaiah 29:4, and that is all we need here:
And being below you
will speak from the Netherworld,
and form the dust of your speech will be low;
and your voice will be as a ghost (‘ôb)
from the Netherworld,
and form the dust your speech shall twitter.
The substance of this Hebrew passage
would, of course, be completely lucid to any passing Babylonian, with the dead
squeaking and gibbering, birth-like in the dust, the eternal eṭemmu.
Hebrew yiddě’onî
In many biblical passages the Hebrew ‘ôb
is paired with the word yiddě’onî. The trouble here is that no one is at
all sure what this word means either. It is sometimes translated ‘familiar
spirit’, supposedly deriving from the common verb to know, although this etymology
is very doubtful. Other common Bible translations of ‘ôb and yiddě’onî
are:
·
familiar spirit
and wizard (RV), i.e. one ethereal; one human
·
medium and wizard
(NRSV), i.e. both human
·
divining spirit
an enchanter (Greek Septuagint), i.e., one ethereal; one human
Familiar spirit is an absurd translation, dragging in the old
European witches’ animal familiar at the bidding of any self-respecting,
dark-arts practitioner. Nor can we for a moment argue, á la Babylon,
that a ‘familiar spirit’ is the ghost of an extended-family member as opposed
to some unknown ghost. Wizard, with all its later accretions and associations
for us, can equally be neither defended nor sustained for a moment. The
important point here is that neither term refers to a human practitioner; they
refer rather to the forces with which they deal.
It seems to me obvious that ‘ôb
refers to a ghost of human origin and yiddě’onî to a spirit of non-human
origin, or, to put it more plainly,
‘ôb means ghost and yiddě’onî
means demons.
Any practitioner who operated in such
spheres would be dealing with evil spirits or demons, just as much as ghosts. (Irving
Finkel, The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies [London: Hodder &
Stoughton Ltd, 2021], 252-54)
