Gaal (biblical person)
According to Judges 9, 26ff LUT, Gaal, the son of Ebed was a rebel in the city of Shechem at the time of the kingdom of Abimelech .
etymology
The Hebrew personal name גַּעַל ga'al , German 'Gaal' is a one-word and animal name. It is probably derived from the Arabic ǧu'al and means "dung beetle".
In the Book of Judges, Gaal, Ebed's son, is a deliberate distortion in order to make the wearer look ridiculous. Starting from the root געל g'l "abhor" the meaning "disgust, son of a slave" is associated.
The Septuagint gives the name as Γααλ Gaal , the Vulgate as Gaal . Comparable is the neo-Puna personal name געלגסת g'lgst .
The revolt of the Gaal
About three years after Abimelech made himself king in Shechem and extended his power to all of Israel , Gaal and his brothers appeared in Shechem. After Abimelech had previously argued with his (non-Israelite) mother from Shechem when he reached for royalty, Gaal now argued that Abimelech's father Gideon was an Israelite and not from Shechem. He himself relied on rulership rights derived from the ancestry of his clan, which he traced back to Hamor , the father of Shechem (of whom is reported in Genesis 34, EU as the rapist of Dina ).
After the city governor Zebul Abimelech had informed about this, he came with an army and defeated Gaal, so that he and his brothers had to flee from Shechem. As a result, the city of Shechem was destroyed by Abimelech.
literature
- Art. גַּעַל, In: Gesenius. 18th edition 2013 , p. 225.
- Martin Noth : The Israelite personal names in the context of the common emitic naming. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1928, p. 230.240.
- Hans Rechenmacher : Old Hebrew personal names. Münster 2012, p. 170.202.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Stuttgart Explanatory Bible. 2nd Edition. German Bible Society , Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-438-01121-2 , p. 319