Reuel and Deuel

 "Pride Rock! So majestic, so mysterious, so...bizarrely named. Pumbaa, how can a rock be proud?"

"Well, actually, I think it's a metaphor--"

These words come to mind with the twin names Reuel and Deuel. Reuel is actually a name that belongs to multiple people in Tanach: There's of course Yitro, AKA Reuel, and then there's Esav's son Reuel, and Reuel ben Yevanyah of the Tribe of Binyamin, and of course, Reuel, father of Elyasaf, the Nasi of Gad in the desert. That's quite a quartet: Two Israelites, a Midianite and an Edomite. All descendants of Avraham, of course.

Then there's Deuel, father of Elyasaf, the Nasi of Gad in the desert. Wait, what?

Yup. Elyasaf's father is at time called Reuel and at time Deuel. What's going on?

Well, people with double names aren't that rare in Tanach. In fact, I think that a great many mysteries in Tanach could be solved with properly identifying certain people with other people. But that's of course the tricky part, who's who and all that.

But in this case, I'm not really sure Elysaf's father had a double-name. The two names are just too similar. Many modernists enjoy explaining away the issue as a mistake in genealogy by one of the authors or redactors of the Tanach. I'm afraid that's not really my style. To paraphrase Ben Tzion Luria: "If you cut off this part and explain away that part as a mistake, what'll you be left with in the end?"

No, we have to assume that the Tanach wrote this person's name differently to teach us something. And, quite possibly, there was something era-specific about the splitting of the name.

The Ho'il Moshe on Divrei Hayamim has a creative solution. According to him, the original name was a composite of the two: Dreuel (or Deruel; no nikkud in the commentary...), which is Aramaic for "the arm of God". Ho'il Moshe explains that this was the "ikar" of the name, the essence of the name.

Okay, so his name was Dreuel. Why the split?

I haven't worked it out yet, but I assume that each name - Reuel and Deuel - represent different aspects of him, or perhaps they're supposed to reflect his son, a more central figure in Tanach than he was (ya know, being Nasi of Gad and all that...).

What do we know? All three names are derived from the ancient Hebraic names. According to Rabbi Ahron Marcus in Barzilai, these names have the ancient Shinarian "U" affix to the first half of the name and have the Semitic "E-l" at the end. In other words, these names go together with names such as Kemuel, Nemuel, Lemuel, Yemuel, Shvuel, Shmuel (possibly) and so forth.

What does that tell us? Well, it means that an Aramaic origin for the name isn't so surprising, as the name is derived from the ancient proto-Hebrew (Ivrit Kama'it, as Rabbi Marcus called it) and both Hebrew and Aramaic derived from this proto-Hebrew.

What else do we know? "Reu" in Shinarian, according to Rabbi Marcus, means "Shepherd" - "Ro'eh".  "Reuel"=Shepherd of Hashem. "Deu" can't quite make the same transition here - what would be a "Do'eh"? But it likely refers to some form of receiving or giving over knowledge. "Deuel"="Know Hashem". Conceptually, actually quite similar. Which actually leaves a question mark on the Ho'il Moshe's suggestion, because "The Arm of Hashem" refers to...well, you know, "strong-arming" people. Kind of a bodyguard or soldier.

Dreuel is usually called Deuel and only called Reuel once, when sounding off the Nesi'im and the armies of the Tribes. Reuel in the context of armies makes sense. It's a leadership name. However, Dreuel probably would have made more sense...so perhaps a flaw in the argument?

Anyway, that's what I have now.

Thoughts?