Tanach Thoughts

I considered writing another post about the blasphemer, a subject near and dear to my heart (because it's an unsolved mystery!), but then I discovered to my shock that my last post on the subject was actually still in draft mode, never published..! So, though I'm still super busy, here's a ready-made post from last year, touched up and completed: The blasphemer is a subject that has been on and off of my mind for a couple of years now. The blasphemer was the son of Shlomit bat Divri, a woman of the Tribe of Dan, and an Egyptian man, who lived during the time of the Exodus. He had an argument with a purely-Israelite man and ended up cursing God, hence his title as "the blasphemer". He was put to death. The midrash ( Sifra 14:1 ) attempts to explain this story thus: "("And the son of an Israelite woman went out; and he was the son of an Egyptian man in the midst of the children of Israel. And they strove within the camp, the son of the Israelite woman and ...

 No, not that kind of Ham. In Parashat Derachim, pg. 338-339, Dr. Yitzchak Meitlis brings a view that the word "chavoteihem" (חותיהם), a group of settlements captured by Yair ben Menashe ( Bamidbar 32:41 ), is a combination of the words "Chavot" and "Ham"; Ham being a place mentioned in the conquest of the Four Kings ( Beresheet 14:5 ), or in other words, "chavoteihem" means "the villages of Ham". I thought that was a fascinating idea, particularly because that area was in Amorite territory. Why is that important? Because in Canaan there was an Amorite king named Hoham (הוהם) ( Yehoshua 10:3-5 ). As far as I know, not much is known about the Amorite language, but I'm guessing there's a connection between Hoham and Ham. Perhaps his name means something along the lines of "man of Ham" or "son of Ham", or something like that. Meanwhile, Obelix has discovered he enjoys gefilte fish. (images taken from Asterix an...