PHILOLOGY TO THE TROTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 213 



equivalent to u — so old that but for the book of Job it would 

 have been lost — so old that, whereas it has kept the old 

 nominative in its formation, its plural, which in use has 

 completely supplanted it, has taken the form of the genitive, 

 and with very rare exceptions is used with a singular verb. 

 'Eloah was already old when the book of Job was written, but 

 not so old as to have become obsolete. When we use the same 

 key which opened the way into the understanding of b^")n, hv\ 

 epicene, and the make of the old verbal nouns, it opens the way 

 here also for the analysis and derivation of this word. Take 



'El, the first part of the word. This is another word for 



God, and occurs in the book of Job, as Spurrell points out in his 

 valuable Notes on the Hebrew Text of the Booh of Genesis, 

 p. 370, in the proportion of about a quarter of all its occurrences 

 in. the Old Testament. No other word for God occurs so 



frequently in Job, although 'Eloah comes very near it, fifty-five 

 of the one, forty-one of the other. 



The problem in 'Eloah, as has been indicated, is in some 

 respects like that of the epicene third sing, pronoun in the 

 Pentateuch, with this difficulty added, that there is no ^^^TT, hy\ 

 to guide in the search. But we have the now-ascertained old 

 nominative 6 = u at the end of ^^=God. Then we are left with 

 rr, h' It is evident that h cannot have been alone. The next 

 point is, h was probably final, because any addition would have 



affected the plural form, 'Elohim. Hence our problem is solved 

 if we can find the fitting word or name ending in A, but begin- 

 ning with a letter or letters which would disappear or be 

 absorbed in the 6 of 'Eloah. Xow in the name rP, Yah, we 



T 



have such a word, and just as, in the pronoun, hai, with the 

 -i-sound coming before v or w in hai-iud changed the v ox w into 

 y, so here the 'z2-sound coming before a y has caused it to 

 disappear in its own sound 6, and the full name was originally 

 n''^7t^. or ^n^'^St^, Elu-yah or Ehl-yahU, both nominative endings. 

 Thejy-sound between the u, later 6, and a, disappeared. The e 

 of 'El was treated as tone -long like the e in hen, " a son," 



'ayil, later El, " strong " or " mighty," a passive form ; a 

 term including stative, was at the root of both, and both and 



|5 in course of time were treated as tone-long, hence H^bsi the 



sing, of 'Elohim, the most frequently used word for God in the 

 Old Testament. 



