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"And Leah said: God hath endowed me with a good dowry; now will my husband
dwell with me, because I have borne him six sons: and she called his name Zebulun."
The word translated "dwell" is Zabal, and it stands alone in the Hebrew Scriptures.
"The Companion Bible" says in a note that the word is Assyrian "to honour" brought out
of Ur. To those whose acquaintance with the Hebrew tongue is not very deep, the fact
that Lexicons and Concordances bring together Zabal and Zebul as meaning "to dwell"
and a "dwelling" would be sufficient proof. But we are assured that Hebrew scholars
have been puzzled by this word used of Leah. Dr. Payne Smith's note is emphatic, he
says: "Leah is more than usually obscure in the reasons she gives for this name", says
"there is no trace" of the word zabal, and says that the meaning "dwelling" given to
Zebulun in the margin finds no support.
The language of Assyria and Babylon which has since been recovered, removes the
difficulty. Zabal is an Assyrian word which means "to honour", "to be high" in one's
esteem. Leah's statement would therefore read "Now will my husband honour me". If
Leah actually spoke the language of Assyria, it would but confirm the record of
Abraham's trek from Ur of the Chaldees to Haran. The Hebrew word for "dwelling" was
evidently known, for a play upon the double meaning of the words, derived from the
two languages, seems evident. Jacob, also, when he blessed Zebulun seems to glance at
this double meaning:
"Zebulun shall dwell at the haven of the sea" (Gen. 49: 13),
but the word here translated "dwell" is shaken not Zebul as we might have expected, and
shaken means to dwell as in a tent, and supplies the word translated "tabernacle".
We find a generation or more later, that Chaldee was the natural tongue of the
descendants of Nahor, for Laban, Rebekah's brother, called the heap of stones
"Jegar-sahadutha", which Jacob called "Galeed", and these names mean "a heap of
witness" in Chaldee and Hebrew respectively.
To the English reader there does not seem to be the slightest resemblance between
Jegar-sahadutha, and Galeed, but the Hebrew reader would perceive that while two very
different words are used for "heap", namely jegar and gal, the words for "witness" are
similar, being adutha in Chaldee, and eduth edah and ed in Hebrew. So these similarities
yet differences in the language of Jacob and Laban, like that of Leah is an indication that
we are dealing with historic truths when we read the narrative of Genesis concerning
Haran, Mesopotamia and Padan-aram.