What? You don’t get it? Bible, HUMOr, HUMOngous, see? Now you’re laughing, right? Probably not. There are several reasons for that.
In the third place, what’s funny in one language may not be funny in another language. I read an anecdote in German 40 years ago that’s still funny to me when I think about it in German. When I think about it in English, it’s not funny. And this is inside the very same brain!
In the second place, what is funny to one culture isn’t funny to another. My dad, who served in the Pacific Theater in WWII, told me that the Australians didn’t understand any American jokes and vice versa – at the same time in the same language! We’re several thousand years, several thousand miles, and a language away from the puns we’re going to look at.
Most importantly, we don’t expect humor in the Bible. We read it and hear James Earl Jones – the sound of God creating the universe. Often we should be hearing Woody Allen – funny, intellectual, and whiney. Sometimes we should be hearing George Carlin – funny and not always suitable for children. Most of this unit will be Woody-Allen style humor. It’s important that you read the explanation of the pun right below the scripture reference, and helpful if you read through the selected scripture verses here before turning to your own Bible.
Genesis 2:4-17, Adam (5/18/15)
adamah/ground > the adam/person > Adam/ Adam
So. Right after God (played by James Earl Jones) created the universe, God (now played by Woody Allen) made human beings. He took some dust and made a little dustball out of it. Eventually he named the dustball Dusty. Or maybe he took some soil and made a soul and called it Sol.
- 5b-6 There was no adam/human to work the adamah/soil. But streams came up from the ground and watered the adamah/soil.
7 The LORD God took a handful of adamah/soil and made an adam/human. God breathed life into the adam/human, and the adam/human started breathing.
8-9a The LORD made a garden in a place called Eden, which was in the east, and he put the adam/human there. And out of the adamah/soil the LORD God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food.
15 The LORD God put the adam/human in the Garden of Eden to take care of it and to look after it.
Genesis 2:18-23, Woman (5/19/15)
ish/man + –ah > ishah/woman
Hunter’s Loose Translation of the man’s little poem:
Zowie! Here’s my very own!
My own flesh, and my own bone!
I’m gonna call her “Woman,” because ...
Whoa, man!
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18 The LORD God said, "It isn't good for the adam/human to live alone. I need to make a suitable partner for him."
19a, 20 So the LORD took some adamah/soil and made animals and birds. He brought them to the adam/human to see what names he would give each of them. Then the adam/human named the tame animals and the birds and the wild animals.
21-23 So the LORD God made the adam/human fall into a deep sleep, and he took out one of his ribs. Then after closing the flesh, the LORD made a woman out of the rib. The LORD God brought her to the adam/human, and the adam/human exclaimed, "Here is someone like me! She is part of my body, my own flesh and bones. She came from me, an ish/man. So I will name her ishah/Woman!"
Genesis 2:25 – 3:13, The cunning serpent (5/20/15)
(Roughly) the arum/cunning nachash/serpent nasha/beguiles the arom/nude couple into believing that they are erom/naked.
Can you explain the difference between nude and naked? Or between naked and nekkid? Adam and Eve were nude, but the serpent convinced them that they were nekkid. They were nude; the snake was naughty. That cunning one convinced them to do something they shouldn’t.
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2:25 Although the man and his wife were both arom/naked, they were not ashamed.
3:1a The nachash/snake was arum/sneakier than any of the other wild animals that the LORD God had made.
7a Right away they saw what they had done, and they realized they were erom/naked.
10a The man answered, "I was erom/naked.
11a "How did you know you were erom/naked?" God asked.
13a The LORD God then asked the woman, "What have you done?" "The nachash/snake nasha/tricked me," she answered.
Genesis 3:14-20, Eve (5/21/15)
chay/living > Chavvah/lifegiver/Eve
Adam finally gets a proper name in vs. 17. Always before this in Hebrew, he is “the adam,” but now he’s just Adam. The Contemporary English Version still calls him “the man” until vs. 20; the Hebrew fades in and out, and the translations vary about when they make the switch. Adam gives his wife a proper name in vs. 20. The ch of Chay and Chavvah is a rough “h” sound, so Eve is closer to the original Hebrew than it looks in print. In English we should have called her “Livia” because she was the mother of all living.
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17a The LORD said to adam/Adam, "You listened to your wife and ate fruit from that tree."
20 The man Adam named his wife Chavvah/Eve because she would become the mother of all chay/who-live.
Genesis 4:1, Cain (5/22/15)
qanah/gotten > Qayin/Cain; also qayin/fixity/lance
Adam and Eve had three sons. The first one was Cain. Eve says that she called him Qayin/Cain because she has qanah/gotten him from the LORD. I think there’s more to it than that, even though Eve didn’t realize it at the time. Qayin is the same as qayin = fixity/lance, and we all know that Cain was a murderer who stayed around – was fixed in place – for quite a while.
As a rule of thumb, any Old Testament sentence that sounds like “he/she/it was named or called X because Y” means that X is a pun on Y. Unfortunately, the pun almost never comes through in translation except by accident.
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1 Adam and Eve had a son. Then Eve said, "I'll name him Qayin/Cain because I qanah/got him with the help of the LORD."
Genesis 4:2-8, Abel (5/25/15)
hebel/vanity, something transitory > Abel
Hebel/Abel’s name was hebel/transitory. He didn’t last long. Many of the puns in Hebrew make you say “aha!” and not “ha ha!”
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2 She had another son and named him Abel.
Genesis 4:25, Seth (5/26/15)
sheeth/appoint > Sheth/Seth
Hunter’s Loose Translation: "God sheeth/set-in-place Sheth/Seth to replace Transitory/Abel, who was killed by Spear/Cain." Since Seth eventually gave rise to the Hebrew people, he was appointed in more ways than one.
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25 Adam and his wife had another son. They named him Sheth/Seth, because they said, "God has sheeth/appointed us a son to take the place of Abel, who was killed by his brother Cain."
Genesis 5:28 – 6:8, Noah (5/27/15)
nacham/comfort/rest > Noach/Noah
We know that Lamech meant Noach/Noah to be a pun on nacham/comfort, because it says so right there in vs. 29. As near as I can tell, however, after all this time nobody knows exactly what he meant by it. I suppose we can all take comfort from the fact that God spared Noah and his family; otherwise we wouldn’t be here.
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5:28-29 When Lamech was one hundred eighty-two, he had a son. Lamech said, "I'll name him Noach/Noah because he will give us nacham/comfort, as we struggle hard to make a living on this land that the LORD has put under a curse."
Genesis 12:1-4, 17:1-9, Abraham (5/28/15)
abram/high-father/Abram; abraham/father-of-a-multitude/Abraham
English occupational surnames are job descriptions: Hunter, Farmer, Sawyer, Harper, Miller, etc. Now, however, they’ve been around so long as names that we don’t really think of them as anything but names when they refer to a specific person. Abram and Abraham are not only names for a specific person, but they are also God’s job description for that person: Abraham is the spiritual father of all Jews, Christians, and Muslims.
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3-5 Then Abram/high father/Abram fell on his face. And God said to him, "Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram/high father/Abram, but your name shall be Abraham/father of a multitude/Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations.
Genesis 12:5, 17:15-16, Sarah (5/29/15)
sarai/my-princess/Sarai; sarah/Princess/Sarah
John Wesley points out that Sarai, strictly, means “my princess, as if her honour were confined to one family only.” Lots of guys call their ladies “my princess.” Sarah, however, is no longer just my princess, but a princess of multitudes and the mother of kings.
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15-16 And God said unto Abraham, As for your wife Sarai, don't call her Sarai/my princess, but Sarah/Princess. And I will bless her, and give you a son by her: yes, I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of people shall come from her.
Genesis 17:17-19, 18:1-15; 21:1-6, Isaac (6/1/15)
tsachaq/laugh > Yitschaq/laughter, Yischaq/he-will-laugh > Isaac
Loose translation from the web: Abraham and Sarah chuckled, and they called their little boy Chuckles.
Actually, there are some funny parts to this story even without the pun tsachaq/Yitschaq = laugh/Laughter. In vs. 17:17, Abraham is so amused by the angel’s announcement that he is literally rolling on the floor laughing. This is a bit of a meta-pun, since “fell to his face” also means (and is usually taken to mean here) that the person falling to his face is worshipping the person standing. But think about it: this old man is so amused and so feeble that he falls down, and since he’s down on the ground, he might as well do a little worshipping.
In 18:11-13, Sarah giggles inside the tent when she hears this news. “Like that’s going to happen! I’m worn out, and my husband is old. Cackle, cackle.” The LORD hears her, and he says to Abraham, “Why is Sarah laughing, just because she’s too old to have a baby?” Notice that the LORD doesn’t repeat what Sarah actually said, which is that she thinks Abraham is too old! It’s a little secret between Sarah and the LORD.
Finally, in 21:6, Sarah is holding her little baby Chuckles, and she is so happy she laughs out loud. But still she can see that it’s pretty funny for a woman in her 90s to be having a baby, and she knows that all her friends are going to laugh, too.
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17:17a Then Abraham fell on his face and tsachaq/laughed.
18:12a So Sarah tsachaq/laughed to herself.
13-14 The LORD said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah tsachaq/laugh?"
15 But Sarah denied it, saying, "I did not tsachaq/laugh," for she was afraid. He said, "No, but you did tsachaq/laugh."
21: 3-5 Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore him, Yitschaq/Laughter/Isaac. And Abraham circumcised his son Yitschaq/Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Yitschaq/Isaac was born to him.
6 And Sarah said, "God has made tsachoq/laughter for me; everyone who hears will tsachaq/laugh over me."
Genesis 16:1-11, 17:18, 20, Ishmael (6/2/15)
shma-el/God-hears; Yishma-el/God-will-hear > Ishmael
Ishmael was already about 8 years old when God came to tell Abraham that his wife Sarah was going to have a baby. A decade or so earlier, Sarah had decided to have a baby by a surrogate mother, so she gave her handmaiden Hagar to Abraham as a concubine. When she became pregnant, Hagar got kind of snippy with her mistress, who beat her for it. Hagar ran away. God had a sympathetic chat with Hagar and told her to name her baby “God will hear,” because he had heard her problems.
Later, when God visited Abraham about Sarah, Abraham apparently figured that a boy in the hand is worth two in the bush, and he said, “May you take care of ‘God will hear.’” God answered, “I hear you.”
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16:11 And the angel of the LORD said to her, "Behold, you are pregnant and shall bear a son. You shall call his name Yishma-el/God-will-hear/Ishmael, because the LORD has shma/heard your affliction.
17:18 And Abraham said to elohim/God, "Oh that Yishma-el/God-will-hear/Ishmael might live before you!"
20a (God said,) “As for Yishma-el/God-will-hear/Ishmael, I have shma/heard you.
Random Walk in a Gallery of Religious Art, Step 30: Genesis 21:5-14, Abraham Casting Out Hagar and Ishmael, by Il Guercino (F. F. Barbieri) (7/13/15)
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An interesting thing that I just learned while preparing another study is that artists in 17th and 18th centuries often dressed Biblical characters in modern clothing and placed them in modern settings. Silly me, I had always assumed they didn’t know any better. No-oo. They did it on purpose, with the idea that I could have been the one in that situation. I could have sold my brother into slavery. I could have been the villain or hero of this story. The Bible isn’t about some old guys who lived a long time ago – it’s about me. So here we have Abraham repudiating Hagar and Ishmael in 1657, wearing the rich Italian clothing appropriate to Abraham’s wealth. My favorite part of this painting is Ishmael. The scripture tells how Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar feel about the situation, but all it says about Ishmael is that Hagar left him under a bush so that she didn’t have to listen to him cry. This picture poignantly suggests why he is crying: he doesn’t want to leave his daddy. Previous Step. Next step. |
 "Abraham Casting Out Hagar and Ishmael" by Il Guercino (F. F. Barbieri), from the Gamble family Bible, now in the private collection of Regina Hunter. Photography by Daryl Lee. |
Genesis 25:20-34, Esau (6/3/15)
sear/hairy, Esav/feeling rough > Esau;
admonee/reddish, adom/ruddy > Edom/Edom
Esau had two names, “Harry” and “Red.” He had more hair than most babies when he was born, which is why they called him Harry. He had a ruddy complexion, and he sold his birthright for some red stew (it must have had a lot of paprika in it), which is why they called him Red.
Pay attention to Jacob and the incident of the heel; we’ll come back to that tomorrow.
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25 The first came out admonee/red, all his body like a sear/hairy cloak, so they called his name Esav/Esau.
29-30 Once when Jacob was cooking stew, Esav/Esau came in from the field, and he was exhausted. And Esav/Esau said to Jacob, "Let me eat some of that adom/red-stew, for I am exhausted!" (Therefore his name was called
Genesis 27:1-36, Jacob (6/4/15)
aqeb/heel, aqab/seize by the heel, supplant > Yaaqob/Supplanter/Jacob
Jacob talked Esau into selling his birthright, and then he lied to his father and stole Esau’s blessing. Jacob was a real heel.
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11 But Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, "Behold, my brother Esav/Esau is a sair/hairy man, and I am a smooth man."
36a Esau said, "Is he not rightly named Yaaqob/Supplanter/Jacob? For he has aqeb/supplanted/cheated me these two times."
More Voices of the Bible
Biblical Humor
Playful Appellations, 1
Playful Appellations, 2
Less Playful Appellations
Five Funny Stories
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