🔼The name Chinnereth or Chinneroth: Summary
- Meaning
- Harps or Lyres
- Etymology
- From the plural of the noun כנור (kinnor), harp or lyre.
🔼The name Chinnereth or Chinneroth in the Bible
The name Chinnereth or Chinneroth belongs to a town, a lake or the western shore of that lake, which in later times became known as the Lake of Galilee or the Sea of Tiberias, while our name Chinnereth/Chinneroth became transliterated into Greek as Gennesaret.
Our name comes in two versions. The one spelled כנרת, or Chinnereth, occurs four times in the Bible: in Numbers 34:11, Deuteronomy 3:17, Joshua 13:27 and 19:35. The one spelled כנרות, or Chinneroth, occurs in Joshua 11:2, 12:3 and 1 Kings 15:20.
🔼Etymology of the name Chinnereth or Chinneroth
The כנור or Chinneroth version of our name is spelled identically to the plural of the noun כנור (kinnor), meaning harp or lyre:
כנור
The noun כנור (kinnor) describes the harp or lyre, which was an instrument mostly of social felicity and merriment, and provided the musical foundation of both the temple services and the king's government: the mystical heart of celebration to the rational head of legislation and law.
This plural of our word כנור (kinnor), meaning harp, is quite common in the Bible and occurs in 2 Samuel 6:5, 1 Kings 10:12, 1 Chronicles 13:8, 15:6, 15:21, 15:28, 16:5, 25:1, 25:6, 2 Chronicles 5:12, 9:11, 20:28, 29:25, Nehemiah 12:27, Psalm 137:2 and Isaiah 30:32. However, according to the medieval Masoretes, this plural noun, כנרות, was pronounced as kinnorot, whereas our name was pronounced slightly different, as kinarot. The version כנרת, Chinnereth, may even point at some otherwise forgotten and ancient feminine singular variant: כנרה (kinra).
🔼Chinnereth meaning
As we discuss in our much more elaborate article on Gennesaret, the Greek version of Chinnereth: despite the slight difference in pronunciation, our name was probably commonly understood to indeed mean Harps. Beside Tiberias, another important city of Gennesaret was Magdala, which was also known as Magadan, which may likewise relate to a word for harp, namely μαγαδις (magadis).