🔼The name En-hakkore: Summary
- Meaning
- The Eye Of The Caller, Partridge Spring
- Etymology
- From (1) the noun עין ('ayin), eye or fountain, and (2) the verb קרא (qara'), to call out or the derived noun קרא (qore'), partridge.
🔼The name En-hakkore in the Bible
The name En-hakkore occurs only once in the Bible. Right after the judge Samson famously pummeled a thousand Philistines to death with a donkey's jaw bone (Judges 15:15), he realized that the effort had left him rather thirsty.
He cried out to YHWH and the Lord answered by splitting open a hollow place near Lehi, where the slaughter took place, and water sprang from it. In response to his miraculous salvation, Samson named that spring En-hakkore (Judges 15:19).
🔼Etymology of the name En-hakkore
The name En-hakkore obviously consists of two elements. The first part comes from the noun עין (ayin), meaning either spring/fountain or eye:
עין
The noun עין ('ayin) means both eye and fountain, well or spring. This might be explained by noting that the eye produces water in the form of tears, but perhaps more so in that water and light were considered deeply akin (see our article on the verb נהר, nahar, both meaning to shine and to flow). In that sense, the eye was considered a fountain that watered the outward face with water and the internal mind with light. Verb עין ('in) means to eye or regard. Noun מעין (ma'yan) describes a place with a spring.
The second part of our name comes from the verb קרא (qara'), meaning to call out:
קרר
Root קרר (qarar) means to cool off in a thermodynamic sense: to go from hot gas to cool liquid to a cold solid. Socially this would describe warring tribes "cooling off" into culturally compatible peoples and liquid trading networks and ultimately the formation of cities and solid nations. Intellectually, diverse viewpoints might congeal into local conventions and ultimately a global standard.
Adjective קר (qar) means cool. Nouns קר (qor) and קרה (qara) mean cold. Noun מקרה (meqera), meaning coolness.
Noun קיר (qir) is one of a few words for wall. It might relate to the root because bricks are congealed mud, and a wall is bricks pieced together (non-standard bricks take some puzzling and pounding). The noun קרקע (qarqa') means floor; earth trampled into a compact state. The verb קרקר (qarqar) means to forcibly compact, to pound down.
קרה
Verb קרה (qara), and its by-form קרא (qara'), mean to near, to meet or to happen upon. Noun קורה (qora) describes a rafter or beam; the things that come together to form a roof, and which obviously relate to bricks pieced into a wall. Verb קרה (qara) means to piece beams together and noun מקרה (meqareh) means literally place of beams; beam-work.
Nouns קרה (qareh) and מקרה (miqreh) mean chance or accident, fortune or fate. Noun קרי (qeri) means opposition, contrariness. At a social level, chance meetings and opposition are the very rafters that carry society's roof.
For this same reason, the nouns קריה (qiryah) and קרת (qeret) are the words for city and federation of cities.
קרא
Verb קרא (qara'), which is identical to the by-form of the previous, means to call or call near. Adjective קריא (qari') means called or summoned. Noun קריאה (qeri'a) means proclamation. And noun מקרא (miqra') means convocation or called assembly. The noun קרא (qore') describes a partridge; literally "a caller."
The ha-part of our name comes from the particle ה (he), which is either the definite article ("the"), or else a particle of direction ("towards the") or ascription ("of the"). Whatever it is, it puts emphasis on the calling part. En-hakkore is not simply a well of someone who calls out, but of he who calls out; the caller.
🔼En-hakkore meaning
For a meaning of the name En-hakkore, NOBSE Study Bible Name List reads The Spring Of Him Who Called and Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names has Fountain Of The Calling.
BDB Theological Dictionary lists the name En-hakkore in its article on the noun עין (ayin), meaning spring and translates it (astoundingly) with Partridge Spring (from the noun קרא (qore'), meaning partridge, also from the verb קרא I (qara' I), meaning to call out). And then it should be noted that the noun עין ('ayin) also means "eye" and may have been deployed against the verb קרא I (qara') as a kind of facetious contrast.