🔼The name Enosh: Summary
- Meaning
- Man, Weak But Social Individual
- Etymology
- From the noun אנוש ('enosh), man, from the verb אנש ('anash), to be weak and social.
🔼The name Enosh in the Bible
The name Enosh is applied only once in the Bible. The one and only Enosh is the son of Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve (Genesis 4:26). Since he is an ancestor of Christ, he appears in the Lucan genealogy (spelled Ενως; Luke 3:38).
🔼Etymology of the name Enosh
Enosh is one of a few Hebrew words that indicate man or mankind and it is rooted in the verb אנש ('anash), meaning to be weak and social:
איש אנש
The verb אנש ('anash) appears to emphasize the weakness of the human individual and mankind's consequent tendency to clan up and have strength in numbers first and then in social stratification. It either means to be weak or even to be sick, or it swings the other way and means to be friendly and social. It yields the important noun אנוש ('enosh), man or human male individual who is weak yet social.
In the Bible, societies are feminine (and maternal) and although some scholars insist on a whole other but identical root, the noun אשה ('isha) means woman or wife. And again perhaps from a whole other root or perhaps the same one, the noun איש ('ish) means man, or rather man of; man in some specific function such as "man of war" or "man of the earth." It's also the common word for husband.
Since societies form around central fires (or the "purifying light" of wisdom, which is where the metaphor comes from), the noun אש ('esh), fire, may also derive from this verb.
🔼Enosh meaning
For a meaning of the name Enosh, The name Enosh, Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names proposes Man Frail And Miserable. NOBSE Study Bible Name List reads Mortal.