🔼The name Tebah: Summary
- Meaning
- Slaughter, Butcher
- Confidence
- Etymology
- From the verb טבח (tabah), to slaughter, butcher.
- From the verb בטח (batah), to trust or feel safe.
🔼The name Tebah in the Bible
Tebah is one of four sons of Abraham's brother Nahor with his concubine Reumah (Genesis 22:22), and that's all we know about him. After Genesis 22:22, Tebah is not mentioned anymore in the Bible.
🔼Etymology of the name Tebah
The name Tebah comes from the verb טבח (tabah) meaning to slaughter, butcher, slay, kill:
טבח
The verb טבח (tabah) means to slaughter or butcher, mostly simply in the food-prep sense. Noun טבח (tebah) means a slaughtering or a slaughter. Noun טבחה (tibha) denotes that what is slaughtered. Noun טבח (tabbah) originally meant butcher or cook, but since a company cook apparently often doubled as guard, or perhaps because guards also executed perps, this word mostly came to mean guard or bodyguard in Biblical times. This word's feminine version, טבחה (tabbaha), describes a female cook (and probably not a female bodyguard). Noun מטבח (matbeah) denotes a place of slaughter, a butchery.
🔼Tebah meaning
For a meaning of the name Tebah, NOBSE Study Bible Name List reads Slaughter. And yes, the name Tebah most directly means Slaughter, but more practically he was probably known as Butcher.
For the sake of completeness we mention the solution of Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names, who suggests that the name Tebah was formed through the process of permutation, which is the reversal of letters. Hence Jones takes this name from the verb בטח (batah), meaning to trust:
בטח
The verb בטח (batah) means to trust, feel safe or be confident. Noun בטח (betah) means safety or security. Noun בטחה (beteha) means trust of trusting. Noun בטחון (bittahon) means confidence or trust. Plural noun בטחות (battuhot) means security or safety. Noun מבטח (mibtah) describes the act of confiding or the object or state of confidence.
For a meaning of the name Tebah, Jones reads Confidence, but here at Abarim Publications we're more convinced by the similarity of the name Tebah to the verb meaning to slaughter.