Tishbite meaning

Meaning

Homesteader, Returnee

Etymology

From the noun תושב (toshab), sojourner, from the verb ישב (yashab), to sit or dwell.

Related names

• Via שוב (shub): Eliashib, Ishbi-benob, Jashobeam, Jashub, Jashubi-lehem, Jeshebeab, Joshbekashah, Josheb-basshebeth, Joshibiah, Jushab-hesed, Meshobab, Sabbath, Sachia, Shabbethai, Shear-jashub, Shebaniah, Shebna(h), Shebuel, Shobab, Shobai-Shobi

There are one or two Tishbites in the Bible, depending on which version we look at:

• The most famous Tishbite (and the only one actually called one) is Elijah the Tishbite, who rose to renown as the nemesis of king Ahab and queen Jezebel of Israel (1 Kings 17:1). The ethnonym Tishbite could come from a place or even an ancestor called תשבה (Tishbe? Tishbah?) or תשב (Tesheb? Tashib?) or even תשבי (Tishbi). But whatever it was, people in Elijah's time all seemed to know that he was a Tishbite. When king Ahaziah fell out of a window, he dispatched messengers to Baal-zebub for advice. The Lord sent Elijah to intercept them and when they reported this to their king, Ahaziah asked them to describe him. His men described Elijah as a hairy man wearing a leather girdle, whereupon the king replied: that was Elijah the Tishbite (2 Kings 1:8). And when general Jehu had queen Jezebel thrown out of a window, he growled that he had fulfilled the words of YHWH as spoken by Elijah the Tishbite (2 Kings 9:36).
• The other Tishbite of the Bible isn't actually called a Tishbite, and many people would insist that he isn't even in the Bible. His name was Tobit (or Tobias), and his story is told in the apocryphal Book of Tobit. We only have that book in Greek and some fragments in Hebrew and Aramaic, but these fragments don't contain the reference to Tobit's hometown Tishbah or Thisbe, which occurs in Tobit 1:2: Θισβη which is probably a transliteration of the Hebrew תשבה. The story tells us that Tobit was from the tribe of Naphtali, and his hometown was situated "south of Kedesh-naphtali, in upper Galilee, above Hazor, beyond the road to the west, north of Peor".

Whether Elijah and Tobit were from the same town called Tishbah can obviously not be established. We don't even know which tribe Elijah was from. But the Book of Tobit and that of the Kings play in about the same time (8th century BC) and Tobit and Elijah were approximate contemporaries.

It's not even sure whether Elijah was called a Tishbite because he came from Tishbah (or something like that), or even whether Tishbite should be regarded as a name or perhaps as a title or epithet. 1 Kings 17:1 reads אליהו התשבי מתשבי גלעד (elijah ha tishby me tishby gilead), or Elijah the Tishbite from the Tishbites of Gilead — or something along those lines, as this sentence can be translated in all kinds of ways: NAS and JSP read "Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the settlers of Gilead;" NIV has "Elijah the Tishbite, from Tishbe in Gilead;" ASV has "Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the sojourners of Gilead;" And KJV, Darby and Young have "Elijah the Tishbite, of the inhabitants of Gilead".

The word תשבי (tishby), which is translated as Tishbite when it applies to Elijah, occurs twice more in the Bible: In Ezekiel 26:20 YHWH foretells the destruction of Tyre to the point where she will no longer be inhabited (say NAS, KJV, JSP, ASV, Darby and Young) or return (say NIV and NAS in a footnote). And in Hosea 3:3 the prophet Hosea instructs his wayward but retrieved wife that for many days she would have to stay with him (says NAS), live with him (says NIV), abide for him (say KJV, ASV and Darby), sit solitary of him (says JSP), remain for me (says Young).

Even more spectacular: the familiar story of Romeo and Juliet is very much alike the Iliad in that both are dramatically enhanced meditations on the relationship between law and sentiment, between rules and feelings, between duty and pleasure, between the invincible sun and the impermanent moon — and to give a hint: before Paris of Troy swept Helen off her feet, she was legally married to the king of Sparta, meaning that the war between the Greeks and the Trojans had nothing to do with Helen being so very pretty and everything with the supremacy of law over sentiment.

The Iliad is about the very first and most important step away from natural tribal tyranny and toward the miracle of the democratic republic (see our article on παρθενος, parthenos, Virgin). This first step is taken when rulers first begin to understand that a stable society depends on the sanctity of any man's property rights. A man's property was summarized as his estate, or his "house" (our word economy derives from οικος, oikos, meaning house), of which his marriage was the foundational unit: the verb δαμαζω (damazo) means to domesticate (from domus, house); noun δαμαρ (damar) means wife.

The old world was characterized by the law of the jungle, in which the strongest individual had all the authority and access to all the resources. The new world — and that is the world which the Greeks had begun to explore in Homer's late Bronze Age — was one of law and order: a world held together by covenant rather than appetite. Not Helen's pretty face launched a thousand ships but rather the understanding that any man's sovereign rights to his own house was the key to an entire world of order and peace. In the Bible, the exact same theme of mighty rulers learning about the link between societal health and any man's house is fleshed out most obviously in the wife-heist cycle that runs from Genesis 12:17 to Genesis 20:3 to Genesis 26:8-9. It also features in the stories of Hosea and Gomer, and David and Michal. The proverbial decade of the Trojan War, which is revisited in Odysseus' ten year journey home to his beleaguered wife, appears in the Bible for instance in the duration of stay of Naomi in Moab (Ruth 1:4). The happy end of Boaz and Ruth obviously revisits the theme of the returned wife.

Quite in that same sense, Romeo represents the political and legal reality of Rome whereas Juliet represents the misplaced populist passion for the Republic with which Julius crossed the Rubicon. Julius wished nothing more than to save the Republic, but when he made his legion cross the Rubicon, he became the very tyrant that the Republic was designed to keep out. When the Republic failed at its most primary mission, it could only die. And that's what it did. That's what both did. What emerged was the Roman Empire: a satanic monster that spread death and enslavement, and cast the world into a period of darkness that we're only now (in the 21st century) slowly coming out of.

One of Shakespeare's many innovations to this story is that he famously made Juliet the sun — "What light through yonder window breaks? It's the east (קדם, qedem, means both east and antiquity) and Juliet is the sun! Arise fair sun, and kill the envious moon" (R&J 2.2). In these famous lines, Shakespeare rather obviously also commented on the rise of Islam (remember that Luther had translated the Quran in 1543): "I seek refuge with the Lord of Dawn [...] against the harm of the envier when he envies" (Quran.113). Shakespeare also surely remembered that Virgil had ascribed the Roman royals a Trojan heritage (see our article on Aeneas), which they eagerly considered a great compliment. Had they known their classics, they would have realized that Virgil declared them quite as misguided by their passions as the Trojans had been, and tacitly predicted their ultimate demise likewise — regardless of whether this would come by Great Horse or Chariot of Fire.

When enlightenment comes from fire, a careful approach is warranted, or so warned Daedalus. Jesus warned too, but for the broad road to perdition (πλατυς, platus, broad or populistic). Three centuries before Shakespeare, the same Virgil had guided Dante on a journey that again contemplated the supremacy of law over sentiment, but which recognized divine revelation as an even greater authority than mere reason. Hoe divine revelation reaches humanity may remain unclear to the rational, but compare Genesis 2:7 to Acts 2:1-2, and John 20:22 to 2 Timothy 3:16.

Neither Shakespeare nor Dante were entirely original when writing their great accounts, as both were clearly inspired by a story told (or retold rather: the tributaries go back to deep antiquity) by the Roman poet Ovid, about two Babylonian lovers called Pyramus and Thisbe, who come to their untimely end beneath a μορον (moron), or mulberry, a proverbially dim glowing dark red fruit. The name Pyramus is clearly designed to point to the word πυρ (pur), meaning fire, which is significant because the genitive form of the name Elijah as used in the Septuagint (Ηλιας), namely Ηλιου, is the same as the genitive of the name Ηλιος (Helios), meaning Sun.

The name Tishbite is thought to be related to the noun תושב (toshab), meaning sojourner, and both to come from the verb ישב (yashab), meaning to sit, to remain or to dwell:

None of the sources we customarily consult dare to propose a translation of the ethnonym Tishbite. BDB Theological Dictionary lists the מתשבי (metishby) of 1 Kings 17:1 under the verb שבה (shaba), meaning to take captive, but adds a question mark (possibly also because there is no mention of any Gileadites being captured during the time of Elijah).

Elijah the Tishbite may be Elijah From Tishbah now living in Gilead, but he may also be Elijah the Homesteader from the Homesteaders of Gilead. He may be Elijah the Answer Man from the Answer Men of Gilead. Or Elijah the Returnee from the Returnees of Gilead (if that would refer to an otherwise unrecorded small-scale heist, such as the abduction of the sons of Ehud — 1 Chronicles 8:6 — or the women of Ziklag — 1 Samuel 30:2 — or Lot, the nephew of Abraham, and his people — Genesis 14:16).

We really don't know.