Don’t Call Me Hebrew! The Mysterious Origins of the First Anti-Semitic Slur
In the Bible, the term “Hebrew” is primarily used as a derogatory racial slur. Why then do even Israelites—as well as God—employ this term?
123rf
Published: January 9, 2015
|
Last Updated: September 7, 2026
[1] In 2 Kings 18:26, the Judeans’ language is called “Yehudit.”
[2] More generally, this term tends to refer to Israelites in the presence of non-Israelites (as in Jonah 1:9).
[3] So Rashi on Gen 14:13.
[4] Ibn Ezra on Gen 10:21; Radak on Gen 14:13.
[5] See the comprehensive summaries of this material in Jean Bottéro, Le Problème desḪabiru (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1954); idem, “Ḫabiru,” Realexikon der Assyriologie 4: 14–27; Moshe Greenberg, The Ḫab/piru (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1955).
[6] For a recent review and critique of this view, see Daniel E. Fleming, The Legacy of Israel in Judah’s Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 258–69.
[7] For an English translation of these letters, see William L. Moran, The Amarna Letters(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1992), and see especially the newly released new edition of these texts by Anson Rainey (z”l): The El-Amarna Correspondence (2 vols.; eds. William S. Schniedewind and Zipora Cochavi-Rainey; Leiden: Brill 2015).
[8] Translation mine, based on the pre-publication transcriptions of Anson Rainey (z”l), now published in The El-Amarna Correspondence.
[9] “The Hebrew Conquest of Palestine,” Biblical Archaeologist 25 (1962): 66–87.
[10] The Tribes of Yahweh (New York: Orbis Books, 1979), 389–485.
[11] An archaeological enthusiast of this theory has been William G. Dever, Who Were the Early Israelites and Where did they Come From? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 182–88.
[12] See the discussions in Manfred Weippert, The Settlement of the Israelite Tribes in Palestine (London: SCM Press, 1971), 74–82, and Anson Rainey’s negative assessment in Anson F. Rainey and R. Steven Notley, The Sacred Bridge: Carta’s Atlas of the Biblical World(Jerusalem: Carta, 2006), 88–89. Rainey vocalizes the term ̔apîru (with a long second vowel) and argues that this nominal pattern would not allow the consonantal and vocalic shifts to become ̔ibri.
[13] For discussion and possible solutions, see Nadav Na’aman, “Ḫabiru and Hebrews: The Transfer of a Social Term to the Literary Sphere,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 45 (1986): 271–88; Fleming, Legacy of Israel, chs. 15–17.
[14] From the book’s cover jacket. For Egyptians and Philistines as Ham’s progeny, see Genesis 10:6–14.
[15] This is not a play on words, but rather the actual etymological derivation of the term Semitic, which should be stressed in this context.
[16] The condensed discussion in the following paragraphs is based primarily on ch. 4.
[17] The designation למילדות העבריות is ambiguous, maybe deliberately so, leaving readers to wonder (as they have) whether they are Egyptians (“the Hebrewesses’ midwives”) who show compassion for the Israelites or are themselves “Hebrewess midwives.”
[18] See Rashi on this verse for both interpretations.
[19] Another example of dehumanized Hebrews: When a Philistine garrison discovers Jonathan and his arms-bearer in 1 Sam 14:11, they exclaim: “Look, Hebrews are coming out of the holes where they have been hiding!” In this context, one can hardly miss the similarity between Hebrews (‘ibrim) and mice (‘akbarim) – distinguished by only one letter in the consonantal text (some scholars even emend the text accordingly!), hiding in holes in the ground. See Hebrews Between Cultures, 136–37.
[20] Needless to say, many source critics would attribute the changing appellations to distinct literary sources. Sternberg’s bold project is an attempt to make sense of the present form of the biblical text, showing the many insights that can be lost from a premature fragmentation of the text.
[21] Editor’s note: One great example of this phenomenon in modern times comes from Israeli politics. In 1999, in the days before the Knesset elections, the actress, Tikvah (Tiki) Dayan, called Bibi Netanyahu’s Likud party אספסוף (rabble), using the biblical term for the people who came along with the Israelites when escaping from Egypt (Num 11:4). In response, the Likud party printed out bumper stickers with their new slogan, אני אספסוף גאה, “Proud to be rabble.” ZIF
[22] Interestingly, it is Canaan, Ham’s son, who is cursed by Noah in reaction to Ham’s seeing his nakedness. This strange case of punishing the son (and only one of several offspring!) for the father’s crime as well as the anomaly that the son Canaan is mentioned (whereas the blessings of Shem and Japheth focus on Noah’s sons themselves) raise the possibility that this text has been glossed to emphasize the depravity of the Canaanites. Leaving this speculation aside, it is not a large exegetical stretch to assume that Ham’s other offspring were also implied by this curse.
