I’ve written about the biblical judge Jephthah before, but while on the subject of name puns I thought I would add some interesting information about his name. I have to credit Rabba Dr Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz for bringing this to my attention during a recent lecture at the University of Sydney on anonymous women in the Hebrew Bible.
The most perplexing part of the biblical story of Jephthah (and probably the most widely known detail of the story) is his vow to offer a sacrifice to God if he was victorious in a battle. Jephthah vowed to sacrifice “as a burnt offering” whatever (or whoever) first came out of his door when he returned home, and he then faced the terrible dilemma in having to sacrifice his daughter to fulfill that vow (go to my post linked above for further details of the vow and whether it was carried out).
The tale of Jephthah’s vow and sacrifice contains several motifs which can be found in folk literature all over the world, such as a rash vow bringing disaster on the person who made it, and a father being obliged to sacrifice his only child, including the tale of Iphigenia in Greek mythology. Interestingly, in both stories the daughters run to greet their father, they both accept voluntarily to be sacrificed and both stories end with the daughter being lamented and memorialised by other young women. In my previous post on the subject I explored some of the evidence for the suggestion that this part of Jephthah’s story was inserted into the book of Judges at a later date, and I won’t go into any further detail about that here, except to say one thing. Dr Taylor-Guthartz noted in her lecture that Jephthah’s Hebrew name (יִפְתָּח) comes from the root פתח to open and in this grammatical form means “he opened”. Who opened, or what he opened is not evident in the name itself, although as the story progresses Jephthah realises his awful mistake and exclaims “For I have opened my mouth to the LORD, and I cannot take back my vow” (Judges 11:35).
There is a pun here on Jephthah’s name (“he opened”), playing on the fact that he opened his mouth too quickly or rashly. Against the background of the evidence advanced by some scholars that this part of the story is probably a late addition, influenced by similar popular tales, I am going to suggest that the post-exilic editor who inserted the story about the vow took the opportunity to play on Jephthah’s name in the process.
מִקְרָא Mikra: Biblical studies 
Well the Moab and Amman name giving runs in Greek as well. They would kind of translate as Μωὰβ=I seek father Ἀμμάν=to mother.
That pun does not seem to work as well in the Greek version of the story as the opening of the mouth is rendered ἤνοιξα which couldn’t be farther removed from Ἰεφθάε.
But another similarity could work and even bring us back to the myth of Iphigenia. If the name Ἰεφθάε is meant to be a rendering of Greek ἴφθιμος which means stout, strong or mighty, and he is announced in Judges 11:1 as ἐπηρμένος δυνάμει so that works alright. Then we see in line 34 that the otherwise unnamed daughter is the μονογενής or only born of Ἰεφθάε then every Greek reader would take that as reference to ἰφιγένεια. Not the strongest of cases, I admit, but the queer coincidence is compelling.
It is difficult, impossible perhaps, to successfuly translate puns or wordplays from one language into another and retain the pun. It seems to me that the translators of the Septuagint rarely, if ever, even attempted it so I personally don’t think there’s much point in looking for them in a Greek translation.
I can’t deny that, and I am not trying to.
Nevertheless I tried to find at least an attempt to replicate that pun if one was intended. Of course we don’t even know if the author of the Greek version even had a Hebrew Vorlage with that same pun or even recognized it when he saw it. We know the art of punning with names was not peculiar to only the Hebrew language, so I was only checking the case here as a bridge to my own hunch following.
A cute Greek example of name punning in the Septuagint comes to mind:
In Genesis 25:40 we read:
καὶ εἶπεν Ἠσαὺ τῷ Ἰακώβ Γεῦσόν με ἀπὸ τοῦ ἑψέματος τοῦ πυρροῦ τούτου, ὅτι ἐκλείπω ἐγώ· διὰ τοῦτο ἐκλήθη τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Ἐδώμ.
In this sentence the name of Esau is sort of aetiologically connected to Edom. But the Greek pun intended is aimed at Esau’s almost glutinous propensity for food and the word Ἐδώμ is then just calling him eating or devouring in Greek.
Clasina, this is interesting and I’d love to know more about how (in Greek) “the name of Esau is sort of aetiologically connected to Edom.” From the Hebrew it appears that the writer may not have actually known the meaning or etymology of “Esau” (עֵשָׂו) and so he doesn’t really explain the connection between his name and his characteristics. So Gen 25:25 says “the first one emerged reddish, like a hairy mantle, so they named him Esau”. Here the word “hairy”(שֵׂעָר) is related to the place Seir (שֵׂעִיר), in the territory of Edom which is often associated with it (see Gen 32:3; 33:16; 36:8-9; Deut 2:4-5, 12, 22, 29; Josh 24:4). So it seems that “hairy” is a play on the name Seir (or vice versa), but not on “Esau”. Likewise, “Edom” (אֱדוֹם) is a play on the word for “red” (אָדֹם). But just how “Esau” relates to “hairy” or “red” is anyone’s guess! Gen 36:9 brings all the names together: “These are the descendants of Esau, ancestor of the Edomites, in the hill country of Seir.”
Your comment about Esau’s “almost glutinous propensity for food” is really interesting in this context. In the Hebrew version of the verse you quoted (Gen 25:30) Esau says ““Let me eat some of that red red, for I am famished!” He was so eager to get to the food he just impatiently points to the pot of boiling stew and says “give me some of that red red” repeating the word “red” but without even trying to come up with the right word for “stew”. Several translations render the repetition into English as “that red stuff”. Similarly, Robert Alter points out that the word for “eat” isn’t the regular word for eating, but is a cruder word and one which he translates as “gulping down”. That would fit with your idea.
Whoops, seems like opening another can of worms. I looked at the MT now and it strikes me as strange to force the etymology or aetiology of Edom or whatever is going on here on the red soup when Esau was already described as reddish when he was born. If I compare the Hebrew and Greek version(with my hypothesis it is about eating, devouring or ἔδω=ἐσθίω)I think the Greek reading doesn’t come down as forced as the Hebrew version. Seems like the MT author was struggling to make some sense. Are we sure the Greek is a translation of the same text or is it the other way round in this case?
One thing we need to do with name puns is to ask which came first: the name, or the origin-story? It seems highly likely to me that Edom was given that name (which means “red” in Hebrew, and almost certainly in Edomite which is a cognate semitic language) because the rocks and soil are red. If you’ve been to, or seen pictures of, Petra – the “rose red city” carved out of rock – you will understand why the place could be given the name “Red” (we do the same thing when we call Petra the “rose city”). Then later, stories developed which played on the name “Edom/Red” and created puns. Two of these stories are in Genesis: one says it was named Red because it’s originator was red-coloured at birth; another said he was nicknamed Red because of the incident when he wanted some red stew. Neither story is an accurate historical account of how the territory got its name. The fact, most likely, is that the country was named Edom/Red FIRST, and THEN these stories developed to play on the name. To some extent (a large extent in my opinion) these origin-stories are comical.
A similar example in Genesis is the story of the birth of the two sons born to Lot – Moab and Ammon. The names of these territories were probably long in use by the time the stories were written, and the stories then made a mocking wordplay to say that the names of two of Israel’s enemies related to their incestuous origins.
This is why the etymology of the names is “forced” – because rather than the stories giving an historical account of how the names were given to the territories or tribes, they are instead wordplays which mock them.