Today we will finish introducing the heroines of the Book of Genesis to enter the Book of Exodus, to continue discovering ideas of names for girls inspired by the Old Testament and telling the stories and the meaning of such beautiful names.
Asenat, the Egyptian wife
We remember Joseph, the penultimate of Jacob’s sons, very loved by him since he was the son of his favorite wife, Rachel . We will not elaborate on the details of his adventure but it is necessary to remember that, envied by his brothers for his dreams in which he presented himself as the most important of them and for the excessive love that his father showed him, he ended up being attacked by them. and sold as a slave.
While Jacob mourned for his teenage son whom he believed dead, eaten by a wild animal, Joseph ended up in Egypt, sold to a high official of the pharaoh, Potiphar. Potiphar’s wife, whose name the Bible does not give but who tradition has called Zuleica , will try, in vain, to seduce José and, when rejected, accuses him of having attacked her and he is imprisoned.
After repeatedly demonstrating his intelligence, his managerial skills and his ability to interpret dreams, Joseph will not only be released from prison but will become the right hand of Pharaoh himself. José will live surrounded by dignities, as a high Egyptian official and was granted as a wife to Potiphar’s daughter (it is not clear that she is the same Potiphar from the beginning of the adventure), called Asenat .
Asenat’s name means “dedicated to the goddess Neith”, a goddess of the Egyptian pantheon who is related to hunting, warfare, wisdom and is also identified as the mother of the gods and caretaker of the dead.
We don’t know too much about Asenat , but she was the mother of Joseph’s two sons: Manasseh and Ephraim, who will end up being blessed by old Jacob as if they were their own children and will therefore receive a double inheritance from their grandfather to compensate for their suffering. of José in the years of slavery or the great joy that turned out to be the meeting with his family.
Well, Joseph, in short, will end up welcoming his father and his brothers and nephews, up to 70 people, in Egypt, to save them from hunger in a time of terrible drought, the famous years of the “lean cows” that Joseph had anticipated translating dreams of the pharaoh.
So we left the sons of Jacob with their families living in Egypt and they stayed there for many years.
Puah y Sifrah
After a long time it turned out that the people of Israel had grown a lot and Pharaoh himself feared their power, so he spoke with the midwives who cared for the Hebrew women and ordered them to kill the males as they were born. The women, whose names we know, were Puah , which means “girl” and Sifrah , which means “beauty” or “improved”, coming from the Hebrew LE-SAPER, which is “to improve”.
The two midwives disobeyed Pharaoh and allowed the babies to live despite what had been ordered. Asked by Pharaoh for the reasons for the survival of male children, they stated that women were very strong and gave birth before they arrived, so they could no longer do anything against babies.
Very brave, resisting injustice and disobeying criminal laws, these matrons Puah and Sifrah , who saved so many lives, surely risking their own lives.
Miriam and Sephora
Pharaoh will not settle and order that all male children be thrown into the river. When the protagonist of the Exodus is born, the child who will be Moses, an older sister he had appears watching over him, who was the one who was watching over that nothing happened to him on his journey through the Nile and suggested to the savior, who was no other Than the cruel Pharaoh’s daughter, who hired Hebrew nurses to feed the little one rescued from the waters. And thus, Moses’ real mother was his nurse hired by the adoptive mother. Women disobeying the law and creating, weaving, together, life.
The sister of Moisés, whose name is not given to us at first, will later appear as a person of enormous strength. Her name is Miriam or Mirjam. The etymology of the name in Hebrew means “bitter sea” or “myrrh of the sea” coming from the Hebrew words MIR and JAM, which mean, respectively, “bitter” and “sea”.
It would then be “bitter sea” or “myrrh of the sea” or “tears of the sea”. More modern interpretations of this name derive from the Arabic (Egypt), from the root “mry” = “beloved”. Or, from the modern Hebrew and the letters “mry” another meaning is derived that would come to be “fertility” and Mirjam would then be “the fertile”. Clearly, there is no single answer to the meaning of this name.
Before returning to Miriam, who will accompany Moses in the Exodus, we are going to introduce his wife, Zippor, whose name is ZIPPORAH in Hebrew and means “bird”, representing a white bird, a little bird. The charming Zippora was not Hebrew either, nor was she a submissive woman who allowed herself to be handled, indeed, she stars in one of those chilling scenes in which terror is mixed with admiration. I think she must be a priestess or have a lot of cold blood.
Moses had saved her and her sisters from marauders and soon Moses took her as his wife and stayed to live in Maidan, residing there for 40 years. They had two sons, Gersón and Eliezer.
The little one was a day old when Moses received from God the command to return to Egypt to prepare the salvation of his people. The interpretations of what happens then are varied, but the reality is that the text says that God was angry with Moses and wanted to kill him, becoming very serious. Sephora understood what was happening, that it was nothing other than the fact that little Eliezer had not been circumcised as ordered by the Hebrew tradition and she, with a flint, cuts the foreskin of her son and touches Moses’ genitals with the stained stone, claiming him as “husband of blood”. Impressive the scene. With her reaction, the kind and quiet Sephora earns my admiration.
The Exodus mentions, later, already on the long journey in the desert, that Moses’ wife was despised by her brothers for being Kushita (Nubian) and, therefore, presumably black skinned. It is not clear which woman this is, if they refer to the maidanite Sefora by some intricate etymological relationship that I do not get to see very clearly or to another companion of Moses. We don’t know much about her anyway.
However, it is related to Miriam’s reappearance in history. We know from her that she was traveling on Sinai and had great influence on the people, like the other brother, Aaron, given the difficulty Moses had in expressing himself verbally. Miriam is considered a prophetess and led women in songs and poems of praise to God.
It happened that she and Aaron got angry with Moses for his Kushite wife and murmured, considering that they were also messengers of God. But He put them in their place in a very forceful way and also punished Miriam with leprosy, although the infection lasted only 7 days and then she was forgiven, cured and reintegrated to the people on her journey.
None of our characters will ever cross the Jordan and will end their days seeing, from afar, the Promised Land to which their children and grandchildren will arrive guided by Josué, a descendant of Ephraim, the son of Joseph and Asenat . But the story of the Hebrews in the Promised Land and the adventures of their heroines will be left for another day.
With this we finish the review through the Books of Genesis and Exodus, in which we have introduced you to the biblical heroines of the most beautiful names and symbolism, to give you ideas on feminine names for babies .
In Babies and more | Female baby names: Old Testament characters (I), (II) and (III), Baby names: mythological heroines (I), (II), ( III ), Female baby names: Egyptian goddesses and queens, Names Male Baby Names: Egyptian Gods and Pharaohs, Female Baby Names: Egyptian Origin, Baby Names: Bible Characters
