🔼The name Barachel: Summary
- Meaning
- God Has Blessed
- Etymology
- From the verb ברך (barak), to kneel or to bless, and (2) the word אל ('el), God.
🔼The name Barachel in the Bible
There's only one man with the name Barachel in the Bible. Barachel the Buzite of the family of Ram, is the father of Elihu, the fourth, and youngest, friend of Job, who waits for thirty-one chapters until his older companions — Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar — are done talking (Job 32:2). Elihu reckons himself God's gift to Job, but when Elihu finishes explaining things, God raises his voice and says, "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?" (38:2)
🔼Etymology of the name Barachel
The name Barachel consists of two elements. The final part is אל (El), the common abbreviation of Elohim:
אל אלה
In names אל ('el) usually refers to אלהים ('elohim), that is Elohim, or God, also known as אלה ('eloah). In English, the words 'God' and 'god' exclusively refer to the deity but in Hebrew the words אל ('l) and אלה ('lh) are far more common and may express approach and negation, acts of wailing and pointing, and may even mean oak or terebinth.
The first part of the name Barachel comes from the verb ברך (barak), meaning either to kneel or to bless:
ברך
The verb ברך (barak) mostly means to bless and sometimes to kneel. But the noun ברך (berek) always means knee, and the noun ברכה (beraka) always means blessing. The opposite of to bless is to curse, or ארר ('arar), which literally means to bind or restrict.
That probably means that the act of blessing had to do with the act of giving someone the freedom to do whatever this person had in their heart to do. The freely moving knee, after all, makes it possible to walk and run and go wherever one wants.
🔼Barachel meaning
For a meaning of the name Barachel, NOBSE Study Bible Name List proposes God Has Blessed. Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names reads Blessed Of The Lord, and BDB Theological Dictionary says El Doth Bless.