🔼The name Bidkar: Summary
- Meaning
- Son Of Thrusting Through
- Etymology
- From (1) the noun בן (ben), son, and (2) the verb דקר (daqar), to thrust through.
🔼The name Bidkar in the Bible
The name Bidkar occurs only once in the Bible. It belonged to a military official in service of king Jehu of Israel, who lobbed the body of rival king Joram onto the field of Naboth the Jezreelite, after Jehu shot him through the heart (2 Kings 9:25).
🔼Etymology of the name Bidkar
There's no real consensus on the etymology of this name. Some scholars say it means "servant of Kar," but it's not clear in which language that would work, or who this Kar might be. There are two figures in Greek mythology named Kar (or Car), and the בד-part of our name could be a contracted form of עבד ('ebed), meaning servant (see the name Obed), but all this is really quite shaky and seems rather arbitrary. Bidkar is also a popular surname in India, and hey, maybe Jehu's officer was a wandering Sikh.
In names and compounds, the familiar noun בן (ben), meaning son, is often contracted into just the letter beth and more plausible is the possibility that Bidkar is a perfectly allowable contracted form of the name Ben-deker. The first part of the name Bidkar would then be a remnant of the noun בן (ben), meaning son:
בן
The noun בן (ben) means son, or more general: a member of one particular social or economic node — called a "house", which is built upon the instructions of one אב ('ab), or "father" — within in a larger economy (hence: the "sons of the prophet" are the members of the prophet-class; the prophets). This noun obviously resembles the verb בנה (bana), to build, and the noun אבן ('eben), stone.
Our noun's feminine version, namely בת (bat), means daughter, which resembles the noun בית (bayit), meaning house. Sometimes our noun is contracted into a single letter ב, whose name beth comes from בית (bayit) and means "house" as well. As a prefix, the letter ב (be) means "in." The word for mother, אם ('em), is highly similar to that of tribe or people, אמה ('umma).
And the second part of our name would come from the verb דקר (daqar), meaning to pierce or thrust through:
דקר
The verb דקר (daqar) means to pierce or thrust a person fatally through with a sword or spear, or figuratively with hunger. Noun מדקרה (madqara) means a piercing.
🔼Bidkar meaning
For a meaning of the name Bidkar, NOBSE Study Bible Name List goes with the curious Servant Of Kar and Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names proposes Son Of Thrusting Through. BDB Theological Dictionary does not interpret this name, but does list it under the possible contracted ben-names.