🔼The name Shamhuth: Summary
- Meaning
- Deserts, Desolation
- Renowned Shouter
- Etymology
- From the verb שמם (shamem), to be desolate or appalled.
- From (1) the verb הות (hut), to shout at, and (2) the noun שם (shem), name or fame.
🔼The name Shamhuth in the Bible
The name Shamhuth occurs only once in the Bible. It belongs to Shamhuth the Izrahite, who was one of the twelve military commanders who cycled through the divisions of king David's army (1 Chronicles 27:8).
🔼Etymology of the name Shamhuth
It's unclear where the name Shamhuth comes from or how it is constructed. Scholars generally propose that this name is "probably" a corrupted form of the name שמות (Shammoth), but supply no argument or reason to actually accept this. But if it were, it would have been derived from the verb שמם (shamen), meaning to be desolate or appalled:
שמם
The verb שמם (shamem) means to be desolate, devastated or abandoned. It usually describes a literal empty place but may also be used to describe a mental state, in which case it refers to being appalled.
Adjective שמם (shamem) means devastated or deserted. Nouns שממה (shemama), שמה (shamma), שממון (shimmamon) and משמה (meshamma) denote various forms and degrees of waste, devastation, horror or appalment.
Verb ישם (yasham) is a by-form of the previous and means the same, albeit with an apparent emphasis on dry and arid lands. Noun ישימון (yeshimon, or variants) refers to desolate regions and mostly describes deserts. Noun ישימה (yeshima) describes the mental equivalent (whatever that might be).
שמים
Noun שמים (shamayim) means heavens. It's a plural form of a non-existing singular word שמי (shamay), coming from an assumed root שמה (shama). Whether or not this word is formally related to the above, to the ancients the heavens were clearly known as a vast emptiness that filled the observer with existential horror.
שם
Equally striking is the noun שם (shem), which means name or renown. This suggests that the ancients saw someone's empty head as the same howling infinite as empty space, and all formal knowledge of the whole of creation that a person might accrue equal to this person's name.
A Hebrew audience, however, would have likely objected to the unaccounted for letter ה (he) that sits in the middle of our name. A creative member of that audience might have even figured that the name Shamhuth consists of two distinct elements. The first one of these could be the noun שם (shem), meaning name or fame:
שם
The noun שם (shem) means name, but the ancients saw one's name as summary of the deeds and traits this person was known for (e.g. He Who Slew Many In The Great War). That means that when Man named the animals (Genesis 2:19), he didn't call them Tom, Dick or Harry but rather consciously reckoned his fellow creatures for their essential natures (which in turn cemented his own).
In case one had no claim to fame, one would be prone to acquire a name that commemorated not one's own deeds but rather some worthy event (e.g. The Great War). Such a person's name would have the function of reminding other people of that memorable event, without in the least suggesting to embody it. Very often people would be named after traits of God (Yah's Grace, El's Wrath), which meant that the bearer was known to proclaim these traits rather than claim to be the embodiment of them.
Since the Creator's invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature can be clearly seen, being understood through what has been made (Romans 1:20), knowing the "Name of God" is the same thing as understanding the whole of creation, which in turn means that a true desire for righteousness leads to science rather than to religion.
שם
Then there is the identical adverb שם (sham), which means here, there, hither or thither. These two words may have accidentally evolved into the same form, but perhaps this adverb served as a sort of pronoun by which an otherwise unnamed or unspecified location was named.
The second (hypothetical) part of our name could be taken from the verb הות (hut), meaning to shout at:
הות
The verb הות (hut) means to shout at, assail or even break into. It is used only once in the Bible, in the unusual form תהותתו (thwttw). It has no extant derivations.
🔼Shamhuth meaning
The name Shamhuth looks like it could mean Famous Shouter or Here's A Shout. But for a meaning of the name Shamhuth, NOBSE Study Bible Name List follows the way of least resistance and reads Desolation. Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names, equally uninspired, proposes Deserts. BDB Theological Dictionary doesn't interpret our name but likewise assumes that it is the same as Shammoth.