🔼The name Tahpenes: Summary
- Meaning
- Head Of The Age
- Etymology
- From an Egyptian phrase.
🔼The name Tahpenes in the Bible
Tahpenes is the queen of Egypt during the time of Solomon (1 Kings 11:19-20).
At the end of his reign, Solomon married women from surrounding nations and began to worship their gods. This obviously angered God and he raised Hadad of Edom against Solomon. Hadad was living in Egypt at the time, as a refugee resulting from David's genocidal purges, and Hadad had obtained the appreciation of the Pharaoh. So much even that the Pharaoh gave Hadad his unnamed sister-in-law as a wife. She bore him Genubath, but queen Tahpenes weaned him. When Hadad learned that David had passed away he moved back to Edom and from there harassed Israel.
The name Tahpenes is spelled תחפניס except for the second occurrence in 1 Kings 11:20, where it is spelled תחפנס.
🔼Etymology and meaning of the name Tahpenes
The name Tahpenes is Egyptian and cannot possibly be made into something that means anything in Hebrew. Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names refers to the German theologian Daniel E. Jablonski, who proposed that the name Tahpenes is in fact the same as the name of the city called תחפנחס, or Tehaphnehes (Ezekiel 30:18) and both mean Head Of The Age in the sense of the Beginning Of Earth As We Know It.
But Jones also gives us the opinion of theologian Simonis, who interprets the name Tahpenes as Given Of The Serpent, on account of serpent worship, which was common in Egypt.