🔼The name Uel: Summary
- Meaning
- Will Of God
- Etymology
- From (1) the verb אוה ('wh), to desire, and (2) the word אל ('el), God.
🔼The name Uel in the Bible
The name Uel occurs only once in the Bible. He is listed as one of the sons of Bani who married foreign wives and who were dealt with during the purge of Ezra (Ezra 10:34).
🔼Etymology of the name Uel
The name Uel consists of two elements. The first part of our name probably comes from the verb אוה ('wh), to wish or desire:
אוה אי
There are four different verbs אוה ('wh), which all appear to express a desire or movement toward something. Noun אי ('i) means coast, which has been mankind's preferred place to settle since time immemorial. Nouns או ('aw), מאוי (ma'away), אוה ('awwa) and תאוה (ta'awa) all mean desire. The noun אות ('ot) means mark or sign, and humanity's earliest marks were not to assert private ownership but rather a collective identity: something to draw toward and gather around. Noun אי ('i) means jackal, and noun איה (ayya) means hawk or falcon. These creatures were possibly named after their supplicatory calls, or else their rapturous method of predation.
The conjunction או ('o) means "or." The interjection אי ('i) expresses regret: "alas!" Adverb אי ('i) may serve as a particle of negation ("to be desired" and thus not so), or as an interrogative adverb, meaning "where?", usually in rhetorical questions. The substantive אין ('ayin) expresses negation or nothingness and occurs hundreds of times in the construct מאין (m'ayin), which literally means "from where is not?", as introduction to a rhetorical question concerning something that is true in all known parts of the world: "where isn't it so that such and such, hmm?"
The second part of our name is אל, El, the name of the prominent Canaanite deity whose name became applied to the God of Israel, or the common abbreviation of Elohim, the genus God:
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.
🔼Uel meaning
In a rare display of consensus, for a meaning of the name Uel, NOBSE Study Bible Name List, Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names and BDB Theological Dictionary all read Will Of God.