🔼The name Yiron: Summary
- Meaning
- Place Of Fear, Place Of Reverence
- Etymology
- From the verb ירא (yara'), to fear or revere.
🔼The name Yiron in the Bible
The name Yiron (or Iron or Jiron, as some translations have it) occurs only once. It's the name of a town that came to be in the territory allotted to the tribe of Naphtali, in the far north of Israel, close to the Mediterranean Sea (Joshua 19:38).
🔼Etymology of the name Yiron
The name Yiron comes from the verb ירא (yara'), which means to fear or revere:
ירה ירא
The verb ירה (yara) describes the bringing about of a unified effect by means of many little impulses (arrows, stones, words, instructions, rain drops, and so on). Noun יורה (yoreh) refers to rain that falls during the first period of the agricultural year, when seedlings bud but don't bear fruit yet. Noun מורה (moreh) may either also refer to early rain, or it means teacher, who is a person who teaches children who can't think for themselves yet. Noun תורה (tora), refers to any set of instructions (hence the familiar word Torah).
The verb ירא (yara') describes the same process, but rather from the perspective of the receiving "soil": to revere, to pay heed to, and in extreme cases: to fear. Nouns יראה (yir'a), מורא (mora') and מורה (mora) cover the broad spectrum between reverence and fear, between anything awe-inspiring and anything terrifying.
The waw-nun termination of our name is a common device to localize or personify the core meaning of a root, somewhat like a diminutive form.
🔼Yiron meaning
The name Yiron was probably meant to mean something like Fear (as in Cape Fear) or Reverence. NOBSE Study Bible Name List forgoes treating our name (which is exceptional, and probably due to an oversight). Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names translates our name with Pious, which may be a touch over-inferred. BDB Theological Dictionary does not offer an interpretation of our name but does list it under the verb ירא (yara'), which means to fear or revere.