🔼The name Yom Kippur: Summary
- Meaning
- Day Of Atonement(s)
- Etymology
- From (1) the noun יום (yom), day, and (2) the plural noun כפרים (kippurim), atonements.
🔼The name Yom Kippur in the Bible
The name Yom Kippur doesn't really occur in the Bible, but rather Yom Kippurim (or even Yom Hakippurim). And as such it occurs only three times, namely in Leviticus 23:27 and 25:9 as יום הכפרים (yom hakippurim) and in Leviticus 23:28 as יום כפרים (yom kippurim).
Yom Kippur is the name of a holy day, namely the tenth day of the seventh month, which was to be regarded as a Sabbath upon which people were to humble themselves and offer fire to YHWH for their atonement. Every fifty years, sounding the ram's horn on Yom Kippur heralded in the year of Jubilee (Leviticus 25:10).
🔼Etymology of the name Yom Kippur
The name Yom Kippur obviously consists of two elements. The first word is the noun יום (yom), meaning day:
יום
The noun יום (yom) can mean day, but really describes any productive segment or up-swing in any cyclic phenomenon. The word יומם (yomam), or daytime, covers any periodic exposure to light, energy or information of any kind of economy (whether physical, biological or mental).
The second part of our name יום כפרים is the plural noun כפרים (kippurim), meaning atonement(s):
כפר
The verb כפר (kapar) describes the formation of any sort of protective perimeter around any sort of vulnerable interior.
Noun כפר (koper) describes the price of a human life, i.e. the purchasing price and maintenance costs of keeping a person out of slavery. This is not simply a single sum of money but rather an economic protective layer of all sorts of hedges and investments. The noun כפרים (kippurim) is in fact a plural of the previous and denotes a massive free-buying and free-keeping of many people at once. Noun כפרת (kapporet) is the technical term for the cover of the Ark of the Covenant; the Mercy Seat.
Nouns כפר (kapar) and כפר (koper) mean village, but emphasize not the mere huddling together of folks, but rather any rudimentary social stratification that mimics the natural formation of eukaryotic cells, with cell walls, organelles and a nucleus that hosts the wisdom tradition.
The letter ה (he) that sits in front of the kippurim-part twice out of three times, is either the definite article, or else a particle of motion. It's a very common occurrence in names of the form X-of-Y.
🔼Yom Kippur meaning
The name Yom Kippur means Day Of Atonement(s), but note that in the ransom business, it's highly unusual that an abductee has to cough up his own ransom. The choice of words of this name seems to suggest that the offering brought on Yom Kippur was not so much for one's own atonement but rather for the others.