Eli-Phaz

אליפז


Genesis 36:4 and 10 ff name him as a son of Esav with Adah.

Job 2:11 et al - one of those who argued with Iyov (Job).

The name means "to whom El is strength", and sounds very much the right name, figuratively as well as literally, for the arguments that Eli-Phaz put to Iyov in that story. Given that Iyov came from Uts (ע֖וּץ) - which was an Edomite colony in the northern Arabian desert, and Iyov's principal discourser is here claimed as a son of the Edomite Esav, we have further evidence that the Book of Job was not Yisra-Eli at all, but yet another of those fragments of Edomite culture borrowed but never returned; though in fact the Edomite version was itself most likely a borrowing, either from an Egyptian "lamentations" source, or Babylonian - click here for a full article on the subject.

Uts is also the name of one of the sons of Nachor and Milkah (Genesis 22:20/23), the others being "Buz his brother, and Kemu-El the father of Aram, and Chesed, and Chazo, and Pildash, and Yidlaph, and Betu-El.' The last of these, Betu-El, will father Lavan and Rivkah, who will become Ya'akov's mother and father-in-law, and all of whom are based in Padan Aram, adding still further weight to the Book of Job being of non-Yisra-Eli origins, but also perhaps giving us a cultural route for its entry into Yisra-El.





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