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penoal

penoal

פנואל

'penoal' (aka Penuel) is a place near the city of Succoth, east of the Jordan River and south of the river Jabbok in present-day Jordan.

Genesis 32:30 describes Jacob assigning the name and his reason for choosing this name. This naming pattern is a highly useful etymological phenomenon which occurs quite regularly and allows us to make connections between root words and phrases.

The traditional translation yields “Jacob called the the place Peniel for 'I have seen God face to face and is preserved my life'

The direct transliteration of the bolded phrase is: because “arah alehim pen al pen xil nepes

Taken literally, this appears to say “met Jacob characteristics the place Penoal because looked the Tree People Edge Ones to Edge Ones deliver souls”

The key here is that “penoal” is derived (by Jacob himself) from “alehim pen al pen” and is obviously intended to be a brief summary of the event that Jacob just experienced here. Therefore, as stated explicitly by Jacob, we know that the word al and the word pen are the salient features. We also see that they are connected by a word o (which might be a preposition, but whose meaning is unclear at this point) - forming pen-o-al.

penoal.txt · Last modified: 2025/02/19 12:24 by ken

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