issachar

     

Issachar/Yissachar (Hebrew: יִשָּׂשׁכָר, Stanard Yissaḫar Tiberian Yiśśâḵār ; "Reward; recompense") was, according to the Book of Genesis, a son of Jacob and Leah (the fifth son of Leah, and ninth son of Jacob), and the founder of the Israelite Tribe of Issachar; however some Biblical scholars view this as postdiction, an eponymous metaphor providing an aetiology of the connectedness of the tribe to others in the Israelite confederation. The text of the Torah gives two different etymologies for the name of Issachar, which textual scholars attribute to different sources - one to the Yahwist and the other to the Elohist; the first being that it derives from ish sakar, meaning man of hire, in reference to Leah's hire of Jacob's sexual favours for the price of some mandrakes; the second being that it derives from yesh sakar, meaning there is a reward, in reference to Leah's opinion that the birth of Issachar was a divine reward for lending her handmaid Zilpah to Jacob. Scholars suspect the former explanation to be the more likely name for a tribe, though some scholars have proposed a third etymology - that it derives from ish Sokar, meaning man of Sokar, in reference to the tribe originally worshipping Sokar, an Egyptian deity.

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