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yissaskhar

יִשָּׂשכָר

HebrewH3485Proper Noun“Issachar”

Appears 43 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 30:18Gen 35:23Gen 46:13Gen 49:14Exo 1:3Num 1:8Num 1:28Num 1:29Num 2:5 (2×)Num 7:18Num 10:15Num 13:7Num 26:23Num 34:261Ki 4:171Ch 2:11Ch 6:62(47)1Ch 6:72(57)1Ch 7:11Ch 7:51Ch 12:40(41)1Ch 26:51Ch 27:18
Compound of
nasaנָשָׂאto lift: bear656H5375
sakharשָׂכָרwages28H7939
Word studyResearch-gradeyiss-ah-KHARproper noun

What yissaskhar means

1

Issachar: a man's name, carried above all by Jacob's fifth son with Leah, the boy his mother named for a wage she felt she had been paid

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

Leah names the boy at his birth and explains the name while she does it: God has given her her "reward" because she gave her maidservant to her husband (Genesis 30:18). Two verses earlier she had told Jacob she had "hired" him with her son's mandrakes. Both speeches play on the same family of Hebrew words for hiring and paying, the words behind the ordinary noun for a wage (שָׂכָר) and the verb for hiring a worker (שָׂכַר).

The written name keeps the puzzle alive. Scribes wrote it with an extra letter that was never read aloud, and the simplest explanation is that the spelling froze together two rival ways of hearing it: "there is a reward" and "man of hire." So this is not a word with one settled sense but a name whose spelling preserves an old argument about what it says.

As a person, this Issachar does almost nothing. He is born, he stands in the lists of Leah's sons and of the family that went down to Egypt, and he fathers four sons whose names later become the tribe's founding families. One unrelated man in the Bible carries the same name, a temple gatekeeper's son.

Nuances

1aJacob's fifth son by Leah: the man of the birth story, and the father of the four sons whose names became the tribe's clans
Gen 30:18Gen 35:23Gen 46:13Exo 1:31Ch 2:11Ch 7:1
1banother man with the same name: the seventh son of Obed-edom, one of the families of temple gatekeepers
TranslatabilityDirect
1Ch 26:5
2

Issachar: the tribe descended from Jacob's fifth son, and the stretch of northern farmland the tribe held

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

Most of the time this name is a group, not a man. Issachar is counted in both wilderness censuses (54,400 fighting men, then 64,300), given a chief, a place in the camp and in the marching order, a scout, a share of the land, and towns handed over to the Levites. Its territory lay in the eastern part of the Jezreel Valley and the hills toward Tabor, some of the best farmland in the country, though several of the strongest towns inside its borders belonged to Manasseh and stayed in Canaanite hands.

The tribe's reputation shifts as the story goes on:

  • In Jacob's blessing it is a strong donkey that bends its shoulder to a load and ends up at forced labor.
  • In Moses' blessing it feasts and offers right sacrifices with Zebulun at a mountain in the north.
  • In the Song of Deborah its leaders go up with Barak while other tribes stay home.
  • In Chronicles it becomes the tribe of "men who understood the times," and one of its sons, Baasha, seizes the northern throne.

The wage inside the name is heard again in that first picture. A tribe named for hire is shown hiring out its strength, and readers have taken the image in opposite directions: as a rebuke for trading freedom for comfortable land, or as praise for a powerful and willing worker. Issachar is also almost never named alone. Its brother tribe Zebulun (זְבוּלֻן) stands beside it in the birth order, in both blessings, in the tribal lists, and in the roll of northerners who answered a call.

Nuances

2athe tribe of Issachar as a people: the descendants counted, led, mustered, and sent as one of Israel's twelve tribes
Num 1:8Num 1:28Num 1:29Num 2:5 (2×)Num 7:18Num 10:15Num 13:7Num 26:23Num 26:25Num 34:26Deu 27:12Jos 19:17
2bthe territory of Issachar: the northern district on the map, the towns reckoned to it, and its portion and city gate in Ezekiel's vision of the restored land
Jos 17:10Jos 17:111Ki 4:171Ch 12:40(41)Ezk 48:25Ezk 48:26Ezk 48:33
2cIssachar spoken of as one figure in the tribal poems, where the whole tribe is addressed or pictured as a single person
Gen 49:14Deu 33:18
Gen 49:14

Whether the saying on Issachar in Genesis 49:14-15 is a rebuke or a commendation, and so whether the tribe's name for hire marks subjugation or industry.

  • majorityA rebuke: Issachar surrendered political independence for good land and submitted to forced labor under the Canaanite city-states of the valley.; Hermann Gunkel, Genesis (HKAT, 5th ed. 1922), 483-484; Gerhard von Rad, Genesis (Old Testament Library, rev. ed. 1972), on Genesis 49:14-15
  • minorityA commendation: the strong-boned donkey is a picture of powerful, willing labor, and the tribe is a paid worker in fertile country rather than a humiliated slave.; Raymond de Hoop, Genesis 49 in its Literary and Historical Context (Oudtestamentische Studien 39, 1999), 151-158; Joel D. Heck, "Issachar: Slave or Freeman? (Gen 49:14-15)", Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 29 (1986): 385-396
  • contestedBoth at once: the imagery grants Issachar real strength while placing it in genuine subordination to the valley city-states of the settlement period.; Hans-Jurgen Zobel, Stammesspruch und Geschichte (BZAW 95, 1965), 15-17

What scholars say about yissaskhar

The lexica agree that the derivation is uncertain. BDB says outright that the etymology and meaning are dubious, while HALOT, Gesenius and DCH file the name under the root שׂכר, "to hire, to reward," alongside שָׂכָר ("wage"), שֶׂכֶר and שָׂכִיר ("hired laborer"). Yair Zakovitch reads Genesis 30:16 and 30:18 as a deliberate double name-derivation rather than a seam between sources, which fits the two standard reconstructions: יֵשׁ שָׂכָר ("there is a reward") and אִישׁ שָׂכָר ("man of hire"), the latter judged the more probable base by BDB and argued by Wellhausen. Martin Noth classified the name among the Israelite sentence-names, and a verbal reading of the initial yod ("he grants a reward") remains live; non-Hebrew proposals include Wenham's Amorite parallel from Mari and the older suggestion of C. J. Ball that the name means "man of the god Sokar." The orthography is best treated as a split in tradition rather than a scribal error: Ben Asher, whose text the printed Hebrew Bible follows, treats the second sibilant as written but unread, while Ben Naphtali, the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Temple Scroll preserve a double reading, and the Greek, Latin and Syriac versions side with the single pronunciation.

Historical reconstruction is far less secure, and every position below should be weighed as a hypothesis rather than a finding. Albrecht Alt's settlement model read the tribe as a group that entered the Canaanite-dominated Jezreel plain and took on corvee obligations to the city-states, and Noth grouped Issachar with the Leah tribes while treating it as a late accretion to that core and the twelve-tribe system as substantially schematic. Nadav Na'aman has argued that most of Issachar's inheritance lay outside any early Israelite polity and was absorbed only under David, and Israel Finkelstein treats the genealogical tribal system as a literary construct rather than a premonarchic kinship reality. On Genesis 49:14-15 the negative reading of Gunkel and von Rad is answered by de Hoop and Heck, with Zobel in between; all sides agree that the term rendered "strong-boned" connotes strength rather than gauntness. The proposed identification of Issachar with an Egyptian place name from the reign of Amenhotep III (Manfred Gorg, Pieter van der Veen) is a minority position whose related readings have been rejected by Adrom, de Hulster and Ritner, and it should not be presented as established. On 1 Chronicles 12:32 the calendrical reading is Targumic and rabbinic (Genesis Rabbah, b. Yoma 26a, the Targum on Chronicles), while the commentators read ordinary political sagacity.

Where scholars disagree about yissaskhar

Where the name יִשָּׂשכָר comes from and what it originally said, a question BDB leaves open with the verdict that its etymology and meaning are dubious.

  • majorityThe name belongs to the root שׂכר, "to hire, to reward," and the doubled spelling preserves two forms that coalesced in pronunciation: אִישׁ שָׂכָר ("man of hire") or יֵשׁ שָׂכָר ("there is a reward"), which is also what the birth narrative's double wordplay in Genesis 30:16 and 30:18 suggests. BDB judges the "man of hire" base the more probable of the two.; BDB, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. יִשָּׂשכָר (p. 441); HALOT, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. יִשָּׂשכָר; Julius Wellhausen, Der Text der Bucher Samuelis (1871), 95; Yair Zakovitch, "Explicit and Implicit Name-Derivations", Hebrew Annual Review 4 (1980): 182; Raymond Apple, "Rewarding a Mitzvah: The Etymology of Issakhar", Jewish Bible Quarterly 44 (2016)
  • minorityThe initial yod is a verbal prefix, making this a sentence-name of the very common Israelite type: "(God) grants a reward," or in a passive sense "he receives a reward."; Martin Noth, Die israelitischen Personennamen im Rahmen der gemeinsemitischen Namengebung (1928); Raymond Apple, "Rewarding a Mitzvah: The Etymology of Issakhar", Jewish Bible Quarterly 44 (2016)
  • minorityThe name is not Hebrew in origin at all: either an Amorite name of the type attested at Mari, or a name formed on the Egyptian god Sokar, meaning "man of Sokar." Both readings set aside the wage wordplay the narrator so plainly intends.; Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 16-50 (Word Biblical Commentary 2, 1994), 247-248; C. J. Ball, Genesis (The Sacred Books of the Old Testament), on Genesis 30:18
In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • BDB, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. יִשָּׂשכָר (p. 441): "etymology and meaning dubious"lexicon
  • HALOT, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. יִשָּׂשכָרlexicon
  • DCH, The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, ed. David J. A. Clines, s.v. יִשָּׂשכָרlexicon
  • Yair Zakovitch, "Explicit and Implicit Name-Derivations", Hebrew Annual Review 4 (1980): 182article
  • Raymond Apple, "Rewarding a Mitzvah: The Etymology of Issakhar", Jewish Bible Quarterly 44 (2016)article
  • Julius Wellhausen, Der Text der Bucher Samuelis (1871), 95monograph
  • C. J. Ball, Genesis (The Sacred Books of the Old Testament), on Genesis 30:18commentary
  • Martin Noth, Die israelitischen Personennamen im Rahmen der gemeinsemitischen Namengebung (1928)monograph
  • Martin Noth, Das System der zwolf Stamme Israels (BWANT IV/1, 1930), 30-31monograph
  • Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 16-50 (Word Biblical Commentary 2, 1994), 247-248commentary
  • Hermann Gunkel, Genesis (HKAT, 5th ed. 1922), 483-484commentary
  • Gerhard von Rad, Genesis (Old Testament Library, rev. ed. 1972), on Genesis 49:14-15commentary
  • Raymond de Hoop, Genesis 49 in its Literary and Historical Context (Oudtestamentische Studien 39, 1999), 151-158monograph
  • Joel D. Heck, "Issachar: Slave or Freeman? (Gen 49:14-15)", Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 29 (1986): 385-396article
  • Hans-Jurgen Zobel, Stammesspruch und Geschichte (BZAW 95, 1965), 15-17monograph
  • Jean-Daniel Macchi, Israel et ses tribus selon Genese 49 (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 171, 1999)monograph
  • Albrecht Alt, "Die Landnahme der Israeliten in Palastina" (1925), in Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte des Volkes Israel I (1953), 89-125article
  • Nadav Na'aman, Borders and Districts in Biblical Historiography (1986), 75-117monograph
  • William F. Albright, "The Topography of the Tribe of Issachar", Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 44 (1926): 225-236article
  • Pieter G. van der Veen, "Israel and the Tribes of Asher, Reuben and Issachar: An Investigation into Four Canaanite Toponyms from New Kingdom Egypt", in Egypt and the Hebrew Bible (Agypten und Altes Testament 100, 2022), 30-32article
  • Gerald A. Herion, "Issachar", in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (1992)reference-work
  • Sara Japhet, I and II Chronicles: A Commentary (Old Testament Library, 1993), on 1 Chronicles 7 and 12:32commentary

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of יִשָּׂשכָר

m

יִשָּׂשכָר, יִשָׂשכָר

Gen 30:18, Gen 35:23, Gen 49:14, Exo 1:3, Num 1:8, Num 1:28, Num 1:29, Num 2:5