Tola: a man's name spelled exactly like the everyday Hebrew word for a worm, carried in the Bible by two men of the tribe of Issachar
Tola is a name rather than an ordinary word, but it is written and pronounced exactly like the common Hebrew word for a worm or grub (תּוֹלָע), the same word that also names the crimson dye taken from a small insect and the costly scarlet thread made from it. Names drawn from small creatures were ordinary in Hebrew, and the Bible never pauses to comment on this one. Still, anyone hearing it in Hebrew heard a familiar word inside it, and the English spelling "Tola" hides that completely.
Two men carry the name, and both belong to the tribe of Issachar. The first is one of Issachar's four sons, and he appears only in family records: the list of Jacob's household going down to Egypt, the census of the clans in Numbers, and the tribal list in Chronicles. His descendants were counted as a clan of their own, the Tolaites, and Chronicles names six of his sons and reckons his line at twenty-two thousand six hundred fighting men in David's day.
The second is one of the leaders in the book of Judges, a man of Issachar who rose after Abimelech's violent death and lived at Shamir in the hill country of Ephraim, leading Israel twenty-three years. His notice is unusually quiet: no enemy, no battle, no rescue, just the years he served and the town where he was buried. His own name and his father's name, Puah, are also the names of the two leading clans of Issachar, which is why scholars discuss whether this record preserves a particular man or a clan remembered as one.
Nuances
Whether Judges 10:1 names an individual leader from Issachar or a clan figure whose family details were supplied from the tribal lists. The names Tola and Puah are the first two Issachar clans in Genesis 46:13, Numbers 26:23 and 1 Chronicles 7:1, so the judge and his father bear the names of the two chief subdivisions of their own tribe.
- majorityAn individual leader, remembered in a short but genuine notice; the names coincide with the Issachar clans simply because he belonged to them, and the brief notices of these lesser-known leaders preserve old records of real officeholders.; Robert G. Boling, Judges (Anchor Bible 6A; Doubleday, 1975), on 10:1-2; Daniel I. Block, Judges, Ruth (New American Commentary 6; Broadman and Holman, 1999), on 10:1-2; Trent C. Butler, Judges (Word Biblical Commentary 8; Nelson, 2009), on 10:1-2
- minorityA clan figure: the genealogy has been assembled out of Issachar clan names, so the notice preserves tribal tradition rather than the memory of one man.; George Foot Moore, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Judges (ICC; T&T Clark, 1895), on 10:1; C. F. Burney, The Book of Judges, 2nd ed. (Rivingtons, 1920), on 10:1; Susan Niditch, Judges (Old Testament Library; Westminster John Knox, 2008), on 10:1-2