Benjamin
Name
According to the Hebrew Bible, Benjamin's name arose when Jacob deliberately changed the name "Benoni", the original name of Benjamin, since Benoni was an allusion to Rachel's dying just after she had given birth, as it means "son of my pain". Textual scholars regard these two names as fragments of naming narratives coming from different sources - one being the Jahwist and the other being the Elohist.
Name
Unusual for one of the 12 tribes of Israel, the Bible does not explain the etymology of Benjamin's name. Medieval commentator Rashi gives two different explanations, based on Midrashic sources. "Son of the south", with south derived from the word for the right hand side, referring to the birth of Benjamin in Canaan, as compared with the birth of all the other sons of Jacob in Aram. Modern scholars have proposed that "son of the south" / "right" is a reference to the tribe being subordinate to the more dominant tribe of Ephraim. Alternatively, Rashi suggests it means "son of days", meaning a son born in Jacob's old age. The Samaritan Pentateuch consistently spells his name "בנימים", with a terminal mem, ("Binyamim"), which could be translated literally as "spirit man" but is in line with the interpretation that the name was a reference to the advanced age of Jacob when Benjamin was born.
Name
According to classical rabbinical sources, Benjamin was only born after Rachel had fasted for a long time, as a religious devotion with the hope of a new child as a reward. By then Jacob had become over 100 years old. Benjamin is treated as a young child in most of the Biblical narrative, but at one point is abruptly described as the father of ten sons. Textual scholars believe that this is the result of the genealogical passage, in which his children are named, being from a much later source than the Jahwist and Elohist narratives, which make up most of the Joseph) narrative, and which consistently describe Benjamin as a child.
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