Havvah: A Name of Unusual Origins

I recently completed several lectures on the Hebrew idea of ‘ezer kenegdo. In every location, people in the audience found it difficult to accept the possibility that Adam named the woman with a word that means “serpent.” More than once questions were raised about this derogatory naming, especially since the text suggests that the meaning of Havvah is “the mother of all living.” How, they asked, could I assert that Havvah has such a different meaning?

Several scholars have examined the etymology of this name. I will mention comments from Naham Sarna, the Jewish rabbi who authored the JPS Torah Commentary on Genesis, Victor Hamilton, the Christian author of the NICOT commentary on Genesis and A. S. Kapelrud, author of the article in The Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament.

Nahum Sarna states the following:[1]

Eve Hebrew havvah, which seems to be an archaic form of hayyah, could mean “living thing,” life personified. This is how the Septuagint understood it when it rendered the name here Zoe. The vocalization suggests an intensive form, so that “propagator of life” is also a possible meaning. There might, in addition, be a word play, for Aramaic hivya means serpent, as noted in Genesis Rabba 20:11, 22:2. In the Sifre inscription (1.A.31), the word for serpent is actually written hvvh.

mother of all living This description is closely paralleled in Near Eastern mythology, where it belongs to the mother goddess. Here it is demythologized and naturalized to express the biblical concept of the unity of the human race and of woman’s primary role—motherhood.

Victor Hamilton adds some important additional information.[2]

The text says Eve was (hayeta) the mother of all living. But she has yet to give birth to a second generation! Might we not have expected the imperfect tihyeh, “she will be”? One may explain the perfect form in two forms: as a prophetic perfect or as a precative (optative) perfect. Sometimes Hebrew uses a perfect to express future action. Such usage is called a prophetic perfect, for the use of the perfect reinforces the certainty of the distant fact. It is as good as done (e.g., 17:16). Scholars debate whether Biblical Hebrew has a precative perfect, though Ugaritic has one. Is it Adam’s prayer that his wife will become a mother? The prophetic perfect is more likely here, if only to express a fact which was imminent in the imagination of the narrator.

This issue concerns the etymology of Eve. Undoubtedly v. 20 connects Eve (hawwa) with living or “life” (hay). But the word hawwa assumes that the Hebrew verb “to live” is hawwa, when in fact it is haya, that is, medial y rather than medial w.

If one abandons the equation between “Eve” and “to live,” one has many other choices for an etymology of hawwa. Thus KB list no fewer than nine possible etymologies, but they decline to make a choice. Whether one of these etymologies should be pursued for further significance is unlikely. If indeed “Eve” is to be connected with the Aramaic word for “serpent” or with the “Hivites,” such connections will probably tell us little about the meaning of “Eve” in 3:20.

Hamilton is cautious about drawing any conclusions, perhaps because of the powerful implications of an etymology drawn from a word meaning “serpent.” But further comment is provided by Kapelrud in The Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament.[3]

“ . . . there was early acceptance of a theory proposed by the medieval rabbis, who saw in the name chavvah the term chevya’, ‘serpent.’

Kapelrud notes that some scholars have suggested a connection to the Phoenician goddess Havat, also considered a serpent-goddess and a goddess of the Underworld. He goes on to recount several other possibilities including hints of a matriarchal tribal origin, a tribal goddess of the Hivites, or an archaic form of chayah, spelled as an evasive form, chaiyah in order to distinguish it from animal life. Kapelrud concludes that the evidence demonstrates the word is borrowed from Canaanite/Phoenician where a similar word means “alive.”

The name chavvah occurs only twice in the Tanakh, both occurrences found within the context of the man and woman after the fall. Kapelrud’s conclusion seems a bit tenuous because he goes on to note that the name of the man, Adam, is associated with his source, namely, the earth. “His name was always a reminder that he belonged to the earth and must return to the earth when his life was at an end.”[4] It seems to me that we can apply the same modal format to the name of the woman, that is, the name is a reminder of whom she belongs to and what her life must be. Since it is Adam who names her, this suggests that Adam views the woman under his authority (like the animals) and that her life will be service to him. But this is not what God intended in the Genesis 1 or 2 account. This is an alteration of God’s design, and, I believe, Adam gives her a name that underscores this alteration. Therefore, it seems to me that the context of the story suggests we should accept the discovery of Sarna and the opinion of the rabbis that chavvah is connected to the idea of serpent.

[1] Nahum Sarna, The JPS Torah Commentary: Genesis, p. 29.

[2] Victor Hamilton, The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1-17, NICOT, Eerdmans, 1990, p. 205.

[3] Kapelrud, chavvah, TDOT, Vol. IV, p. 257 ff.

[4] Ibid., p. 259.