🔼The name Jeruel: Summary
- Meaning
- Founded By God
- Etymology
- From (1) the verb ירה (yara), to throw or found, and (2) the word אל ('el), God.
🔼The name Jeruel in the Bible
The name Jeruel occurs only once in the Bible. It's the name of a wilderness (called the wilderness of Jeruel; so Jeruel might originally have been a town or settlement) where YHWH told king Jehoshaphat and the people of Judah through the mouth of Jahaziel, son of Zechariah, to find their nemeses, the men of Ammon, Moab and Seir, utterly destroyed.
🔼Etymology of the name Jeruel
The name Jeruel consists of two elements, the final one being אל (El), either the prominent Canaanite deity whose name became applied to the God of Israel, or the common abbreviation of Elohim, the genus God:
אל אלה
In names אל ('el) usually refers to אלהים ('elohim), that is Elohim, or God, also known as אלה ('eloah). In English, the words 'God' and 'god' exclusively refer to the deity but in Hebrew the words אל ('l) and אלה ('lh) are far more common and may express approach and negation, acts of wailing and pointing, and may even mean oak or terebinth.
The first part of our name comes from the verb ירה (yara), which in the Bible means to throw, cast or shoot, but which in other languages might mean to found:
ירה ירא
The verb ירה (yara) describes the bringing about of a unified effect by means of many little impulses (arrows, stones, words, instructions, rain drops, and so on). Noun יורה (yoreh) refers to rain that falls during the first period of the agricultural year, when seedlings bud but don't bear fruit yet. Noun מורה (moreh) may either also refer to early rain, or it means teacher, who is a person who teaches children who can't think for themselves yet. Noun תורה (tora), refers to any set of instructions (hence the familiar word Torah).
The verb ירא (yara') describes the same process, but rather from the perspective of the receiving "soil": to revere, to pay heed to, and in extreme cases: to fear. Nouns יראה (yir'a), מורא (mora') and מורה (mora) cover the broad spectrum between reverence and fear, between anything awe-inspiring and anything terrifying.
🔼Jeruel meaning
For a meaning of the name Jeruel, all consulted sources go with the verb ירה (yara), which all render the meaning of to found: NOBSE Study Bible Name List has Founded By God. Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names says Founded Of God. And BDB Theological Dictionary has the similar Founded Of El.