Ichabod ( he, אִיכָבוֹד ''ʼīyḵāḇōḏ'', – ''without glory'', or "''where is the glory?''") is mentioned in the first Book of Samuel as the son of

Phinehas According to the Hebrew Bible, Phinehas or Phineas (; , ''Phinees'', ) was a priest during the Israelites’ Exodus journey. The grandson of Aaron and son of Eleazar, the High Priests (), he distinguished himself as a youth at Shittim with h ...

, a malicious priest at the biblical shrine of Shiloh, who was born on the day that the

Israelite The Israelites (; , , ) were a group of Semitic-speaking tribes in the ancient Near East who, during the Iron Age, inhabited a part of Canaan. The earliest recorded evidence of a people by the name of Israel appears in the Merneptah Stel ...

s' Ark of God was taken into Philistine captivity. His mother went into labour due to the shock of hearing that her husband and Eli, her father-in-law, had died and that the Ark had been captured. He is also named later as the brother of Ahitub.

Etymology

In the Book of 1 Samuel (), his name is given to him by his mother because ''the glory has departed from Israel'', because of the loss of the Ark to the

Philistines The Philistines ( he, פְּלִשְׁתִּים, Pəlīštīm; Koine Greek ( LXX): Φυλιστιείμ, romanized: ''Phulistieím'') were an ancient people who lived on the south coast of Canaan from the 12th century BC until 604 BC, whe ...

, and perhaps also because of the deaths of Eli and Phinehas. She repeats the phrase "The glory has departed from Israel, for the ark of God has been captured", to show her piety, and that the public and spiritual loss lay heavier upon her spirit than her personal or domestic calamity. Yairah Amit suggests that his name indicates "the fate of this newborn child who would have no parents, no grandfather and not even God, because even the glory has departed from the place". According to biblical commentator Donald Spence Jones, "the meaning of the term ''I-chabod'' is much disputed, owing to the doubt which hangs over the first syllable, "I", followed by "chabod". It is usually taken to mean a simple negative: "not": chabod signifying "glory", I-chabod thus represents "not glory", i.e., there is no glory. Others render the "I" syllable as a

rhetorical question A rhetorical question is one for which the questioner does not expect a direct answer: in many cases it may be intended to start a discourse, or as a means of displaying or emphasize the speaker's or author's opinion on a topic. A common example ...

, "Where?", "Where is the glory?", the answer, of course, being, "It is nowhere". But it is also possible to read the syllable "I" as an exclamation of bitter sorrow, "Alas!": the name then could be translated, "Alas! the glory". The

Septuagint The Greek Old Testament, or Septuagint (, ; from the la, septuaginta, lit=seventy; often abbreviated ''70''; in Roman numerals, LXX), is the earliest extant Greek translation of books from the Hebrew Bible. It includes several books beyond t ...

states that his name was a complaint: ''Uaebarchaboth'', ''woe to the glory of Israel''.1 Samuel 4:21: Brenton's Septuagint Translation
/ref> The

Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209 The Codex Vaticanus ( The Vatican, Bibl. Vat., Vat. gr. 1209), designated by siglum B or 03 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering), δ 1 ( von Soden), is a fourth-century Christian manuscript of a Greek Bible, containing the majority of the Greek Old ...

also refers to him as ''ouai barchaboth'', i.e. as ''I Bar Chabod'' - ''I, son of Chabod'' or ''No, son of Glory''. According to textual scholars,''Jewish Encyclopedia'', ''Books of Samuel'' this section of the Book of Samuel, the ''sanctuaries source'', derives from a fairly late source compared with other parts, and hence this justification of his name may simply be a

folk etymology Folk etymology (also known as popular etymology, analogical reformation, reanalysis, morphological reanalysis or etymological reinterpretation) is a change in a word or phrase resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a more famili ...

. While Ichabod is barely mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, the fact that Ahitub is elsewhere referred to as the brother of Ichabod, rather than as son of Phinehas (or of anyone else), has led textual scholars to suspect that Ichabod was considered a significant individual in the days of Samuel.

References and notes

{{JewishEncyclopedia, url=http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?letter=I&artid=73, article=Ichabod 11th-century BC clergy Jewish priests Family of Eli (biblical figure)