Beyond the Flood: The original meaning of mabbûl in biblical Hebrew

The use of the term mabbûl to designate a flood / inundation is specific to biblical Hebrew, but outside the book of Genesis, inundation events are not evoked as mabbûl. That the designation of Noah’s flood as mabbûl in Genesis is unconventional is suggested by the many glosses that accompany it, and by the difficulty of interpreting mabbûl as flood in Ps 29:10. It is proposed here that the word mabbûl derives from a metallurgical meaning of the root ybl associated with the melting of metal, and that it originally refers to the melting of old metallic artefacts for the purpose of recycling and renewing the metal. Consequently, the mabbûl appellation of Noah’s Flood is interpreted here as an innovation introduced by the author of Genesis, whose intent was to remove this story from its Mesopotamian background and to integrate it, via the re-melting imagery, into the metallurgical context traditionally characterising ancient Yahwism.