More on the Differences Between “Jew,” “Hebrew,” and “Israeli”

Like many of you, I read with interest James Diamond’s article “The Confounding Origins of the Term ‘Hebrew’” that was published last week in Mosaic. With much of it I found myself in agreement.

Diamond is certainly right about two things. The first is that the Hebrew word ivri, “Hebrew,” is always used in the Bible to distinguish someone who belongs to the ethnic group referred to by it from someone who does not. As Diamond observes in giving an example from the book of Jonah, when the latter says “I am a Hebrew” in answer to the storm-tossed sailors who ask, “Whence comest thou? What is thy country? And of what people are thou?”, he is in part saying, “My people is different from any of yours.”

The Israelites of the Bible do not speak of themselves this way in their own internal discourse. Typically, when revolting against him in the book of Kings, the subjects of Solomon’s son Rehoboam sound the battle cry of “To your tents, O Israel!”, not “To your tents, O Hebrews!” “Hear O Hebrews, the Lord is your God, the Lord is one” could not have been a possible version of the sh’ma.