"To Ordain" or "Not To Ordain"? The Meaning of millēʾ yād

Abstract

In scholarly literature, the phrase millēʾ yād refers to the ordination of priests. However, of the eighteen occurrences of the phrase in the Hebrew Bible, only thirteen explicitly mention priests or their possible ordination. The other five occurrences appear in contexts that do not address priestly ordination. Moreover, even in some priestly ordination contexts, such as Exod 29, the way in which millēʾ yād is used does not support the accepted meaning, “to ordain a priest.”

In this study, I discuss problems that result from translating millēʾ yād as “to ordain a priest” in each of the eighteen occurrences. Through an analysis of the constituent words of millēʾ yād, I propose a new basic meaning for the Hebrew phrase that draws support from the Septuagint as well as from the Akkadian semantic equivalent, qātam mullûm. I test this understanding of the phrase by applying it to each of the eighteen occurrences of millēʾ yād.