CUMORAH

Lehite GN

1.

Land and hill, also known as RAMAH (q.v.), located in a land of many waters (Mormon 6:2 (x2), 4 (x2), 5, 6 (x2), 11; 8:2)

Etymology

The hill CUMORAH is where MORMON buried all of the plates except the abridgement that he gave to his son, MORONI (Mormon 6:6). ETHER’s record states that the hill where MORMON buried the plates was named RAMAH (Ether 15:11).

It is possible that the different spellings of CUMORAH in the printer’s manuscript (Camorah once, Cumorah six times, and Comorah twice) could represent minor phonetic shifts in English pronunciation. However, the studies below will assume the various spellings are only scribal variants and not actual phonetic variants.

It may be that the root meaning of CUMORAH is related to the JAREDITE GN COMNOR/COMRON, with the former representing a grammatically feminine ending, while the latter, COMRON, may represent the form of a masculine place name. Of note is that both are GNs for a hill; and CUMORAH’s alternate name, RAMAH, also means “height; hill.”

As distant as it may seem, an East Semitic lexeme may provide an appropriate etymology for CUMORAH. The Akkadian verb kamāru in the G-stem means “to heap up, to layer” including corpses, and in the N-stem it is applied to ruin mounds and piled up corpses. Notice that Ether 11:6 states that JAREDITE prophets prophesied that “their bones should become as heaps of earth upon the face of the land except they should repent of their wickedness,” an apt description of the destruction of both the JAREDITES and the NEPHITES at the hill CUMORAH.

With metathesis, the Akkadian noun karmu, from the same root, means “ruin, ruin heap” and Akkadian karmūtu, “state of ruin.” The vocable karmūtu is an abstract noun and may be analogous to CUMORAH, a grammatical feminine which can be used as an abstract. Lending support to this suggestion is the likely Hebrew cognate kmr that occurs in words having to do with heat, ripening, fermentation; darkness, gloom; net, snare; and heap up (JH).

Another possibility is that CUMORAH a late NEPHITE rendering of GOMORRAH (JH). Some may object that LEHI and his family, when they left JERUSALEM, would not have known the form GOMORRAH with initial g or c. GOMORRAH, however, in the Masoretic Text is spelled with an ayin, namelyʿmrh, in the Hebrew Old Testament, which does not seem to allow for an initial c for this word. However, at the time LEHI left JERUSALEM, the pronunciation of the name in Hebrew was with a ġayin /ġ/, as is demonstrated by the transliteration into the Greek LXX form gomorra. (It is from this Greek form that the King James Bible drives its spelling, GOMORRAH.) In addition, when Semitic ġayin is represented in EGYPTIAN texts of the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period, it can be represented by /q/ or /g/. The /c/ of CUMORAH would then be a voiceless representation in “reformed Egyptian” script used by MORMON. The slight difference in vowels between CUMORAH and GOMORRAH present no additional problems. Thus, as far as the initial consonant is concerned, CUMORAH could be a late NEPHITE form of GOMORRAH.

The fact that GOMORRAH has a doubled r and CUMORAH only a single r is also a non issue. In Hebrew the r is not orthographically represented as doubled, i.e., it does not contain a dagesh forte. However, compensatory lengthening in some words indicates that the r is virtually doubled. Thus, when transcribed into Greek, the r was doubled. In LEHI’s day, Hebrew orthography would not have indicated a doubled r. Thus, the fact that CUMORAH, if it is to be derived from GOMORRAH, has only one r speaks for a Hebrew origin rather than being derived through Greek, English, etc.

CUMORAH as a late NEPHITE rendering of GOMORRAH is especially attractive because GOMORRAH came to symbolize in the Old Testament a desolate, God-destroyed place. It would be an appropriate name for the hill that the NEPHITE search party discovered when they were looking for ZARAHEMLA, but found instead “a land which had been peopled and which had been destroyed.

CUMORAH could be a verbal noun from the Hebrew root whence comes kōmer, “priest,” hence k^emōrāh, “priesthood.” (See JAT in NPSEHA 149.1 [June 1982].) (Cf. kumirtu, priestess,” the feminine of West Semitic kumru, “priest,” on an Assyrian tablet from the time of Asshurbanipal, now in the British Museum [ANET 301:1]). For the structure of CUMORAH Stephen Ricks and John Tvedtnes point to the Hebrew noun pattern peʿullāh. While the consonants of CUMORAH fit this Hebrew noun pattern quite well, the first vowel /u/ would be hard to explain as coming from the initial /e/ of peʿullāh. However, based on English pronunciation, u often represents /ә/, thus providing the necessary vowels for CUMORAH.

As has been pointed out, the Hebrew word kōmer, “priest,” is used in the OT in reference to false or non-Israelite priests, while the word kōhēn designates the legitimate priests of the order of AARON (JAT). That is why the translation “idolatry,” with the feminine ending making it an abstract noun, has been proposed (JH). Ricks and Tvedtnes point out that while it is true that kōhēn is used for priests of the tribe of LEVI, kōmer was used for non-Levitical priests, ISRAELITE and otherwise, basing this on 2 Kings 23:5, Hosea 10:5, and Zephaniah 1:4. They then conclude, “Since Lehi’s party did not include descendants of Levi, they probably used kōmer wherever the Book of Mormon speaks of priests.” Thus, while having a hill called “Idolatry” in which the sacred records were buried is troublesome, this GN could be interpreted as “Priesthood.”

As has been pointed, Hebrew ʾôr means “light, flame, fire” and is used as “revelation” in Num. 27:21, 1 Sam. 28:6, Isa. 2:5, 49:6, 51:4, and Prov. 6:23. For the feminine form ʾôrah, which means “light” or “brightness,” see Est. 8:16, Ps. 139:12 (RFS) and Isaiah 26:19, though two of these three are not singular. Coupled with Hebrew qûm, “to rise (up),” the meaning “Arise, o light” or “Light arises” is a very tempting etymology, given the significance of the Hill CUMORAH in LDS scripture and thought.

However, this interpretation is not without its difficulties. ʾôrah would require the feminine imperative qûmî, not the masculine form qûm. For example, Isa. 60:1, qûmî ʾôrî, contains the feminine command forms, “arise, shine.” The masculine forms would be qûm and ʾôr. The only possible way to have qûm and ʾôrāh as verbs would be to make ʾôrah an energic, which is unlikely.

Suffice it to say, to see in CUMORAH a combination of “arise” and “light” is plausible only if one speculates that at the close of one thousand years of development of NEPHITE Hebrew, it did not behave any more like a Semitic language, while at the same time, it hung onto obscure Semitic forms such as an energic.

It has also been proposed that Hebrew CUMORAH may be derived from the Hebrew kūm-ʾōrāh, “mound of light/revelation.” Cf. MORONI’s words “And whoso shall bring it to light” (Moro. 8:14-15) and “it shall be brought out of darkness unto light. . .and it shall shine forth out of darkness” (Mor. 8:16) (RFS). Because the lexeme kūm does not appear in Hebrew at all, this etymology would have to be derived from the lexeme qûm that means “to raise up, erect; to stand up, to rise.” The feminine noun form qûmâ means “height.”

EGYPTIAN Arabic kom, komat, “heap, pile, mound, tell” (cf. Kom Ombo in Upper EGYPT), possibly related to Hebrew qûm, “to rise, stand, exist, live, remain, endure, persevere, come forth, be confirmed” (RFS), is interesting.

There are names from ancient EGYPT which resemble CUMORAH: (1) EGYPTIAN km-wr, “great black,” is the name of three different locations in ancient EGYPT, including the Great Bitter Lake near modern Ismailiyah (RFS). (2) EGYPTIAN k3mrw is a GN of a place in Asia.

Cf. Book of Mormon COM, COMNOR, et al.

See also Cumorah / Camorah / Comorah Variant

Variants

Camorah, Comorah

Deseret Alphabet: 𐐗𐐆𐐅𐐣𐐄𐐡𐐂 (kɪuːmoʊrɑː)

Notes

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