Two people named Benaya

HEBREW EPIGRAPHY AND ONOMASTICS: A Tale of Two Benayas—3,000 Years Apart. A story of ‘a place and a name’ on Israel’s northernmost border (CHRISTOPHER EAMES, Armstrong Institue of Biblical Archaeology).

From the September-October 2025 Let the Stones Speak Magazine Issue

Yad Vashem (יד ושם) is the name of Israel’s Holocaust memorial center, located on the western edge of Jerusalem. The name is derived from Isaiah 56:5, where the Hebrew phrase is rendered as “a place and a name” (King James Version).

I want to share here a story of a “place and a name”—or more specifically, one place, one name, but two individuals, 3,000 years apart—on Israel’s northernmost border.

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Three, actually. See the end of the article.

I noted the discovery of the Benayau (Benaya) seal at Abel Beth Maacah in 2020 here.

For another ancient Benaya (Benayahu), see here.

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