Ivvah:
iv'-a (‘iwwah; Aba (= Ava), Aua, 2Ki 18:34, Oudou, 2Ki 19:13, apparently due to a misreading): The name is wanting in the Massoretic Text and Septuagint of Isa 36:19.
Ivvah was a city apparently conquered by the Assyrians, and is mentioned by them, in the verses quoted, with Hamath and Arpad, Sepharvaim and Hena. It has been assimilated with the Avva of 2Ki 17:24 as one of the places whence Sargon brought captives to Samaria, and identified with Hit on the Euphrates, between Anah and Ramadieh, but this seems improbable, as is also the suggestion that it is Emma, the modern ‘Imm, between Antioch and Aleppo. Hommel (Expository Times, April, 1898, 330) upholds the view that Hena and Ivvah, or, as he prefers to read, Avvah, are not places at all, but the names of the two chief gods of Hamath, Arpad and Sepharvaim. This would be consistent with 2Ki 18:34; but 19:13: "Where is the king.... of Sepharvaim, of Hena, and Ivvah?" and 17:31, where the gods of Sepharvaim are stated to be Adrammelech and Anammelech, raise serious difficulties. In all probability, the identification of Ivvah depends upon the correct localization of the twofold Sepharvaim, of which Hena and Ivvah may have been the names. The identification of Sepharvaim with the Babylonian Sip(p)ar is now practically abandoned.
Written by T. G. Pinches
Sepharvaim:
sef-ar-va'-im, se-far-va'-im (cepharwayim: Sephpharouaim, Seppharoudim, Seppharoun, Seppharoumain, Eppharouaim, Sepphareim, the first two being the forms in manuscripts Alexandrinus and Vaticanus respectively, of the passages in Kings, and the last two in Isaiah):
1. Formerly Identified with the Two Babylonian Sippars:
This city, mentioned in 2Ki 17:24; 18:34; 19:13; Isa 36:19; 37:13, is generally identified with the Sip(p)ar of the Assyrians-Babylonian inscriptions (Zimbir in Sumerian), on the Euphrates, about 16 miles Southwest of Bagdad. It was one of the two great seats of the worship of the Babylonian sun-god Samas, and also of the goddesses Ishtar and Anunit, and seems to have had two principal districts, Sippar of Samas, and Sippar of Anunit, which, if the identification were correct, would account for the dual termination -ayim, in Hebrew. This site is the modern ‘Abu-Habbah, which was first excavated by the late Hormuzd Rassam in 1881, and has furnished an enormous number of inscriptions, some of them of the highest importance.
2. Difficulties of That Identification:
Besides the fact that the deities of the two cities, Sippar and Sepharvaim, are not the same, it is to be noted that in 2Ki 19:13 the king of Sepharvaim is referred to, and, as far as is known, the Babylonian Sippar never had a king of its own, nor had Akkad, with which it is in part identified, for at least 1,200 years before Sennacherib. The fact that Babylon and Cuthah head the list of cities mentioned is no indication that Sepharvaim was a Babylonian town-the composition of the list, indeed, points the other way, for the name comes after Ava and Hamath, implying that it lay in Syria.
3. Another Suggestion:
Joseph Halevy therefore suggests (ZA, II, 401 ff) that it should be identified with the Sibraim of Eze 47:16, between Damascus and Hamath (the dual implying a frontier town), and the same as the Sabara'in of the Babylonian Chronicle, there referred to as having been captured by Shalmaneser. As, however, Sabara'in may be read Samara'in, it is more likely to have been the Hebrew Shomeron (Samaria), as pointed out by Fried. Delitzsch.
LITERATURE.
See Schrader, The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament, I, 71 f; Kittel on K; Dillmann-Kittel on Isa, at the place; HDB, under the word
Written by T. G. Pinches
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