[Avodah] Why Not: Yehoshua BEN Nun

[cantorwolberg at cox.net]

I received the following response from one of my colleagues with an extensive Yeshiva background and one who is quite erudite.

He wrote:

One might possibly call the case of the name Agur Bin-Yakeh (Prov. 30:1) some kind of fluke or "error," but this can hardly be the case with Bin-Nun, which occurs 29 times in Tanakh as such and never as 
Ben-Nun. The Rambam was on to something as far as the two words being read as one, but like you say, his explanation is fanciful. We know that bein (son) changes its vowel to ben- in the nismach form  
(son of), and indeed in all of these nismach cases one might say that "the two words are being read as one." So the question is why a different vowel change in the case of -Nun, and I think the answer is purely phonological. For some reason speakers of Ancient Hebrew found it more comfortable to pronounce Bin-Nun than Ben-Nun. You won't find in Tanakh any case of Ben followed by the sound nu-  regardless of 
what letter comes after the nu-.   Furthermore, I was only able to find a single instance of a word in which a Segol-Bet is followed by either a Kubutz-Nun or Shuruk-Nun  -- the word  y'subennu in Jer. 52:21. 

If we explore this phenomenon further we see that the change from Ben-to Bin- is not as unique as it it seems, since the very same thing happened to the name Bin-yamin, which obviously derives from Ben-yamin. (cf. Gen 35:18 -- "she named him Ben-Oni; but his father called him Bin-Yamin"). Comparing this case to Bin-Nun, we see that the the operative phonological factor must be the nasal sound "m" 
and/or "n". And similar to the rarity of the sound combination "bennu," I could only find 6 names in Tanakh in the form Ben-Ya... (whether spelled with a Kamatz or Patach), and none of these has a Mem 
or a Nun following the Ben-. (A 7th case might be the famous "Mordechai Ben-Yair," but the Megillah spells it without a Makaf, so it is actually "the son of Yair" rather than "Ben-Yair.")

We similarly find the word ben- changing bin- in the case of a "reverse-nismach" to the nasal word "im" in Deut. 25:2 -- vehaya im-bin hakot harasha.  In this case, if the Makaf had (more logically, semantically speaking) been attached to the word hakot, it would have been  vehaya im ben-hakot harasha instead of bin hakot.  

Finally, there is Jonah 4:10, "You cared about the kikayon plant, ...which appeared overnight and perished overnight."  The very beautiful Hebrew is ...she-bin-laylah hayah u-vin-laylah avad. What we have 
here is a poetic vowel change that can appreciated two ways. It broadens "in the night" (ba-laylah) into "born in the night" (ben-laylah) while it simultaneously turns "son of the night"  (ben-laylah) into the 
more metaphorical  "of the night"  (bin-laylah). 
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