JA-SA
righteous, upright (clipped form of yasaramu; may converge with *y-s "to heal" in onomastic contexts—cf. Greek ἰάομαι, Iāsōn, no secure IE etymology)
Compared forms
- Hebrewyāšāryāšār ‘straight, upright’ (HALOT 450)
- Ugaritic𐎊𐎌𐎗yšryšr ‘uprightness, lawfulness’ (DULAT 973)
- Phoenician𐤉𐤔𐤓yšryšr ‘good, righteous’ (Krahmalkov 218)
- AmoriteJŚR ‘be straight’: jaśar, jīśar, jaśarum (Gelb AS 21, 22)
- Akkadianišaruišaru ‘normal, prosperous, just’ (CAD I/J 224)
Attestations2 cited
Commentary
MA Zb 8, bare JA-SA on a clay vessel, and PH 16b, on a fragmentary lame: two standalone witnesses at two sites, the clipped yašar ‘righteous, upright’ without the mimated -am of the formula word JA-SA-SA-RA-ME, an epithet in short votive texts. SA writes both s and š, so standalone JA-SA also admits *y-s ‘to heal’. Rival: the healer, from Greek ἰάομαι ‘to heal’; Beekes counts Ἰᾱ́σων among the words in which Pre-Greek initial ya- may stand as ἰα- (Beekes 2014, 7). Iāsōn and Iasion derive from it (Astour 1965, 276–282), and the agentive -ān (Gordon 1966 §155) gives *yasā-ān > Iāsōn, as Rpan from √r-p-ʾ (Astour 1965, 252); LB i-ja-te iatēr ‘surgeon’ at Pylos has the root. Against the rival, neither Malia nor Phaistos has an Iasion cult. Cf. SI-RU-TE, where the same merger joins √š-r-t and √š-y-r. See JA-SA-RA, JA-SA-SA-RA-ME and JA-SA-SA-RA-MA-NA.