Rhapsody in the Blue: Another Greek Loanword in Biblical Hebrew

Abstract There is currently no satisfactory etymology for the hapax legomenon רַפְסֹדוֹת rapsōdôt in 2Chr 2:15 (Eng. 16), although its meaning is agreed to be »rafts, floats«. It is proposed here that the word comes from the phonetically identical Greek word ῥαψῳδία (the ancestor of English rhapsody ), which literally means »linked song«. Logs linked together into rafts recalled verses linked together into songs.