מֶתֶג הָאַמָּה

From the study of 2 Samuel 8:1

Range of meaning

Meteg is a known common noun: a bridle, bit or halter, the gear by which an animal is steered. Ammah is usually "forearm" or "cubit" (the forearm-length measure). Many scholars since the 1800s have also suggested "mother," in the sense of a mother-city or capital, by link with 'em ("mother"). Biblical Hebrew does call a chief city "a mother in Israel" (2 Samuel 20:19), but ammah is not clearly found with that meaning anywhere else. The whole phrase occurs only here.

Against the English

KJV, BSB, ESV, NIV and NRSV transliterate it as a place name, "Metheg-ammah," so readers assume it is a known town. WEB and YLT translate it: "the bridle of the mother city" / "the bridle of the metropolis." NASB renders it as taking "control of the chief city." NLT follows Chronicles and names Gath. These are not small style differences. They are different judgments about what the words are.

How it drifted

The phrase was obscure even in antiquity. Translators who print a hyphenated name are not giving the reader a known town. They are leaving an unsolved phrase unsolved, but the English looks like a confident place name.

Used elsewhere in the period

Meteg = bridle elsewhere: 2 Kings 19:28 // Isaiah 37:29 ("my bit in your lips"), Psalm 32:9, Proverbs 26:3. Ancient readings disagree: 1 Chronicles 18:1 has "Gath and her daughters [villages]"; the Septuagint has "the set-apart [land]"; the Vulgate has "bridle of tribute." A "hill of Ammah" is named near Gibeon in 2 Samuel 2:24, but it is in Benjamin and probably unrelated. No town called Metheg-ammah is known from archaeology or other texts.