This assumption that Yahweh is derived from the verb "to be," as seems to be implied in Exod. iii. 14 seq., is not, however, free from difficulty. "To be" in the Hebrew of the Old Testament is not _hawah_, as the derivation would require, but _hayah_; and we are thus driven to the further assumption that _hawah_ belongs to an earlier stage of the language, or to some older speech of the forefathers of the Israelites. This hypothesis is not intrinsically improbable--and in Aramaic, a language closely related to Hebrew, "to be" actually is _hawa_--but it should be noted that in adopting it we admit that, using the name Hebrew in the historical sense, Yahweh is not a Hebrew name. And, inasmuch as nowhere in the Old Testament, outside of Exod. iii., is there the slightest indication that the Israelites connected the name of their God with the idea of "being" in any sense, it may fairly be questioned whether, if the author of Exod. iii. 14 seq., intended to give an etymological interpretation of the name Yahweh,[19] his etymology is any better than many other paronomastic explanations of proper names in the Old Testament, or than, say, the connexion of the name [Greek: Apollôn] with [Greek: apolouôn], [Greek: apolyôn] in Plato's _Cratylus_, or the popular derivation from [Greek: apollymi]. A root _hawah_ is represented in Hebrew by the nouns _howah_ (Ezek., Isa. xlvii. 11) and _hawwah_ (Ps., Prov., Job) "disaster, calamity, ruin."[20] The primary meaning is probably "sink down, fall," in which sense--common in Arabic--the verb appears in Job xxxvii. 6 (of snow falling to earth). A Catholic commentator of the 16th century, Hieronymus ab Oleastro, seems to have been the first to connect the name "Jehova" with _howah_ interpreting it _contritio, sive pernicies_ (destruction of the Egyptians and Canaanites); Daumer, adopting the same etymology, took it in a more general sense: Yahweh, as well as Shaddai, meant "Destroyer," and fitly expressed the nature of the terrible god whom he identified with Moloch. The derivation of Yahweh from _hawah_ is formally unimpeachable, and is adopted by many recent scholars, who proceed, however, from the primary sense of the root rather than from the specific meaning of the nouns. The name is accordingly interpreted, He (who) falls (baetyl, [Greek: baitylos], meteorite); or causes (rain or lightning) to fall (storm god); or casts down (his foes, by his thunderbolts). It is obvious that if the derivation be correct, the significance of the name, which in itself denotes only "He falls" or "He fells," must be learned, if at all, from early Israelitish conceptions of the nature of Yahweh rather than from etymology.