Question IV. Beria — why was he so named by Ephraim?

That raha means “evil” to the Hebrews, and be [means] “in,” is almost not unknown even to the common people. He was therefore called Beria (or Beriha), as if Berahaha — that is, because he had arisen amid the evils of Ephraim’s house, [that is,] after the funerals of the brothers, in the greatest grief and mourning of the parent. But the Hebrew text is more obscure: “And she called his name Beria, because it was in evil in his house.” Yet our Interpreter [the Vulgate] has rendered the sense rightly for us; but those words are to be understood thus: because “in evil was” she — namely, Ephraim’s wife — conceiving and bearing in his house; for that [word] “was” is feminine in the Hebrew. And the Seventy [render] the same, but with the wording changed, so that the speech is Ephraim’s own: ὅτι ἐν κακοῖς ἐγένετο ἐν οἴκῳ μου, “because he was born amid evils in my house.”