A POETIC NAME for Israel, built on yashar, ‘upright, straight’ — roughly ‘the Upright One’, and used nowhere in this book's own prose, only in the Song of Moses (32:15) and Moses's closing blessing (33:5 and 33:26, now on these pages). Its first and defining appearance is a pun against itself: ‘Jeshurun grew fat and kicked’ (32:15), the Upright One turning crooked, in the same chapter that has already called the nation ‘a generation crooked and warped’ (32:5) with the exact opposite root. The name then frames the whole tribal blessing that follows — Jehovah crowned king ‘in Jeshurun’ at its opening (33:5), ‘none like the God of Jeshurun’ at its close (33:26). Isaiah reaches for it once more, centuries later, as a term of comfort rather than accusation (44:2, not yet on these pages) — the name's fourth and final biblical appearance. Most English versions transliterate rather than translate it, keeping the pun invisible to a reader who does not already know the Hebrew. → first discussed at Deut 32:15