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358, a, regards אבי as the fuller form of בּי, and thinks אבי is dialectic = לבי = לוי = לוּ, but this is an etymological leger-demain. The two Schultens (died 1750 and 1793) were on the right track when they traced back אבי to בוא, but their interpretation: rem eo adducam ut (אבי = אביא, as it is certainly not unfrequently written, e.g., 1Ki 21:29, with the assumption of a root בי cognate with בא), is artificial and without support in the usage of the language and in the syntax. Körber and Simonis opened up the right way, but with inadequate means for following it out, by referring (vid., Ges. Thes. s.v. בּי) to the formula of a wish and of respect, bawwâk allah, which, however, also is bajjâk. The Kamus interprets bajjâk, though waveringly, by bawwâk, the meaning of which (may he give thee a resting-place) is more transparent. In an annotated Codex of Zamachschari hajjâk allah wa-bajjâk is explained: God preserve thy life and grant thee to come to a place of rest, bawwaaka (therefore Arab. bawâ = bawa'a) menzilan. That אבי (as also בּי) is connected with this bajjâk since the latter is the Piel-form of an old verb bajja (vid., supra, p. 559), which with the forms Arab. bâ'a (whence Arab. bı̂‛at, a sheltering house) and Arab. bw’ (bwâ) has one root similar in signification with בוא, the following contributions of Wetzstein will show.
In elucidation of the present passage he observes: The expressions abı̂tebı̂, jebı̂; nebı̂, tebû, jebû, are so frequent in Damascus, that they very soon struck me, and on my first inquiry I always received the same answer, that they are a mutilation of Arab. ‘bgy, abghi, I desire, etc. [vid. supra, p. 580], until one day a fugitive came into the consulate, and with these words, abı̂ wâlidêk, seized me in that part of the body where the Arabs wear the girdle (zunnâr), a symbolic action by which one seeks some one's protection. Since the word here could not be equivalent to abghi (“I desire” thy parents), I turned to the person best acquainted with the idiom of