Dissenting scholars note that word dividers are employed elsewhere throughout the inscription and one would expect to find one between "byt" and "dwd" in "bytdwd" too if the intended reading was "House of David". They contend that reading "dwd" as "David" is complicated since the word can also mean "uncle" (dōd) (a word with a rather wider meaning in ancient times than it has today), "beloved", or "kettle" (dūd). Lemche and Athas suggests that "bytdwd" could be a place-name and Athas that it refers to Jerusalem (so that the author might be claiming to have killed the son of the king of Jerusalem, rather than the son of the king from the "house of David"). R.G. Lehmann and M. Reichel proposes interpreting the phrase as a reference to the name or epithet of a deity.