Hebrew

hištaḥăwā - to bow down (HALOT 296, 1457)

PC
*ḥwy - to prostrate oneself (Kogan 2015: 295)
The origin of Ugr and Hbr verbs is disputed, v. Kreuzer 1985:39‒41 and Tropper 1990:73‒74 for the history of research. Possible etymologies: - verbs are to be parsed as Št stem forms of the root ḥwy ‘to curl, to coil,’ unattested in Canaanite but present in Arabic (ḥwy (V) ‘to assume a round or circular form, to coil, to gather itself together (a snake)’). (HALOT 295) - from ḥwy ‘to live’, proposed in Segert 1984:185 (“to ask life for oneself”) and Kreuzer 1985:54‒60 (“hoch leben lassen; huldigen, anbeten”) - Arb. ˀistaḥyā ‘to be ashamed, to be shy of somebody’, the semantic relationship between “to be ashamed” and “to humiliate oneself” being well conceivable (Kogan 2015: 295)