Biblical Hebrew Forum

[John Leake <jesleake AT yahoo.co.uk>]

I note that il šd appears in Ugaritic. I note that Del Olmo Lete and Sanmartín put it under šd(1) = Heb. שדה under (3) Steppe/mountain. But I don't see much there to remind me of mountains though there is parallelism with mdbr, so I wonder if that's been borrowed wholesale from Hebrew lexicography. It's a dangerous feature, using Ugaritic parallels to support Hebrew when the putative Ugaritic meaning may have been deduced from Hebrew in the first place). Interestingly, šd (your 'demon', here 'generic name ("demon") or proper name of deity') appears in its own entry and includes at least one appearance of šd qdš which doesn't sound too demonic. Your idea sounds to be a goer!

Do you have access to DDDB (the Brill Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible?)

John Leake

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ان صاحب حياة هانئة لا يدونها انما يحياها

He who has a comfortable life doesn't write about it - he lives it

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On 2 May 2013, at 10:58, Chavoux Luyt <chavoux AT gmail.com> wrote:

Shalom all

While much has been made of the Name YHWH as revealed to Moses and its possible meaning, the Name "El Shaddai" by which God revealed Himself to the patriarchs seems to be of less interest.

Most translations translate it as "God Almighty" (perhaps following the LXX?). The term "Shaddai" has been related to 3 possible origins (that I know of):

1. Shadad, (שדד) means "to overpower" or "to destroy" (possibly from an original meaning of "strong")

2. Shadaiym (שָׁדַיִם) meaning "breasts" and pointing to His provision

3. Sadeh (שדה) meaning "veld" or mountain (from Akkadian?) (also connected to His provision for pastoralists from the veld)

(There is also the Mishnaic interpretation that it means "Who is enough" 'She-dai' or "Mi she'Amar Dai L'olamo")

I am wondering if another possibility might not be connected to the word "shed" or "sheddim" (שדים) (Deut.32:17), assuming that this word did not originally have the negative connotation of "devil", but rather (like Greek daimon originally?) a more neutral meaning. In that case it could be functionally equivalent to the later "YHWH Tzevaot" (יהוה צבאות) meaning the God of the heavenly armies?

Regards

Chavoux Luyt

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