El Shaddai

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El Shaddai (

عز وجل, romanized
ʾAllāh ʿazza wajal)

dual grammatical number.[2] The Deir Alla inscriptions contain shaddayin as well as elohin rather than elohim. Scholars[3] translate this as "shadday-gods," taken to mean unspecified fertility, mountain or wilderness gods. Discomfort over this is sometimes interpreted as controversy, leaving room for other suggestions, like a relation to the Destroyer aspect of God mentioned et alia during the Egypt affair[4] from shaddad שדד, though such an etymology appears less direct, or even "fanciful and without support."[5]

The form of the phrase "El Shaddai" fits the pattern of the divine names in the Ancient Near East, exactly as is the case with names like ʾĒl ʿOlām, ʾĒl ʿElyon and ʾĒl Bēṯ-ʾĒl.[6] As such, El Shaddai can convey several different semantic relations between the two words, among them:[7] the deity of a place called Shaddai, a deity possessing the quality of shaddai and a deity who is also known by the name Shaddai.[6] Other deities are attested in various cultures. One is Ammonite Šd-Yrḥ.[8]

Occurrence

Third in frequency among divine names,[9] the name Shaddai appears 48 times in the Bible, seven times as "El Shaddai" (five times in Genesis, once in Exodus, and once in Ezekiel).

The first occurrence of the name comes in Genesis 17:1, "When

Abram was ninety-nine years old the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, 'I am El Shaddai; walk before me, and be blameless,'[10] Similarly, in Genesis 35:11 God says to Jacob, "I am El Shaddai: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins." According to Exodus 6:2–3 Shaddai was the name by which God was known to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
.

In the vision of

Deuteronomy 32:17 (parashah Haazinu) and Psalm 106: 37–38,[13] who are Canaanite
deities.

The name "Shaddai" is often used in parallel to "El" later in the Book of Job, once thought to be one of the oldest books of the Bible, though now more commonly dated to a later period.[14][15]

The Septuagint often translates Shaddai or El Shaddai just as "God" or "my God", and in at least one passage (Ezekiel 10:5) it is transliterated ("θεὸς σαδδαΐ"). In other places (such as Job 5:17) it appears as "Almighty" ("παντοκράτωρ"), and this word features in other translations as well, such as the 1611 King James Version.

Etymology

Šad, which sounds like the eventual Akkadian, Ugaritic, and Hebrew words meaning "breast", means "to extend" (lengthwise) in proto-Afrasian and into "pre-proto-Semitic"[16] while šdh means a plain in Canaanite but a mountain in Sumerian.[17]

Shaddai related to wilderness or mountains

According to Ernst Knauf, "El Shaddai" means "God of the Wilderness" and originally would not have had a doubled "d". He argues that it is a

Late Bronze Age until Achaemenid times, and even in the Punic language name ʿbdšd "Servant of Shadé or Shada".[18]

Another theory is that Shaddai is a derivation of a

W. F. Albright, but was somewhat weakened when it was noticed that the doubling of the medial d is first documented only in the Neo-Assyrian Empire.[citation needed] However, the doubling in Hebrew might possibly be secondary. According to this theory, God is seen as inhabiting a holy mountain, a concept not unknown in ancient West Asian religion, and also evident in the Syriac Christianity writings of Ephrem the Syrian, who places the Garden of Eden on an inaccessible mountaintop.[citation needed
]

The term "El Shaddai" may mean "god of the mountains", referring to the

biblical Mount Sinai where God gave Moses the Ten Commandments. According to Stephen L. Harris, the term was "one of the patriarchal names for the Mesopotamian tribal god".[19] In Exodus 6:3, El Shaddai is identified explicitly with the God of Abraham and with Yahweh.[19] The term "El Shaddai" appears chiefly in Genesis
, only with a fertility association.

Shaddai meaning destroyer

The root word "shadad" (שדד) means to plunder, overpower, or make desolate. This would give Shaddai the meaning of "destroyer", representing one of the aspects of God, and in this context it is essentially an

sin, not to shin. The termination "ai", typically signifying the first person possessive plural, functions as a pluralis excellentiae like other titles for the Hebrew deity, Elohim ("gods") and Adonai "my lords". The possessive quality of the termination had lost its sense and become the lexical form of both Shaddai and Adonai, similar to how the connotation of the French word Monsieur changed from "my lord" to being an honorific title.[20] There are a couple of verses in the Bible where there seems to be word play with "Shadday" and this root meaning to destroy (the day of YHWH will come as destruction from Shadday,כשד משדי יבוא, Isaiah 13:6 and Joel 1:15), but Knauf maintains that this is re-etymologization.[18]

Shaddai as a toponym

It has been speculated that the tell in Syria called Tell eth-Thadeyn ("tell of the three breasts") was called Shaddai in the Amorite language. There was a Bronze-Age city in the region called Tuttul, which means "three breasts" in the Sumerian language.[21]

Shaddai meaning breasts

The Hebrew noun shad (שד) means "breast".[22] Biblical scholar David Biale notes that of the six times that the name El Shaddai appears in the Book of Genesis, five are in connection with fertility blessings for the Patriarchs. He argues that this original understanding of Shaddai as related to fertility was forgotten by the later authors of Isaiah, Joel, and Job, who understood it as related to root words for power or destruction (thus explaining their later translation as "all-powerful" or "almighty").[23]

Ugarit

zd is breast.[24] There is a DN Athtart-šd in Ugarit.[25] There are references to DNs (indicated by the kbkb star divine name determinative) ydd.w šd ("beloved[26] & breast", may sound like yadid-wa-shad) & šmm w tḥm ("heaven & abyss", shamayim-we-teḥom) in KTU3 1.179:11.[27] The "fields" meaning is also there in Ugarit, like pl ʕnt šdm "parched are the furrows of the fields," [28]

From the God of your ancestor, who supports you,

from Shadday who blesses you:

the blessings of Heaven above,

the blessings of Abyss crouching below;

the blessings of Breasts-and-Womb,

the blessings of your Father, warrior Most High;

the blessings of the Everlasting Mountains,

[the blessings] of the outlying Eternal Hills.’

This song makes clear the breasts-mountains connection and is parallel to the

blessing for Joseph.[29][30]

Historically, the "breasts" meaning preceded the mountains meaning. Harriet Lutzky, on Joseph's blessing, imagines the breast meaning preceded theologically as well. "...The hypothesis that Shadday was originally the name or epithet of a goddess... virtually imposes itself."[9] Lutzky reasons Asherah to have dual epithets as dea nutrix or "one of the breast (shaddai)" and dea genetrix "one of the womb (rahmay)".

Shaddai in the later Jewish tradition

God that said "enough"

A popular interpretation of the name Shaddai is that it is composed of the Hebrew relative particle she- (Shin plus vowel segol followed by dagesh), or, as in this case, as sha- (Shin plus vowel patach followed by a dagesh).[31] The noun containing the dagesh is the Hebrew word dai meaning "enough, sufficient, sufficiency".[32] This is the same word used in the Passover Haggadah, Dayeinu, which means "It would have been enough for us." The song Dayeinu celebrates the various miracles God performed while liberating the Israelites from Egyptian servitude.[33] The Talmud explains it this way, but says that "Shaddai" stands for "Mi she'Amar Dai L'olamo" (Hebrew: מי שאמר די לעולמו‎) – "He who said 'Enough' to His world." When he was forming the earth, he stopped the process at a certain point, withholding creation from reaching its full completion, and thus the name embodies God's power to stop creation. The passage appears in the tractate Hagigah 12a.[34]

There is early support for this interpretation, in that the Septuagint translates "Shadday" in several places as ὁ ἱκανός, the "Sufficient One" (for example, Ruth 1:20, 21).

However, Day's overview says a "rabbinic view understanding the name meaning 'who suffices' (Se + day) is clearly fanciful and has no support."[5]

Apotropaic usage of the name "Shaddai"

The name "Shaddai" often appears on the devices such as amulets or dedicatory plaques.[35][36][37] More importantly, however, it is associated with the traditional Jewish customs which could be understood as apotropaic: male circumcision, mezuzah, and tefillin. The connections of the first one with the name Shaddai are twofold: According to the biblical chronology it is El Shaddai who ordains the custom of circumcision in Genesis 17:1 and, as is apparent in midrash Tanhuma Tzav 14 (cf. a parallel passages in Tazri‘a 5 and Shemini 5) the brit milah itself is the inscription of the part of the name on the body:

The Holy One, blessed be He, has put His name on them so they would enter the garden of Eden. And what is the name and the seal that He had put on them? It is "Shaddai". [The letter] shin He put in the nose, dalet – on the hand, whereas yod on the {circumcised} [membrum]. Accordingly, {when} He goes to {His eternal home} (Ecclesiastes 12:5), there is an angel {appointed} in the garden of Eden who picks up every son of which is circumcised and brings him {there}. And those who are not circumcised? Although there are two letters of the name "Shaddai" present on them, {namely} shin from the nose and dalet from the hand, the yod (...) is {missing}. Therefore it hints at a demon (Heb. shed), which brings him down to Gehenna.

Analogous is the case with mezuzah – a piece of parchment with two passages from the Book of Deuteronomy, curled up in a small encasement and affixed to a doorframe. At least since the Geonic times, the name "Shaddai" is often written on the back of the parchment containing the shema‘ and sometimes also on the casing itself. The name is traditionally interpreted as being an acronym of shomer daltot Yisrael ("the guardian of the doors of Israel") or shomer dirot Yisrael ("the guardian of the dwellings of Israel").[38] However, this notarikon itself has its source most probably in Zohar Va’ethanan where it explains the meaning of the word Shaddai and connects it to mezuzah.[39]

The name "Shadday" can also be found on tefillin – a set of two black leather boxes strapped to head and arm during the prayers. The binding of particular knots of tefillin is supposed to resemble the shape of the letters: the leather strap of the tefillah shel rosh is knotted at the back of the head thus forming the letter dalet whereas the one that is passed through the tefillah shel yad forms a yod-shaped knot. In addition to this, the box itself is inscribed with the letter shin on two of its sides.[38]

Biblical translations

The

Psalm 91:1, "Shaddai" is translated as "the God of heaven".[41]

"Almighty" is the translation of "Shaddai" followed by most modern English translations of the Hebrew scriptures, including the popular New International Version[42] and Good News Bible.

The translation team behind the New Jerusalem Bible (N.J.B.) however, maintains that the meaning is uncertain, and that translating "El Shaddai" as "Almighty God" is inaccurate. The N.J.B. leaves it untranslated as "Shaddai", and makes footnote suggestions that it should perhaps be understood as "God of the Mountain" from the Akkadian "shadu", or "God of the open wastes" from the Hebrew "sadeh" and the secondary meaning of the Akkadian word.[43] The translation in the

Concordant Old Testament
is 'El Who-Suffices' (Genesis 17:1).

In Mandaeism

In Book 5, Chapter 2 of the

Mandaean holy scripture of the Ginza Rabba, El Shaddai is mentioned as ʿIl-Šidai.[44]

References

  1. ^ Feyer 2014.
  2. ^ "Hebrew Academy".
  3. .
  4. ^ Exodus 12:23
  5. ^ a b Day 2000, p. 32.
  6. ^
    JSTOR 3259784
    .
  7. .
  8. . Retrieved 2024-03-10.
  9. ^ a b Lutzky 1998, pp. 15–36.
  10. ^ 'the LORD' replaced with 'El Shaddai' in Genesis 17:1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, 'I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless'. English Standard Version (ESV). 2016.
  11. ketiv
    of Job 19:29, where it is somewhat obscure ("גורו לכם מפני־חרב כי־חמה עונות חרב למען תדעון שדין‎"). Knauf suggests that this may mean "revenger gods" in his article on Shadday, see reference later.
  12. ^ Harriet Lutzky, "Ambivalence toward Balaam" Vetus Testamentum 49.3 [July 1999, pp. 421–425] p. 421.
  13. ^ J. A. Hackett, "Some observations on the Balaam tradition at Deir 'Alla'" Biblical Archaeology 49 (1986), p. 220.
  14. .
  15. ^ . Retrieved 17 September 2023. [Job] is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, books in the Bible.
  16. .
  17. ^ MacLaurin 1962, pp. 439–463.
  18. ^ .
  19. ^
    Harris, Stephen L.
    , Understanding the Bible. Palo Alto, California: Mayfield. 1985.
  20. ^ a b "Gesenius' Lexicon (Tregelles' translation)". Blue Letter Bible. Archived from the original on 13 May 2021. Retrieved 12 January 2015.
  21. .
  22. ^ "Shad Meaning in Bible – Old Testament Hebrew Lexicon - New American Standard". biblestudytools.com. Retrieved 2020-04-13.
  23. S2CID 162352850
    . Retrieved 2021-11-25.
  24. ^ see Ugaritic primer p 190, where there is literally zero other information
  25. ^ Mark Smith Athtart in LBE Syrian Texts pg 75
  26. .
  27. .
  28. ^ DULAT pg 672 pl(l), 1.6 IV 1 and par.
  29. .
  30. ^ Moses; Yahwist; Elohist. Genesis 49 25.
  31. ^ Marks, John; Roger, Virgil (1978). "Relative pronoun". A Beginner's Handbook to Biblical Hebrew. Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press. p. 60, par. 45.
  32. ^ "dai". Ben Yehudah's Pocket English-Hebrew/Hebrew-English. New York, New York: Pocket Books, Simon & Schuster. 1964. p. 44.
  33. ^ It is understood as such by Scherman, Nosson; Zlotowitz, Meir, eds. (1994). "Exodus 6:3 commentary". The Stone Edition of the Chumash (Torah) (2nd ed.). Brooklyn, New York City, New York: Art Scroll / Mesorah Publications. p. 319. Art Scroll is an Orthodox Jewish publisher.
  34. ^ Talmud, b. Chagigah 12a.1–36
  35. .
  36. ^ Schniedewind, William Michael (2009). "Calling God names: An inner-Biblical approach to the tetragrammaton". Scriptural Exegesis: The shapes of culture and the religious imagination – essays in honour of Michael Fishbane. Oxford University Press. p. 76.
  37. LCCN 39-14212
    . Retrieved 23 Sep 2023.
  38. ^ .
  39. ^ Aviezer, Hillel (1997). "Ha-Mezuzah – beyn Mitzvah le-Qamiya". Ma'aliyot. 19: 229.
  40. ^ Job 5:17, 22:25 (παντοκράτωρ) and 15:25 (Κύριος παντοκράτωρ)
  41. .
  42. .
  43. .
  44. .

Bibliography

External links

  • The dictionary definition of שד at Wiktionary
  • The dictionary definition of El Shaddai at Wiktionary
  • Quotations related to El Shaddai at Wikiquote