Lesley.] °0t> lJan- 15, 



to all the Hebrew writings by the frequent adoration of Jehovah in his two 

 moods of affection for his people and violent hatred for those who are not 

 his people. This tone is very harsh in the earlier books, but softens and 

 sweetens in later times, until the modern idea of God as the all- father is 

 almost completely developed. 



But that is not the subject of this paper. I wish to keep in view the 

 sole question, whether ShDI could have been an epithet of Jehovah ; or 

 whether, on the contrary, he was not a different deity, more ancient, and 

 foreign to Palestine. To help settle this question I shall quote every pas- 

 sage in which the word occurs, both in the earlier and later books, to see 

 what the context in each instance suggests. I hope in another com- 

 munication to discuss the question in a broader way, by comparing data 

 obtainable in countries outside the limits of Palestine. 



It is necessary however to add one more item to these prefatory state- 

 ments, viz : the fact that the Hebrew language had two words written 

 ShD, which must have been differently pronounced, although it is im- 

 possible to say what the difference was. In the early Christian centuries 

 Hebrew scribes distinguished these two words by marking one to be pro- 

 nounced short and the other long, Shad and Shad, or Shed and Shed, like 

 the English ship and sheep. But whether this Masoretic punctuation 

 preserved correctly the tradition of the ancient difference of pronunciation 

 is a matter of debate among the best scholars.* It is, however, a very 

 convenient way of distinguishing the two words : Sh§D, a demon, as above 

 described, and ShaD, the female breast or teat.f from which I would de- 

 rive a word for wife, ShDE, which occurs only once in the Hebrew 

 Scriptures (Ecc. 2 : 8). It is a curious fact, and bears upon our subject, 

 thatGesenius rejects this plausible etymology and prefers to derive ShDE, 

 from the other ShD (which he now says means simply 'power, although 

 he has elsewhere said that it never meant power except in a bad or destruc- 

 tive sense), translating it not wife, but mistress, domina. 



I leave to others to explain how two such irreconcilable ideas came to 

 be expressed by the same word ; how ShD could be used to express both 

 destruction and nutrition, a midnight robbery and a woman's breast, the 

 invasion of savage enemies and the suckling of children. But I will show 

 that both these two irreconcilable ideas are involved in the texts relating to 

 the deity ShDI, who is regarded (sometimes in the same passage) as the 

 god of vengeance and destruction and as the god of covenant promise of 



* I cannot see how it can be of any value, seeing that it is not consistent with 

 itself; for in Lam. 4 : 3, the word is pointed short, "\\ff ; in Job. 21 : 9, Is. 60:16, long 

 "l'ty, and in Hosea 9 : 14, Cant. 4 : 5, Gen. 49 : 25, also long CD'tiy tlie two breasts. 

 Gesenius derives this ShaD from an obsolete Shadah, allied to tbe Chaldee and 

 Arabic verbs "to cast, shoot, pour, moisten, irrigate." In other words, it has 

 no known Hebrew etymology. It certainly has nothing to do with the old 

 Egyptian BNTT (Benti).the two dugs (Pierret's Diet., p. 181), nor with the Coptic 

 form MNOT, mamma. 



tShD in Hebrew exactly corresponds to rintr^ and teat. 



