THE SHOFAR. 447 



of the king and the announcement of his victory over some other tribe 

 or faction were one and the same event. 



When Absalom was engaged in the revolt against his father he sent 

 spies among all the tribes of Israel announcing his intentions and in- 

 forming them that when they beard the shofar sounded they might say 

 that he had become king. (II Samuel xv, 10.) 



In the directions given with regard to the coronation of Solomon the 

 use of the shofar is expressly mentioned (I Kings, I, 34 and 30), and its 

 sound affrighted Adonijah and guests at their banquet. (I Kings, i, 

 41.) 



The overthrow of the house of Ahab and the coronation of Jehu 

 were proclaimed in the same way. (II Kings, ix, 13.) 



ETYMOLOGY. 



The etymology of shofar is not at all clear. Gesenius derived it 

 from the stem shafar ti to be bright, clear, beautiful — possibly on ac- 

 count of its clear sound,' 1 but this is hardly satisfactory. The editors 

 of the eleventh edition of Gesenius retain the same explanation.* 



Nothing can be learned from Arabic mbburA This is simply bor- 

 rowed from the Talmudic form sippuraov sippiir, the b in Arabic repre- 

 senting the Hebrew p, as the Arabic possesses no p, but oidy f.t 



The trumpet now used by the Arabs of Asia Minor, which they call 

 seifur, is a metallic instrument. It is x><>ssible, however, that the word 

 was originally applied by the Arabs to an instrument of horn. § 



The Arabian Jews called the shofar saafar. We may, however, get 

 some light from Assyrian. || 



According to Stade (Grammar, par. 218«) the Hebrew shofar stands 

 for a form sa/ppar, and exactly this form has been found in Assyrian. 

 In a cuneiform list of animals (II Kawlinson, vi, 6 cd) we find, following 

 aturiti, "he goat," the word sapparu, which is accordingly the name of 

 an animal, possibly of the goat order. The word also occurs in a 



"They say parenthetically that the shofar was the shape of a horn and })ossiblij 

 made of horn. 



tWetzstein, p. 73, proposes an Arabic etymology; infra and safir in Arabic mean 

 edge or corner, and it is probably his idea that they bear the same relation to shofar 

 that corner bears to Latin cornn. The late Prof, de Lagarde compared shofar with 

 Armenian shifora (Armei ische Siudien , p. 117, No. 16931). 



XCf. Siegmund Fraeukel, Die Aramaischen Fremdworter im Arabiachen, Leyden, 

 1888, p. 24. 



§ See Musical Instruments and their Homes, by Mary E. Brown and William 

 Adams Brown (New York, 1888), p. 196. It is principally interesting because it 

 resembles the trumpet played by an Assyrian warrior on a bas-relief of Nineveh and 

 the Hebrew trumpet represented on the arch of Titus at Rome. This latter is not 

 identical with the shofar; it is the straight metallic trumpet or Uacocera which is 

 represented on the arch of Titus (Engel. p". 21 ). 



|| Fr. Delitzsch, Prolegomena eines neuen Hebraisch- Aramaischen Worterbucliea zum 

 Allen Testament, Leipzig, 1886, p, 125. 



