El Shaddai

El Shaddai (Hebrew: אֵל שַׁדַּי, romanized: ʾĒl Šadday; IPA: [el ʃadːaj]) or just Shaddai is one of the names of God in Judaism. El Shaddai is conventionally translated into English as God Almighty. (Deus Omnipotens in Latin, Arabic: الله الشديد, romanized: ʾAllāh Ash-Shadīd)

El means "God" in the Ugaritic and the Canaanite languages. The literal meaning of Shaddai, however, is the subject of debate.^[1] Some scholars have argued that it came from Akkadian shadû ("mountain")^[2] or from the Hebrew verb shaddad שדד meaning "Destroyer".^[3] Shaddai may have also come from shad שד meaning mammary; shaddai is a typical Biblical Hebrew word (שדי). The plural (Shaddayim -- שדיים) is the typical Modern Hebrew word for human breasts in dual grammatical number.^[4] The Deir Alla Inscription contains shaddayin as well as elohin rather than elohim. Scholars^[5] translate this as "shadday-gods," taken to mean unspecified fertility, mountain or wilderness gods.

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]

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).^[10]

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,'^[11] 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 Balaam recorded in the Book of Numbers 24:4 and 16, the vision comes from Shaddai, who is also referred to as El ("God") and Elyon ("Most High"). In the fragmentary inscriptions at Deir Alla, shaddayin^[12] appear (Hebrew: שדין; the vowels are uncertain, as is the gemination of the "d"), perhaps lesser figurations of Shaddai.^[13] These have been tentatively identified with the šēdim "demons" (Hebrew: שדים) of Deuteronomy 32:17 (parashah Haazinu) and Psalm 106: 37–38,^[14] 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.^[15][16]

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.

The origin and meaning of "Shaddai" are obscure, and a variety of hypotheses have been put forward.

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 loanword from Israelian Hebrew, where the word had a "sh" sound, into Judean Hebrew and hence, Biblical Hebrew, where it would have been śaday with the sound śin.^[17]: 750 In this theory, the word is related to the word śadé "the (uncultivated) field", the area of hunting (as in the distinction between beasts of the field, חיות השדה, and cattle, בהמות). He points out that the name is found in Thamudic inscriptions (as ʾlšdy), in a personal name Śaday ʾammī used in Egypt from the Late Bronze Age until Achaemenid times, and even in the Punic language name ʿbdšd "Servant of Shadé or Shada".^[17]: 750

Another theory is that Shaddai is a derivation of a Semitic root that appears in the Akkadian language shadû ("mountain") and shaddāʾû or shaddûʾa "mountain-dweller", one of the names of Amurru. This theory was popularized by 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 Mesopotamian divine mountain.^[18] This could also refer to the Israelite camp's stay at 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".^[18] In Exodus 6:3, El Shaddai is identified explicitly with the God of Abraham and with Yahweh.^[18] The term "El Shaddai" appears chiefly in Genesis, only with a fertility association.

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 epithet.^[3] The meaning may go back to an original sense which was "to be strong" as in the Arabic "shadid" (شديد) "strong",^[19] although normally the Arabic letter pronounced "sh" corresponds to the Hebrew letter 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.^[19] 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.^[17]: 751

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.^[20]

The Hebrew noun shad (שד) means "breast".^[21] 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").^[22]

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"^[23] while šdh means a plain in Canaanite but a mountain in Sumerian.^[24]

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).^[25] The noun containing the dagesh is the Hebrew word dai meaning "enough, sufficient, sufficiency".^[26] 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.^[27] 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.^[28]

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."^[29]

The name "Shaddai" often appears on the devices such as amulets or dedicatory plaques.^[30][31][32] 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").^[33] 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.^[34]

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.^[33]

The Septuagint^[35] (and other early translations) sometimes translate "Shaddai" as "(the) Almighty". It is often translated as "God", "my God", or "Lord". However, in the Greek of the Septuagint translation of Psalm 91:1, "Shaddai" is translated as "the God of heaven".^[36]

"Almighty" is the translation of "Shaddai" followed by most modern English translations of the Hebrew scriptures, including the popular New International Version^[37] 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.^[38] The translation in the Concordant Old Testament is 'El Who-Suffices' (Genesis 17:1).

In Book 5, Chapter 2 of the Right Ginza, part of Mandaean holy scripture of the Ginza Rabba, El Shaddai is mentioned as ʿIl-Šidai.^[39]

• "Names of God: Shaddai and 'Elyon". Jewish Encyclopedia.
• Day, John (2000). Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan. London: Burns & Oates. ISBN 1-85075-986-3.
• Lutzky, Harriet (1998). "Shadday as a Goddess Epithet". Vetus Testamentum. 48 (1). Brill: 15–36. doi:10.1163/1568533982721839. ISSN 0042-4935. JSTOR 1585459. Retrieved 2023-10-28.
• MacLaurin, E. C. B. (1962). "YHWH, the Origin of the Tetragrammaton". Vetus Testamentum. 12 (4). Brill: 439–463. doi:10.2307/1516934. ISSN 0042-4935. JSTOR 1516934. Retrieved 2023-11-08.
• Steins, G. (1974). "שדי šadday". In Botterweck, G. Johannes; Ringgren, Helmer; Fabry, Heinz-Josef (eds.). Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament. Vol. XIV. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. pp. 418–446. ISBN 978-0-8028-2345-8.

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