StrongerBible

ashshaph

אַשָּׁף

HebrewH0825“enchanter, conjurer, ...”

Appears 2 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Dan 1:20Dan 2:2
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeah-SHAHFnoun

What ashshaph means

an incantation-priest of the Babylonian court: an expert in spells, exorcism, and secret knowledge, counted among the king's wise men

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

The word names a real profession that Hebrew and Aramaic borrowed from the Babylonians. Behind it stands a Mesopotamian scholar-priest whose work ranged across zones we tend to keep apart:

  • diagnosing illness and its unseen cause
  • driving out demons and hostile spirits
  • reciting incantations to protect the king
  • turning away threatening omens through ritual

The term never appears in earlier Hebrew and shows up only in Daniel, always set in the royal court of Babylon, which fits its origin as a loanword from that world.

In Daniel the word always sits inside a list of court experts alongside the magicians (חַרְטֹם), sorcerers, and Chaldeans. These lists pile up impressive titles to stand for the whole sweep of pagan wisdom, and in every scene the experts fail while Daniel, helped by the God who reveals secrets, succeeds. So a reader meets the enchanter less as a precise job title and more as one member of the royal brain trust who cannot do what Daniel can.

The very same word runs through Daniel's Aramaic chapters under a slightly different spelling (אָשַׁף). English versions reach for several renderings, from "enchanter" to "conjurer" to "astrologer," each catching part of the picture and missing part. The safest mental image is not a storybook spell-caster but a learned priest with a library of ritual texts.

Dan 1:20Dan 2:2

Disputed

Whether Daniel's lists of court experts (in which this term always appears) name genuinely distinct classes of Babylonian specialist, or are a rhetorical piling-up of titles standing for pagan wisdom as a whole.

  • majorityThe lists are a stylized, totalizing device rather than a technical taxonomy; the titles vary in number and order and serve to represent all pagan mantic wisdom as a foil for Daniel's God.; John J. Collins, Daniel, Hermeneia (Fortress, 1993); Carol A. Newsom, Daniel, OTL (Westminster John Knox, 2014); James A. Montgomery, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Daniel, ICC (T&T Clark, 1927)
  • minorityThe categories name genuinely distinct classes of Babylonian occult specialist, and the vocabulary reflects accurate sixth-century background.; Stephen R. Miller, Daniel, New American Commentary 18 (Broadman & Holman, 1994)
  • minorityA mediating reading: much of the pile-up is rhetorical, but some terms genuinely preserve Mesopotamian coloring.; Ernest C. Lucas, Daniel, Apollos Old Testament Commentary (IVP, 2002)

What scholars say about ashshaph

The word is one of the securest Akkadian loanwords in the Hebrew Bible, borrowed from āšipu, the Mesopotamian incantation-priest and exorcist (CAD A/II; von Soden, AHw). BDB glosses "conjurer, necromancer"; HALOT prefers the more technical "incantation-priest, exorcist," following Kaufman's and Mankowski's demonstration of the loan; DCH offers "enchanter, conjurer, exorcist." The eight occurrences fall entirely within Daniel's stylized lists of Babylonian court experts (two in the Hebrew sections, six in the Aramaic). A large body of scholarship (Collins, Newsom, Montgomery, Goldingay) reads these lists as rhetorical totalizations of pagan mantic wisdom rather than a technical taxonomy of distinct professions, though Miller defends them as genuinely distinct Neo-Babylonian classes and Lucas takes a mediating view. Even so, this term is widely granted to preserve an authentic memory of the āšipu attested in the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid archives. The instability of the Greek renderings (μάγος, ἐπαοιδός, φαρμακός) suggests the technical sense was already fading by the second century BCE, and the older "astrologer" gloss is rejected as etymologically off-target.

In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. אַשָּׁףlexicon
  • BDB, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, pp. 80-81, s.v. אַשָּׁף and אָשַׁףlexicon
  • D. J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. 1, s.v. אַשָּׁףlexicon
  • The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (CAD) A/II, s.v. āšipulexicon
  • W. von Soden, Akkadisches Handwörterbuch I, 79lexicon
  • Stephen A. Kaufman, The Akkadian Influences on Aramaic, Assyriological Studies 19 (Chicago, 1974)monograph
  • Paul V. Mankowski, Akkadian Loanwords in Biblical Hebrew, Harvard Semitic Studies 47 (Eisenbrauns, 2000)monograph
  • John J. Collins, Daniel, Hermeneia (Fortress, 1993)commentary
  • James A. Montgomery, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Daniel, ICC (T&T Clark, 1927)commentary
  • Stephen R. Miller, Daniel, New American Commentary 18 (Broadman & Holman, 1994)commentary

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of אַשָּׁף

m p absolute

אַשָּׁפִים

Dan 1:20, Dan 2:2