StrongerBible

shiddah

שִׁדָּה

HebrewH7705“concubines, coffers, ...”

Appears 2 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Ecc 2:8 (2×)
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeshid-DAHnoun

What shiddah means

the last item in a king's list of everything he collected for his own pleasure, and a word whose meaning is genuinely lost: most likely chests of treasure, possibly women of a harem.

TranslatabilityUntranslatableCertaintyObscure

This word turns up exactly once in the Hebrew Bible, at the very end of Ecclesiastes 2:8, where the king finishes listing what he gathered for himself: silver and gold, the wealth of kings and provinces, singers, and then this. It appears twice in a row, first singular and then plural, in a phrase that has no parallel anywhere else in Hebrew. What it names is unknown.

The oldest translators were already guessing, and every one of them guessed differently:

  • the earliest Greek version and the Syriac both read it as cupbearers, a man and women who poured the wine
  • Jerome's Latin took it as cups and pitchers used for serving wine
  • the Aramaic paraphrase made it channels of hot and cold water in a bathhouse
  • one strand of rabbinic tradition read it as male and female demons, another as a chest, and a leading rabbi admitted outright that he did not know what the word meant

Two readings are still argued today. The first is "chests" or "coffers." In the Hebrew of a few centuries later this same word is an ordinary household term for a wooden storage chest, and a matching word in Akkadian names a chest for silver, gold, and jewelry. That fits a sentence otherwise devoted to piled-up royal treasure. The second is "concubines" or "harem women," which fits the phrase just before it about the delights that people crave, and fits the expectation that a Solomon-like catalogue of pleasures would mention women somewhere.

What makes the puzzle so stubborn is that each reading is strong exactly where the other is weak. The chest reading has the better evidence from related languages; the harem reading has the better fit with what readers expect the sentence to be about. Notably, the writer used neither of the plain words available to him: not the everyday word for a chest (אֲרוֹן), and not the ordinary word for a concubine (פִּלֶגֶשׁ).

Ecc 2:8 (2×)

What scholars say about shiddah

שִׁדָּה is a hapax legomenon at Qoh 2:8, and the versions already diverge: the kaige-Theodotionic Greek reads οἰνοχόον καὶ οἰνοχόας and the Peshitta independently reaches the same sense via the root š-q-y, both presupposing Aramaic שדא "to pour"; Aquila has κυλίκιον καὶ κυλίκια; Symmachus, per Jerome, paraphrases with tables and their settings; the Vulgate gives scyphos et urceos, and Jerome's commentary (PL 23, cols. 400-401) explicitly denies a human referent while transliterating SADDA and SADDOTH, a pre-Masoretic vocalization at odds with MT šiddāh. Targum Qohelet reads bath conduits, and b. Gittin 68a preserves the Babylonian "demons" pun alongside the Palestinian "chest," with R. Yohanan conceding he does not know the word. The lexica are correspondingly cautious: BDB (994) marks the sense "unknown" and floats the emendation שָׂרָה וְשָׂרוֹת; HALOT (IV, 1420) records "concubine, mistress" as contextually likely via Ugaritic št and Arabic sitt while treating the meaning as uncertain; Gesenius (18th ed.) prints "Bedeutung ungewiss" (meaning uncertain); DCH (vol. 8) lists the proposals without commitment; Jastrow (1558) gives Mishnaic Hebrew שִׁדָּה unambiguously as "chest, strong-box" (Kelim 15:1, 18:1; Miqwa'ot 6:5). The comparative case shifted decisively when W. L. Moran (RA 69, 1975, 151 n. 4) re-read the Amarna gloss ša-di-tum as ša-qí-tu "cupbearer," removing the Akkadian foundation of the harem reading; the Assyriological "šadādu = to love" is a ghost, the real verb meaning "to pull, drag" (CAD Š/1, 20-34). Seow (Ecclesiastes, AB 18C, 1997, 131-33) built the modern case for "chests, coffers" on Akkadian šaddu "chest for silver, gold, jewelry" (CAD Š/1, 42-43) plus the Mishnaic afterlife, parsing שִׁדָּה וְשִׁדּוֹת as accusatives of measure; Lohfink and Bons concur, and NJPS translates accordingly. Against this, Delitzsch, Crenshaw, Murphy, Longman, Krüger, and Fox retain a harem sense on contextual grounds, Fox and Crenshaw via Ugaritic št / Arabic sitt, a derivation Seow rejects on root-shape grounds since the gemination points to šdd. Schoors (OLA 143, 2004) leans to the harem reading while conceding Seow's philological strength, and Weeks (ICC, 2020-21) remains undecided and gives the Old Greek cupbearer reading unusual weight. The proposed derivation from שַׁד "breast" fails morphologically, and a Persian loan has no current advocate; the word is best treated as a Mesopotamian loan consistent with Qoheleth's Late Biblical Hebrew profile.

Where scholars disagree about shiddah

What the word means. It occurs only once in the Hebrew Bible, the ancient versions each rendered it differently, and scholarship has not settled whether it names chests of treasure, women of a royal harem, or something else.

  • contestedChests or coffers. The same word is the ordinary term for a wooden storage chest in Mishnaic Hebrew, and Akkadian šaddu names a chest for silver, gold, and jewelry; that fits a verse otherwise about accumulated royal treasure, and the phrase can be read as "by the chestful."; C. L. Seow, Ecclesiastes (Anchor Bible 18C, 1997), pp. 131-33; Norbert Lohfink, Qoheleth (Continental Commentaries, 2003); Eberhard Bons, Biblische Notizen 36 (1987); Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature, p. 1558
  • contestedConcubines, or ladies of a harem. The phrase stands in apposition to "the delights of the sons of man" in a king's catalogue of pleasures, where women are expected; the derivation is traced variously to Ugaritic št and Arabic sitt "lady," or to the root שדד "to plunder" (captive women).; Franz Delitzsch, Commentary on the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes (Keil-Delitzsch, 1875); James L. Crenshaw, Ecclesiastes (Old Testament Library, 1987); Michael V. Fox, Ecclesiastes (JPS Bible Commentary, 2004); Roland E. Murphy, Ecclesiastes (Word Biblical Commentary 23A, 1992); Tremper Longman III, The Book of Ecclesiastes (NICOT, 1998); HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner-Stamm), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, IV, p. 1420
  • minorityCupbearers, male and female. This is what the Old Greek and the Peshitta read, deriving the word from Aramaic שדא "to pour"; it is largely abandoned today but is still weighed seriously as a witness to an early understanding of the consonantal text.; Stuart Weeks, Ecclesiastes (International Critical Commentary, 2020-21)
  • contestedThe meaning is simply not recoverable. The major lexica decline to decide, recording the proposals side by side; BDB even entertains an emendation of the text rather than a gloss.; BDB, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. שִׁדָּה, p. 994; Gesenius, Hebräisches und Aramäisches Handwörterbuch, 18th ed. (Donner et al., 1987-2010), s.v. שִׁדָּה; DCH (Clines), The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. 8, s.v. שִׁדָּה; Antoon Schoors, The Preacher Sought to Find Pleasing Words (OLA 143, 2004)
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

  • BDB, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. שִׁדָּה, p. 994lexicon
  • HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner-Stamm), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, IV, p. 1420lexicon
  • Gesenius, Hebräisches und Aramäisches Handwörterbuch, 18th ed. (Donner et al., 1987-2010), s.v. שִׁדָּהlexicon
  • DCH (Clines), The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. 8, s.v. שִׁדָּהlexicon
  • Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature, p. 1558lexicon
  • CAD (The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago), Š/1, pp. 42-43, s.v. šaddu; pp. 20-34, s.v. šadādulexicon
  • C. L. Seow, Ecclesiastes (Anchor Bible 18C, 1997), pp. 131-33commentary
  • W. L. Moran, Revue d'Assyriologie 69 (1975), p. 151 n. 4article
  • Norbert Lohfink, Qoheleth (Continental Commentaries, 2003)commentary
  • Eberhard Bons, Biblische Notizen 36 (1987)article
  • Franz Delitzsch, Commentary on the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes (Keil-Delitzsch, 1875)commentary
  • James L. Crenshaw, Ecclesiastes (Old Testament Library, 1987)commentary
  • Roland E. Murphy, Ecclesiastes (Word Biblical Commentary 23A, 1992)commentary
  • Tremper Longman III, The Book of Ecclesiastes (NICOT, 1998)commentary
  • Thomas Krüger, Qoheleth (Hermeneia, 2004)commentary
  • Michael V. Fox, Ecclesiastes (JPS Bible Commentary, 2004)commentary
  • Antoon Schoors, The Preacher Sought to Find Pleasing Words (OLA 143, 2004)monograph
  • Stuart Weeks, Ecclesiastes (International Critical Commentary, 2020-21)commentary
  • Peter J. Gentry, "The Relationship of Aquila and Theodotion to the Old Greek of Ecclesiastes," Aramaic Studies 2.1 (2004)article
  • George A. Barton, Ecclesiastes (International Critical Commentary, 1908)commentary

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

All attested forms of שִׁדָּה

f p absolute

שִׁדּוֹת

Ecc 2:8

f s absolute

שִׁדָּה

Ecc 2:8