shelet

שְׁלֵט

AramaicH7981“rule, have power over, ...”

Appears 7 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Dan 2:38Dan 2:39Dan 2:48Dan 3:27Dan 5:7Dan 5:16Dan 6:24(25)

Root family

sheletשְׁלֵטto rule7H7981
- sholtanשׇׁלְטָןdominion14H7985

Word studysheh-LATEverb

What shelet means

to have power over someone or something: to rule a province or a kingdom, to get the better of a victim, or to place another person in charge.

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

This Aramaic verb is not about titles. It asks who actually has the power in a situation, and it answers with whoever is on top at the end of the story. That is why the book of Daniel can use one and the same verb for an empire that governs the whole earth and for a fire that fails to touch three men.

The range that follows from this is wider than it first looks. A bronze kingdom rules the earth, a foreign exile is promoted to rule as third in Babylon, lions get the better of the men thrown down to them, and fire has no power at all over the bodies it was heated for. Kings, animals, and flames are all measured by the same test: did they in fact prevail?

Twice the verb runs the other direction and says that someone was put in power by another: Nebuchadnezzar over every living creature, Daniel over the province of Babylon. Both times the power comes down from someone higher up, which is exactly the argument the book is making about who hands out authority in the first place.

The rest of this word family fills in the picture. The adjective (שַׁלִּיט) says of a person that he is the one with the say, and the noun (שָׁלְטָן) names the ruling power itself as something that can be given, taken back, or made to last forever. This verb is the moment that power is actually exercised.

Nuances

1ato rule: to hold governing power over a realm, or to hold rank as a ruler within one.

TranslatabilityDirect

Dan 2:39Dan 5:7Dan 5:16

1bto get the better of someone: to overpower a person or a body, or in the negative, to fail to touch it.

TranslatabilityDirect

Dan 3:27Dan 6:24(25)

1cto put someone in power: to hand a person authority over a territory or over living creatures.

Dan 2:38Dan 2:48

What shelet does not mean

English scatters this one verb across half a dozen phrases, so the thread running from the throne room to the lions' den is invisible in translation:

In Daniel 2 and 5 it comes out as "rule," "bear rule," or "made ruler."
In Daniel 3 it comes out as "had no power over," and some versions replace it altogether with "the fire had not harmed them."
In Daniel 6 it comes out as "overpowered" or "had the mastery of them."

That last pair is the one worth catching. When the story says the fire had no power over the three men and then that the lions did have power over their accusers, it is using the same verb the same book uses for kings governing empires. In one word it keeps asking who really has the say.

Keep the languages straight, too. Daniel writes this in Aramaic, and it is not the Hebrew verb spelled the same way (שָׁלַט), which turns up in Esther, Nehemiah, and Ecclesiastes and leans toward getting the upper hand over another person. And on its own this word says nothing about an office or a crown. It is about power actually held, which is why fire and lions can be the ones holding it.

What scholars say about shelet

The Aramaic lexica agree on the analysis and differ only in wording. BDB's Biblical Aramaic section gives the peal as "have dominion over" with בְּ of the sphere ruled (Dan 2:39; 5:7, 16) and "have power over, prevail against" of the fire and the lions (Dan 3:27; 6:25 [English 6:24]), and the haphel as "make ruler over" (Dan 2:38, 48). HALOT's Aramaic volume and Vogt's Lexicon of Biblical Aramaic list the same three groups; Rosenthal's Grammar treats the haphel here as the regular causative of the peal, alongside the qattil adjective שַׁלִּיט and the abstract noun שָׁלְטָן. The root שלט is well attested in Achaemenid-era Aramaic legal material, where the adjective in the formula שליט + ל plus infinitive states who is entitled to act (Cowley; Porten and Yardeni), which is the idiom standing behind the impersonal לָא שַׁלִּיט of Ezra 7:24 and, more distantly, behind the later Aramaic and Syriac use for what is permitted. Commentators note one adjacent crux at Dan 5:7 and 5:16: the numeral תַּלְתָּא / תַּלְתִּי is variously taken as "third in rank" (Belshazzar being second under Nabonidus), as a technical rank name comparable to a triumvir, or as "one of three," and Montgomery (ICC), Collins (Hermeneia), and Goldingay (WBC) canvass the options. The dispute concerns the numeral, not the verb, whose sense of holding governing power is not in question in either verse.

Sources

BDB, Biblical Aramaic section, s.v. שְׁלֵטlexicon
HALOT, Aramaic volume, s.v. שלטlexicon
E. Vogt, A Lexicon of Biblical Aramaic, trans. J. A. Fitzmyer (Rome: Gregorian and Biblical Press, 2011), s.v. שלטlexicon
F. Rosenthal, A Grammar of Biblical Aramaic (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz)grammar
J. A. Montgomery, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Daniel (ICC; Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1927)commentary
J. J. Collins, Daniel: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993)commentary
J. E. Goldingay, Daniel (Word Biblical Commentary 30; Dallas: Word, 1989)commentary
A. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1923)primary-source
B. Porten and A. Yardeni, Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt (Jerusalem: Hebrew University)primary-source

shelet

What shelet means

to have power over someone or something: to rule a province or a kingdom, to get the better of a victim, or to place another person in charge.

Nuances

What scholars say about shelet

Sources

All attested forms of שְׁלֵט

haphel perfect 3ms

peal imperfect 2ms

peal imperfect 3fs

peal imperfect 3ms

peal perfect 3mp

peal perfect 3ms

What shelet means

to have power over someone or something: to rule a province or a kingdom, to get the better of a victim, or to place another person in charge.

Nuances

Related words

The English words used to translate shelet

How shelet differs from similar Aramaic words

shelet in the other biblical languages

What scholars say about shelet

Sources

All attested forms of שְׁלֵט

haphel perfect 3ms

peal imperfect 2ms

peal imperfect 3fs

peal imperfect 3ms

peal perfect 3mp

peal perfect 3ms