StrongerBible

shema

שְׁמַע

AramaicH8086“hear, obey”

Appears 9 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Dan 3:5Dan 3:7Dan 3:10Dan 3:15Dan 5:14Dan 5:16Dan 5:23Dan 6:14(15)Dan 7:27
Word studysheh-MAHverb

What shema means

to hear: to take in a sound or a report, and, when the words come from someone in authority, to comply with them.

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

This is the everyday Aramaic word for hearing, and all nine of its appearances fall inside the Aramaic chapters of Daniel. That setting shapes it. Daniel's stories run on sounds that carry authority: a signal that starts a ceremony, a report that reaches a throne, an order that comes down from a king. The word covers the whole stretch, from a noise striking the ear to a subject falling into line.

Its uses cluster in three situations:

  • a sound goes out and a crowd is expected to react, as when the royal band strikes up and everyone present is to bow to the golden statue
  • word about a person reaches a ruler, as when Belshazzar tells Daniel twice over that he has "heard" of his gifts
  • an order comes down from a throne and is met with compliance, as in the vision where every ruling power will serve (פְּלַח) and obey

The last of those three is where English has to change words. Aramaic keeps hearing and obeying inside one verb, so the step from catching what a ruler says to doing it is not a jump to a new word but a shift in what the sentence is about. English Bibles print "hear" in Daniel 3 and "obey" in Daniel 7:27, and the single word underneath goes unseen. The same reach belongs to the Hebrew verb it matches (שָׁמַע), and to the ordinary words for hearing in the neighboring languages, so it reflects how these languages work rather than a special insight about sound.

One use runs the other way and denies the ability outright. When Daniel tells Belshazzar he has praised gods of silver, wood, and stone that do not see or hear or know, the charge is not that the images are deaf but that they are nothing: a god who cannot take a word in cannot answer one either.

Nuances

1ato hear a sound: the ear catching music, a signal, or a noise.
Dan 3:5Dan 3:7Dan 3:10Dan 3:15
1bto hear about someone or something: to get word of a person or an event by report.
Dan 5:14Dan 5:16Dan 6:14(15)
1cto be able to hear: hearing as a working faculty, named in order to be denied of something lifeless.
Dan 5:23
1dto obey: to give a ruler the compliance a command calls for.
TranslatabilityDirect
Dan 7:27

What scholars say about shema

The standard tools treat this as a single Aramaic verb with a connected range and no homonymy. BDB's Biblical Aramaic section, HALOT's Aramaic volume, and Vogt's Lexicon of Biblical Aramaic give the peal as "to hear" and "to hear of, learn of," and the reflexive-passive stem (hitpaal) at Daniel 7:27 as "to be obedient, to obey." It is the regular Aramaic cognate of Hebrew שׁמע, and the development from auditory perception to compliance is shared with Akkadian, Ugaritic, Arabic, and the later Aramaic dialects, so it is a widespread Semitic pattern rather than a peculiarity of Daniel (TDOT, s.v. שׁמע). Rosenthal's grammar treats the hitpaal of this verb as the ordinary passive-reflexive to the peal, which is why 7:27 is rendered "obey" rather than "be heard." The nine occurrences are distributed in the lexica as follows: the ceremonial hearing of the musical signal at Daniel 3:5, 3:7, 3:10, and 3:15; hearing a report at 5:14, 5:16, and 6:14 (6:15 in the Aramaic numbering); the participle denying the faculty to the idols at 5:23; and the obedience of the nations at 7:27. Goldingay and Collins both note that the contested question at 7:27 is not the sense of the verb but the identity of the one obeyed, since the Aramaic can point either to the people of the holy ones or to the Most High; that is a question about the referent of a pronoun, not about what the verb means.

Sources

  • BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), Biblical Aramaic section, s.v. שׁמעlexicon
  • HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner-Stamm), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, Aramaic volume, s.v. שׁמעlexicon
  • Ernst Vogt, A Lexicon of Biblical Aramaic, revised and translated by J. A. Fitzmyer (Gregorian and Biblical Press, 2011), s.v. שׁמעlexicon
  • TDOT (Botterweck, Ringgren, Fabry, eds.), Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, s.v. שׁמעtheological-dictionary
  • Franz Rosenthal, A Grammar of Biblical Aramaic, Porta Linguarum Orientaliumgrammar
  • John E. Goldingay, Daniel, Word Biblical Commentary 30commentary
  • John J. Collins, Daniel, Hermeneia (Fortress, 1993)commentary

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

All attested forms of שְׁמַע

peal imperfect 2mp

תִשְׁמְעוּן

Dan 3:5, Dan 3:15

peal participle m p absolute

שָׁמְעִין

Dan 3:7, Dan 5:23

peal perfect 1cs

שִׁמְעֵת

Dan 5:14, Dan 5:16

hitpaal conjunctive-imperfect 3mp

וְיִשְׁתַּמְּעוּן

Dan 7:27

peal imperfect 3ms

יִשְׁמַע

Dan 3:10

peal perfect 3ms

שְׁמַע

Dan 6:14