סֻכּוֹת בְּנוֹת

From the study of 2 Kings 17:30

Range of meaning

A name found only here. In Hebrew it would mean 'booths of daughters'. As the name of a Babylonian deity it has no exact match in any cuneiform source, so the Hebrew form is either a garbled version or a deliberately reshaped one.

Against the English

English versions simply transliterate it (Succoth-benoth, Sukkoth Benoth). That avoids error, but readers who know 'Succoth' as the Feast of Booths may think the verse is about building tents or shrines rather than making an idol.

How it drifted

Older commentators (from the 1600s on) read the name literally, as tents where girls served in sacred prostitution. They took this from Herodotus' story (Histories 1.199) that every Babylonian woman once had to sit at the temple of Mylitta. Modern scholars doubt Herodotus' account and no longer read the verse this way.

Used elsewhere in the period

Proposed Babylonian originals: (1) Zarpanitu (also read Zērbānītu, 'creatress of seed'), the wife of Marduk, Babylon's chief god. On this view 'benot' echoes bānītu, 'creatress', and 'sukkot' is a distortion. This has been the most common identification since the 19th century. (2) Sakkut, a star-god also linked by many to 'Sikkuth' in Amos 5:26, combined with a goddess-title bānītu. (3) Marduk himself, under some epithet. The Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 63b) explains the idol as a hen with her chicks, which is a later wordplay rather than historical memory. The Septuagint's Sokchōth Benith shows the name was already opaque by the 3rd–2nd century BC.