Aramaic word · H7595
שְׁאֵלָא
she'eleta'
affair
Question, request, matter, case. It comes from the verb ša'al, 'to ask'. In a legal setting it is the matter laid before a court and the decision on it. It occurs only here in the Bible.
A Biblical Aramaic word, from the parts of the Old Testament written in Aramaic. Why Aramaic?
Appears once in the Aramaic of the Old Testament.
What it means
affair, request
Aramaic of she.e.lah (שְׁאֵלָה "petition" H7596)
Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).
In depth
- Range of meaning
Question, request, matter, case. It comes from the verb ša'al, 'to ask'. In a legal setting it is the matter laid before a court and the decision on it. It occurs only here in the Bible.
- Against the English
KJV and WEB say 'demand', BSB 'verdict', ESV 'decision'. The KJV word is the most misleading for a modern reader (see drift).
- How it drifted
In 1611 'demand' still carried its older French sense of a question or a claim being asked. Today it sounds like an insistent order.
- Used elsewhere in the period
Hebrew šᵉʾēlāh means 'request' (1 Sam 1:17; Esth 5:7–8). In later Aramaic and rabbinic usage, šᵉʾelta is a question, especially a legal one, and an early medieval collection of Jewish legal discourses is called the She'iltot. Lexicons (HALOT, BDB) give 'matter, affair, decision'.
Where it appears
Daniel · 1
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Daniel 4:17 שְׁאֵֽלְתָ֑א affair the
This decision is the decree of the watchers, the verdict declared by the holy ones, so that the living will know that the Most High rules over the kingdom of mankind and gives it to whom He wishes, setting over it the lowliest of men.’
Here: "The case" or "the decision": the matter in question, settled by the court. It comes from the verb 'to ask', so it is the question put before the court together with its answer. This is the only place it occurs in the Bible.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.