Aramaic word · H8046
שְׁמַד
lehashmadah
to destroy
šmd, causative: to exterminate, annihilate. ʾbd, causative: to cause to perish, destroy. Both words describe total destruction, not punishment or correction.
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
(Aphel) to destroy
Aramaic of sha.mad (שָׁמַד "to destroy" H8045)
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
šmd, causative: to exterminate, annihilate. ʾbd, causative: to cause to perish, destroy. Both words describe total destruction, not punishment or correction.
- Against the English
KJV "to consume and to destroy": "consume" here means to use up or make an end of, not to eat or buy. BSB folds both verbs and the following phrase into "completely destroyed forever." NASB "annihilated and destroyed" keeps both verbs distinct.
- How it drifted
KJV "consume" carried the sense "destroy utterly" (compare "consumed by fire"). Readers today mostly hear "consumption" in the sense of eating or spending.
- Used elsewhere in the period
Hebrew šmd (hiphil) is the language of Deuteronomy for wiping out nations (Deut 7:24; 9:3) and of God threatening to destroy Israel (Deut 9:14, 25). In Biblical Aramaic šmd occurs only here. Aramaic ʾbd appears in 2:12, 18, 24 (the order to destroy the wise men), in 7:11 (the beast "destroyed," hûbad), and in Jer 10:11 (the false gods "will perish").
Where it appears
Daniel · 1
-
Daniel 7:26 לְהַשְׁמָדָ֥ה to annihilate
But the court will convene, and his dominion will be taken away and completely destroyed forever.
Here: "To annihilate": a causative infinitive saying what the removal leads to. This is the only time the root appears in the Aramaic of the Bible. Its Hebrew counterpart is a strong word for wiping a people or a power out completely.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.