Hebrew word · H8136
שִׁנְאָן
shin'an
thousands
This word appears only here in the Hebrew Bible, so its meaning has to be reconstructed. The main proposals: (1) from shanah, 'to repeat, do twice' (compare sheni, 'second'), giving 'thousands of repetition' = thousands upon thousands (medieval Jewish grammarians such as Ibn Ezra and Kimchi; BDB).
Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
1) repetition
1a) repetitions, twice-told repetition, twice ten thousands, thousands of repetitions, twice-told thousands
1a1) myriads (in effect)
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
This word appears only here in the Hebrew Bible, so its meaning has to be reconstructed. The main proposals: (1) from shanah, 'to repeat, do twice' (compare sheni, 'second'), giving 'thousands of repetition' = thousands upon thousands (medieval Jewish grammarians such as Ibn Ezra and Kimchi; BDB). (2) Linked to Ugaritic ṯnn, a term in administrative texts for a class of military men associated with chariot forces, giving 'thousands of warriors' (a proposal of W. F. Albright and others; HALOT discusses it). (3) Read as sha'anan, 'at ease, secure', giving 'thousands of untroubled ones' (behind the Septuagint's 'of the flourishing'). (4) 'Angels', from Jewish interpretive tradition (Targum).
- Against the English
BSB 'thousands of thousands' and YLT 'thousands of changes' follow the 'repetition' view. KJV 'thousands of angels' follows the Jewish interpretive tradition and supplies a word the Hebrew does not plainly contain. The Septuagint and Vulgate ('thousands of the rejoicing/flourishing') follow a different word division.
- How it drifted
The KJV's 'angels' comes from the Aramaic Targum and rabbinic reading, which saw the host as angelic. It is a reasonable inference about who rides God's chariots, but it is an interpretation, not a translation of shin'an.
- Used elsewhere in the period
Not attested elsewhere in biblical Hebrew. The Septuagint (Psalm 67:18) has χιλιάδες εὐθηνούντων, 'thousands of the flourishing'. The Targum of Psalms speaks of angels. The Ugaritic ṯnn evidence is suggestive but debated.
Where it appears
Psalms · 1
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Psalm 68:17 שִׁנְאָ֑ן repetition[s]
The chariots of God are tens of thousands—thousands of thousands are they; the Lord is in His sanctuary as He was at Sinai.
Here: This word occurs only here in the Bible, and its meaning is disputed. The most common view takes it as 'repetition', giving 'thousands repeated', i.e. thousands upon thousands. Other proposals are 'warriors' (from a word used in texts from the ancient city of Ugarit), 'those at ease' (the Greek Septuagint), and 'angels' (Jewish tradition and the KJV).
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.