שָׁת

From the study of Psalm 11:3

Range of meaning

A rare word. It is generally linked to the verb shit, 'to set, place, lay down', which gives 'what is set underneath': foundations, base, supports. A related noun shet means 'seat, buttocks' (2 Samuel 10:4; Isaiah 20:4), which also carries the idea of what something rests on. The only other likely occurrence, Isaiah 19:10 ('her shatot will be crushed'), is itself disputed. Some take it as Egypt's 'pillars', meaning its leading men, and others as a separate word for 'weavers'.

Against the English

Nearly all English versions say 'foundations'. NLT turns the picture into 'foundations of law and order', which spells out the probable meaning but removes the image. Jerome's Latin translation from the Hebrew took it as 'laws', meaning things laid down.

How it drifted

Modern readers hear 'foundations' in the abstract sense of founding principles, doctrines, a nation's founding documents or a 'Christian heritage'. The Hebrew picture is concrete: the base courses of a building, standing for whatever holds up a just order in society.

Used elsewhere in the period

Other Psalms use the same idea with different words. In Psalm 82:5, when judges do not do justice, 'all the foundations of the earth are shaken' (mosdei 'erets). In Psalm 75:3, 'when the earth and all its inhabitants totter, it is I who keep its pillars steady.' Ancient Israelites, like their neighbours, thought of the world's moral and social order as a building that God had founded and that God keeps standing.