Tool Beta
The Gods of the Bible
Every named divine being in Scripture, what the text calls it, and what the ancient world thought it was.
Shahar and Shalem
Dawn and Dusk as divine figures, one of whom is the father of the shining one in Isaiah 14.
Isaiah 14:12, in every translation this tool compares.
Dawn and Dusk, treated as figures rather than times of day. Isaiah 14 calls its falling star the son of Shahar, and that phrase only carries weight if Shahar is somebody. The Ugaritic texts make the pair divine twins.
Dawn and Dusk. Helel ben-shahar in Isaiah 14:12 is the son of Shahar, and that only means something if Shahar is a figure. The Ugaritic texts make them a divine pair, fathered by Ilu (El) on two women he meets by the shore in KTU 1.23 ("The Gracious and Beautiful Gods," lines 49-54), nursed by "the Lady" (Anat or Athirat), and sharing Mot's insatiable appetite, "one lip to the earth, one lip to the heavens." With Shahar named in Isaiah 14:12, a cult of Shalem is plausible, though the direct evidence is thin. DDD's own Shahar entry reads most of dawn's other biblical appearances as poetry and not theology: in Job 38:12 dawn is God's creature taking its post and no rival; in Psalm 139:9 the "wings of the dawn" mark the world's eastern edge inside a cosmological psalm without implying a goddess; and Song of Songs 6:10, the bride "fair as the dawn," is the one place DDD grants that a goddess would fit the imagery better than a god, if any of these passages is doing double duty.
H7837 (שַׁחַר), 23 occ
In the Ugaritic god list KTU 1.123:11, Shahru and Shalimu appear among the paired divine couples, and in KTU 1.107 and 1.100 they join the sun goddess in collecting, or failing to dispose of, snake venom, an odd but consistent job that gives them a role in poison alongside dawn and dusk. Mark Smith's Baal Cycle commentary notes that El's fathering of the pair in KTU 1.23:48-54 is one of the few solid signs that El's family had any astral character at all, and ties the pair to Venus as morning and evening star, the identification behind their epithet "the gracious gods" ('ilm n'mm, KTU 1.23:60,67).
- Isaiah 14:12
- Psalm 110:3
- Job 3:9
- Job 38:12
- Psalm 139:9
- Song of Songs 6:10
- W. G. E. Watson, "Helel," DDD, 392-393
- H. B. Huffmon, "Shalem," DDD, 755-756
- S. B. Parker, "Shahar," DDD, 754
- M. S. Smith, *The Ugaritic Baal Cycle*, Vol. II, on Athtar and the family of El —
