El Shaddai
El Shaddai (Hebrew: אֵל שַׁדַּי, romanized: ʾĒl Šadday; IPA: [el ʃadːaj]), or just Shaddai, is one of the names of God in Judaism. The Latin Vulgate rendered it as Deus Omnipotens, thus many English translations render it as God Almighty.
In Hebrew, 'el plainly means "God." However, the meaning of shaddai is the subject of much debate. Some scholars have argued that it is part from the Akkadian shadû (English: mountain), and Francesca Stavrakopoulou has suggested understanding the title as referring to unspecified fertility gods or wilderness gods. Others have suggested that the root (שָׁדַד) means 'ravager,' and various utterances amongst the Prophets seem to support this interpretation. One interpreter, derives , "a contraction of two words: שאמר די (She-amar Day), 'He who said enough, stop."
The form of the phrase El Shaddai fits the pattern of the divine names in the Ancient Near East, exactly as is the case with names like ʾĒl ʿOlām, ʾĒl ʿElyon and ʾĒl Bēṯ-ʾĒl. As such, El Shaddai can convey several different semantic relations between the two words, including the deity of a place called Shaddai, a deity possessing the quality of shaddai, and a deity who is also known by the name Shaddai.
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