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Hebrew Roots · letter 21 of 22

Shin

The three-armed letter, worn on doorposts, shaped by priests' hands, and split down the middle by scholars.

How the shape travelled: three historical stages

How sure we are of this ancient picture

Scholars split

Original sign

Two teeth in a row, or the sun with its rays.

Paleo-Hebrew

A hard zigzag: three points, two valleys.

Modern square

The letter as every printed Hebrew Bible sets it.

On the picture: Occasionally read as the sun or a bow.

Stage 1 has no Unicode encoding, so it stays a drawing, simplified from the copies published by the scholars who studied the inscriptions themselves: Gardiner, Cross, Naveh, Hamilton. Ancient scribes varied, and no two carvings cut a letter exactly alike. Stages 2 and 3 are real Unicode text.

Sounds like

SH, and S when a dot moves. A dot over the right arm makes shin (sh); a dot over the left arm makes sin (s). One letter, two sounds, told apart by a mark Jewish scribes added centuries after the consonants were written.

Written š / ś in scholarly books.

Its number

300

letters carried number values from the Hellenistic era on

Its name means

tooth, or sun

Final form

none

this letter does not change at the end of a word

Shin is the letter scholars argue about most. Was the original sign a row of teeth, or the sun with its rays? The name pulls one way, the oldest shapes have been read both ways, and after a hundred years the question is still open. Two of the twenty-two signs are like this. This is one.

It is also the letter with a dot problem. Put the dot over the right arm and the letter says sh: shalom, shema, Shaddai. Move the dot to the left arm and the same letter says s. The name Israel has it that way, the second letter of Yisraʾel is this letter, pronounced s. One sign, two sounds, and before the scribes added the dots a reader simply knew which one the word wanted.

No letter in the alphabet carries more devotional weight than this one. It is on the doorposts of Jewish homes, in the shape the priests make with their hands over a congregation, and, readers have long said, in the three valleys that meet at Jerusalem. The readings band below carries all of it, each one named and credited.

Where Scripture itself plays with this letter

One letter, two sounds, and Psalm 119 uses both

Psalm 119's shin stanza runs from verse 161 to verse 168, and its very first word is a small joke on the dot. “Princes have persecuted me without a cause”, sarim, with the dot on the left, pronounced s. The stanza named for shin opens on sin.

Both sounds sit inside the same twenty-two letters. The alphabet poems count the letter, not the sound, which is a quiet piece of evidence that the two sounds were felt to be one letter long before anybody wrote a dot on it.

Shemaʿ, “Hear, O Israel”

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is One.” The sentence observant Jews have said morning and evening for well over two thousand years opens with this letter, and the name Israel carries it too, with the dot on the other side.

Jesus was asked which commandment was first of all, and he answered by quoting this verse before anything else.

Two more things about this one verse, both of which belong to other rooms: the ayin that ends shemaʿ is written oversized in the manuscripts, and so is the dalet that ends ʾechad, “one.”

The blessing the priests were told to say

“May the LORD bless you and keep you; may the LORD cause His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; may the LORD lift up His countenance toward you and give you peace.”

Three lines, given by name to Aaron and his sons, and each line longer than the one before it. The last word of the last line is shalom.

The way the priests hold their hands while saying it, and what tradition has read into that shape, is in the readings band below, where it belongs, because the hand position is a practice, not a text.

Shalom is a bigger word than “peace”

English “peace” mostly means the absence of trouble. Shalom means the presence of wholeness: things intact, accounts settled, a body healthy, a city safe, a person complete. You can ask after someone's shalom the way English asks how they are.

That is why “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem” is not a request for quiet, and why “Prince of Peace” is not a title about calm. It is about everything being put right.

Words that begin here

שָׁלוֹם

shalom — peace, wholeness, welfare

Not the absence of trouble, the presence of everything being intact.

Open the word→

שָׁמַע

shamaʿ — to hear, and so, to obey

Hebrew does not separate listening from doing; one word carries both.

The Shema→

שַׁדַּי

Shaddai — the Almighty

The name God gives himself to Abraham, and the name behind the shin on a doorpost.

The names of God→

שֶׁמֶשׁ

shemesh — sun

The Hebrew word for the sun starts with this letter, which is a fact about the word, and not evidence for the sun reading of the sign. Those are two different questions.

Open the word→

The eight verses that are Shin’s own

Psalm 119 is the alphabet walking down the longest chapter in the Bible. Every letter gets eight verses, and every one of those eight verses begins with it. Verses 161–168 are the Shin stanza — eight lines that all open on ש. Every line stands open below, with one preacher’s comment on it directly underneath.

  2. “I rejoice in Your promise like one who finds great spoil.”

    Psalm 119:162→

    “I rejoice at thy word, as one that findeth great spoil. At having it, which is a distinguishing blessing; all are not favoured with it; and is an inestimable treasure, a field in which a treasure lies; which those that find rejoice at, and especially at the understanding of it, as Kimchi notes: for such only delight in it who spiritually understand it, or have an application of it to them; find it, and eat it, and then it is the joy and rejoicing of their hearts.”

    John GillExposition of the Old Testament (1748-1763)on Psalm 119:162→

  3. “I hate and abhor falsehood, but Your law I love.”

    Psalm 119:163→

    “Obtain the same thing for yourself and strive to advance toward it; for it is able to raise you from earth to heaven. You will not advance in it without preparation or [solely] by chance. First cleanse your soul of every passion and wipe it as clean of every evil as a newly cleansed mirror. Remove far from you every recollection of wrong and anger, which most of all prevents our daily prayers from reaching God. Also remove from your heart the offenses of everyone who has ever sinned against you.”

    John DamasceneBARLAAM AND JOSEPH 20:175-76 (749)on Psalm 119:163→

  4. “Seven times a day I praise You for Your righteous judgments.”

    Psalm 119:164→

    “Frequent prayer also commends us to God. For if the prophet says, "Seven times a day have I praised you," though he was busy with the affairs of a kingdom, what ought we to do, who read, "Watch and pray that you enter not into temptation"? Certainly our customary prayers ought to be said with giving of thanks, when we rise from sleep, when we go forth, when we prepare to receive food, after receiving it and at the hour of incense, when at last we are going to rest.”

    Ambrose of MilanConcerning Virginity 3.4.18 (397)on Psalm 119:164→

  5. “Abundant peace belongs to those who love Your law; nothing can make them stumble.”

    Psalm 119:165→

    “Great peace have they which love thy law,.... The Targum adds, "in this world.'' Great prosperity, especially prosperity of soul, inward peace, peace of conscience, peace in Christ, and from him, flowing from his blood, righteousness, and sacrifice, and a view of interest therein; which is usually enjoyed in a way of believing, and frequently had in the ways, worship, and ordinances of God.”

    John GillExposition of the Old Testament (1748-1763)on Psalm 119:165→

  8. “I obey Your precepts and Your testimonies, for all my ways are before You.”

    Psalm 119:168→

    “IF anyone says that these two texts contradict one another, I say that they do not. They form a paradox and they are both true, and true of the same man, at the same time. I will read them to you again. "I have kept Your precepts and Your testimonies: for all my ways are before You." "I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek Your servant; for I do not forget Your commandments."”

    Charles SpurgeonThe Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 2671: “A Sincere Summary—and a Searching Scrutiny” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition) (1900)on Psalm 119:168→

How readers have meditated on this letter

✧The letter on the doorposta devotional reading

Walk past a Jewish home and you may see a small case fixed at an angle to the doorframe, with a single Hebrew letter on the outside of it: shin. Inside is a tiny scroll carrying the words of Deuteronomy 6, including the command to write these words on the doorposts of your house. The box worn on the head in prayer carries the letter too, embossed on both sides, with three arms on one side and four on the other.

The practice is real and living. The reading of the letter, that it stands for Shaddai, the Almighty, so that the house is marked by his name, is Jewish tradition attached to the sign. Every doorpost wearing this letter is wearing a tradition, not a translation.

Read this way by: Jewish practice (the mezuzah of Deuteronomy 6:9 and the tefillin), with the traditional reading of the letter as standing for Shaddai

✧The priests' handsa devotional reading

When the kohanim, descendants of Aaron, pronounce the blessing of Numbers 6 over a congregation, they raise their hands and spread the fingers in a particular way: thumbs together, a gap between the second and third fingers on each hand, so that the hands together make a three-part shape. Tradition reads that shape as the letter shin, standing for Shaddai, the Almighty blessing his people through their hands.

This is the most widely recognized hand position in the world and almost nobody knows why. Leonard Nimoy, raised in an Orthodox Jewish home, watched the priests do it as a boy from behind his father's covering hands, never forgot it, and years later gave it to Mr Spock as the Vulcan salute. He told the story often and freely.

The blessing is Scripture. The hand shape is a practice; reading the letter in it is tradition, and it is the single most-travelled fact about any Hebrew letter.

Read this way by: Jewish priestly practice (birkat kohanim); the Star Trek connection is Leonard Nimoy's own account of where the Vulcan salute came from

✧Three arms, three fathersa devotional reading

Rabbinic tradition reads shin's three arms as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the three patriarchs, distinct and rising out of one root. The four-armed shin on the head-box of the tefillin has its own traditional readings alongside it.

A reading of a letterform, offered on its own terms as Jewish tradition. The square-script shape it reads is itself relatively late; the letter did not always have three neat arms.

Read this way by: Rabbinic tradition on the letterform

✧The city that wears the lettera devotional reading

Look at a relief map of Jerusalem and three valleys, the Hinnom, the Tyropoeon and the Kidron, come together south of the old city in a shape people have long said traces a shin. Readers who love this put it next to Deuteronomy's promise about “the place the LORD your God will choose from among all your tribes, to put his name there”: the city marked with the letter of the Name.

This is a reading of a map, taught widely in both Jewish and Christian circles, and it is a reading, not a claim the text makes and not a fact about the letter. Held as a reflection, it is a striking one.

Read this way by: A widely taught modern devotional reading; the promise it is laid beside is Deuteronomy 12:5