Shepho

שפו


Genesis 36:23 names him as a son of the Edomite king Shoval (שובל), one of the four sons of Se'ir the Beney Chor (Horite); his siblings were Alvan (עלון), Manachat (ממחת), Eyval (עיבל) and Onam (אונם).

It is taken to mean "nakedness", though the root Shaphah (שפה) really means "to scrape" or "scratch". However Job 33:21 has Shuphu Atsmotav (שֻׁפּוּ עַצְמֹתָיו) = "his bones were scraped clean", more naked than which it is not possible to imagine a man being, even in death. What kind of nakedness then does it mean? And who would knowingly give their child such a name?

1 Chronicles 1:40 calls him Shephi (שפי). Frequent references in Jeremiah (3:2; 7:29 et al) as well as Isaiah 41:18 and 49:9 both use Shephi to mean "a hill void of trees", or at least "a high place", a term intended figuratively to describe a sacred grove that had been cut down. What kind of shrine?

Connected to the same root is Shupim (שפים), an alternate word for "serpents", whose sacred grove connections are well-established (1 Chronicles 7:12; 26:16) and the town of Shepham (שפם) in the eastern part of Yehudah (1 Samuel 30:28 has a Siph-Mot (שפמות) which may be a variant, or could simply be a Masoretic mis-reading of Shiph-Mot), and which is again translated (Numbers 34:10) as meaning "a place devoid of trees". If it were Shiph-Mot, it would mean "the serpents of the god of the Underworld", Mot being that particular deity to the Kena'anim (Canaanites).

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