SIDOM
| Lehite GN | 1. | Land (and city?), 2nd c. BC (Alma 15:1; 15:17; Alma 2:17 in P and 1830 has Sidom, which is almost certainly a mistake by the typesetter for Sidon). |
Etymology
It is possible but unlikely that SIDOM is a mimated form of SIDON, the name of a river in the Book of Mormon and a city in biblical Phoenicia. The etymology of the biblical GN is not certain,[1] but it may come from Hebrew ṣwd, “to catch, hunt,” and if it does, -ôn may be an ending that could be replaced by the –ôm ending.
The biblical GN Sodom is voweled in the Masoretic text as sedôm, which could easily yield SIDOM in the Book of Mormon. However, as the KJV Sodom rendering makes clear, the Masoretic text voweling masks the etymology of the GN as Sodom. Septuagint Σόδομα, Ugaritic sú-du-mu and sú-dú-mu, and often סודם, swdm, in the Qumran texts (e.g., 1QIsa 1:9) support the reading Sodom. The evidence from Eblaite is ambiguous: si-da-muki would support the Masoretic pointing, but sa-damki would not. Therefore, it is unlikely that Book of Mormon SIDOM can be derived from biblical Sodom.[2]
The biblical GN Siddim, a valley (Gen. 14:3), is at best only a distant possibility. Biblical śiddîm has the structure of a Hebrew masculine plural, which would preclude the Book of Mormon pronunciation, that is, the /î/ could not morph into /o/.
Cf. Book of Mormon SIDON.
Variants
Deseret Alphabet: 𐐝𐐌𐐔𐐊𐐣 (saɪdʌm)
Notes
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