Shaddai (god)
Shaddai is the name, or a signifying epithet, of a West Semitic deity whose name was attached by the Hebrews to that of El as one of the names of God. The name appears 48 times in the Bible, seven times as "El Shaddai". It has been conjectured that El Shaddai was therefore the "god of Shaddai".
The first occurrence of the name is in Genesis 17:1, "And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am El Shaddai; walk before me, and be thou perfect." Similarly, in Genesis 35:11 God says to Jacob, "I am El Shaddai: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins". According to Exodus 6:2–3, Shaddai was the name by which God was known to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Shaddai thus being associated in tradition with Abraham, the inclusion of the Abraham stories into the Hebrew Bible may have brought the northern name with them, according to the Documentary hypothesis of the origins of the Hebrew Bible.
