Skip to content

Genesis 10:10

And she is becoming the head376 of his reign of Babel, and Long,377 and Accad,378 and Calneh,379 in the Earth of What-is-Shaken.380

Footnote:

380

Strong’s #8152: Shinar. That which is shaken. Speculated by some as "two rivers" or some Mesopotamian origins. However, there is an easy attested solution: a perfect 3rd person masculine verb and the relative pronoun used as a prefix.

Shinar שנער can be plausibly derived, on grammatical grounds, from the Biblical Hebrew relative pronoun שְׁ ("that") prefixed to the verb נער (Qal perfect of the root נ-ע-ר, "to shake"), yielding "that which is shaken." In Biblical Hebrew, שְׁ frequently attaches to verbs or participles to form relative clauses (e.g., ששזפתני, "that which sun burned me," Song of Songs 1:6), and נער denotes shaking or trembling (Strong's #5287). A nominalized form, שנער, could thus grammatically signify "that which is shaken," potentially describing a place of upheaval, such as שנער (Babylonia) in the context of the Babel narrative (Genesis 11:2-9).

The Earth of Shinar is the same place where the religious Tower of Babel is built, and where the house for the ephah carried by two women with stork wings (half black and half white) is built (Zech. 5).