26 And he beheld Satan; and he had a great chain in his hand, and it veiled the whole face of the earth with darkness; and he looked up and laughed, and his angels rejoiced.Tonight as I was writing about this verse, I was curious about the imagery. How could a chain veil the earth? Chains aren't especially opaque. Fortunately, Hebrew is. So I used my Blue Letter Bible app to search for "veil" and "chain" in the Old Testament. The first hits I found for both gave me these words:
- Candidate for "chain": Strong's H7242 (רָבִיד), rabiyd, a neck chain or collar according to Gesenius's Lexicon, used in Genesis 41:42 (Pharaoh gives Joseph "a gold chain about his neck") and Ezekiel 16:11 ("I decked thee also with ornaments, and I put ... a chain on thy neck").
- Candidate for "veil"/"vail": Strong's H7289 (רָדִיד), radiyd, a "veil" in Song of Songs 5:7 and "vails" in Isaiah 3:23, a word which means something spread, a wide wrapper or large veil, or, in Gesenius's Lexicon, "a wide and thin female garment, a cloak."
Second, the veil as some form of radiyd would seem appropriate, for it would be a cloak, spread out widely over the earth. And what a nice word play with rabiyd. Four letters, three of which are identical, and the "b" and "d" sounds aren't that distant phonetically. To me, it sounds like a winner as far as Hebraic word plays go. But I really don't know, so I welcome your feedback. Of course, the Book of Moses has "veiled" as a verb, not a noun, but perhaps "veiled" could be translation of a construction literally meaning something like "to act as a veil." Let me know if that is a problem.
If this could be a legitimate albeit speculative word play in Hebrew that someone has already noticed and written about, either regarding Moses 7:26 or some extant Hebrew text, I would appreciate a reference to cite. I'm working on an article where it might be helpful to cite such a reference. In any case, I think that Moses 7:26, word play or not, has some significance for the Book of Mormon that I hope to discuss more fully as part of an article I'm working on. If the word play is plausible, it would add a little more intrigue to the beauty of the LDS scriptures.
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