Shedim

Shedim (Hebrew: שֵׁדִים; singular: שֵׁד Sheyd)^[3] are spirits or demons in the Tanakh and Jewish mythology. Shedim do not, however, correspond exactly to the modern conception of demons as evil entities as originated in Christianity.^[4] While evil spirits were thought to be the cause of maladies, shedim differed conceptually from evil spirits.^[5] Shedim were not considered as evil demigods, but the gods of foreigners, and were envisaged as evil only in the sense that they were not God.^[6]

They appear only twice (and in both instances in the plural) in the Tanakh, at Psalm 106:37 and Deuteronomy 32:17. In both instances, the text deals with child sacrifice or animal sacrifice.^[7][8] Although the word is traditionally derived from the root ŠWD (Hebrew: שוד shûd) that conveys the meaning of "acting with violence" or "laying waste,"^[9] it was possibly a loan-word from Akkadian in which the word shedu referred to a spirit which could be either protective or malevolent.^[10][11][12] With the translation of Hebrew texts into Greek, under the influence of Zoroastrian dualism, the term shedim was translated into Greek as daimonia with implicit connotations of negativity. Later, in Judeo-Islamic culture, shedim became the Hebrew word for Jinn conveying the morally ambivalent attitude of these beings.^[13]