Shim'ronite (Heb. with the art. hash-Shimroni', i3"l72'li'Jl, patronymic; Sept. 6 ^afiapavi v. r. 'Afijipa- fiei, A. V. " the Shimronites"), a name (Numb, xxvi, 24) for the descendants of Shimron (q. v.) the son of Issa- char.
Shim'ron-me'ron (Heb. Shimron' Mei-on', '^^~\'0'^ "l'l>(~n3 [marg. "(iTa J, i«/^(7; - height nf Meron; Sept. I.vfitijjv [v. r. '2aiipiov Kai (paffjd and McijSpio^] Kai MapitiJ'), a town whose king was conquered by Joshua (Josh, xii, 20); probably the same elsewhere (xi, 1) called simply Shimron (q. v.).
Shini'shai (Heb. Shimshay', '''C'O'^, my suns, or sunny ; Sept. '^a^ii^/d v. r. ^afiaac'i, etc. ), a scribe or sec- retary of Kehimi, who was a kind of satrap of the con- quered province of Judaia and of the colony at Samaria supported by the Persian court (Elzra iv, 8, 9, 17, 23). B.C. 529. He was apparently an Aramsean, for the let- ter which he wrote to Artaxerxes was in Syriac (ver. 7), and the form of his name is in favor of this supposition. He is called Senielius by Josephus (SejUtXiof, Ant. xi, 2, 1). The Samaritans were jealous of the return of the Jews, and for a long time plotted against them without effect. They appear ultimately, however, to have preju- diced the royal officers, and to have prevailed upon them to address to the king a letter which set forth the tur- bulent character of the Jews and the dangerous charac- ter of their undertaking, the effect of which was that the rebuilding of the Temple ceased for a time. — Smith. See Nehemiah.
Shin were supposed by the Chinese to be spirits of the air, and, according to Dr. Jlilne, are to be considered as leans, spirits or intelligences. In the Le-ke it is said that "if we speak of all the Shin collectively, we call them Shang-te" (q. v.) ; but the very circumstance that the word Shin is a collective noun, and never used with a numerical affix, shows that it cannot be considered as denoting the one supreme God. — Gardner, Faiths of the World, s. V.
Shi'nab {Ueh. Shinah', 'Z^yd, father's tooth [so Gesenins as literally; but Hitzig refers the last element to the Arab, for serpent, or the Sanscrit for elephant; while Fiirst prefers splendor of the Father (i. e. (iod)] ; Sept. Sai'i'adp; Josephus 2£)'o/3frp7;c, Ant. i, 9), the king of Admah at the time of the invasion by Chedor- laomer (Gen. xiv, 2). B.C. cir. 2064.
Shi'nar (Heb. Shinar', "lySTT [on the signif. see be- low] ; Sept. usually 'S.tvaap. Sevvacip ; Vulg. Sennanr) seems to have been the ancient name (Gen. x, 10 ; xi, 2 ; xiv, 1, 9) of the great alluvial tract through which the Tigris and Euphrates pass before reaching the sea — the tract known in later times as Chald<fa, or Babylonia. It was a plain country, where brick had to be used for stone, and slime, bitumen, or mud, for mortar (xi, 3). Among its cities were Babel (Babylon), Erech or Orech (Orchoe), Calneh or Calno (probal)ly Niffer), and Accad, the site of which is unknown. These notices are quite enough to fix the situation. It may, however, be re-
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marked, further, that the Sept. renders the word by " Babylonia" {BafivXwi'ia) in one jilace (Isa. xi, 11), by "the land of Babylon" (y;) I5«/3i'\wi'ot) in another (Zech. V, 11\ anil by TroiKiXt) in a third (Josh, vii, 21) as an equivalent to BaiivXoi'tKi) {A. V. " Babylouish").
The native inscriptions contain no trace of the term, which seems to be purely Jewish and unknown to any other people. At least it is extn'nicly doubtlul wheth- er there is really any connection between Shiniir and Sinr/ara, or Siiijar. Siuijara was the name of a town in Central Mesopotamia, well known to the Homans (Dion Cass. Ixviii, 22 ; Amm. Marc, xviii, 5, etc.), and still ex- isting (Layard, Xiii. and Bab. p. 249). It is from this place that the mountains which run across jMesopotamia from Mosul to Kakkeh receive their title of " the Sinjar range" (^lyyapaf opof, Ptolemy, v, 18). As this name first appears in Central Mesopotamia, to which the term Shinar is never applied, about the time of the Antonines, it is very unlikely that it can represent the old Shinar, which ceased practically to be a geographic title soon after the time of Moses (the use in the above passages of Isaiah and Zechariah is an archaism ; so also, per- haps, in Dan. i, 2).
It may be suspected that Shinar was the name by which the Hebrews originally knew the lower Mesopo- tamian country, where they so long dwelt, and which Abraham brought with him from " Ur of the Chaldees" (Miigheir). Possibly it means " the country of the Two Rivers," being derived from '^3'd, " two," and '«?•, which was used in Babylonia, as well as nahr or nuhar ("tilD), for "a river." (Corap. the "Ar-malchar" of Pliny [//. N. vi, 26] and " Ar-JIacales" of Abydenus [Fr. 9] with the Naar-malchaof Ammianus [xxiv, 6], called Sapfid- ■)(a by Isidore [p. o], which is translated as " the Royal River;" comp.again the " Narragam" of Pliny [/A A', vi, 30] with the "Aracanus" of Abydenus, /. s. c). — Smith. See Mksopotajiia.
Shingle, a wooden tile for covering roofs, spires, etc., made ofckft oak. Shingles were formerly very exten- sively em|)loyed in some districts, but their use has, for the most part, been superseded by more durable kin<is of covering; they are, however, still to be found on some church roofs, and on man\' timber spires, especial- ly in the counties of Kent, Sussex, Surrey, and Essex, England. — Parker, Gloss, of Architecture, s. v.