Shit'rai (^Yieh. Shitray' , ^"^'^"ii [marg. Shirtay', *^;!3"l w], my decisions, or decisive; vSept. "S-arpai v. r. ' Aaap- riag), a Sharonite who had charge of David's herds feed- ing in Sharon (1 Chron. xxvii, 29). B.C. 1043.
Shittah (n^ir, Shittah, for nnild, shintuh, proper- ly the thorny, if Heb. [see below] ; i. q. the Arabic Sunt; only once in the sing. Isa. xli, 19; Sept. irvi,oq,'Va\g.pi- neu; A. V. " Shittah-tree") or Shittim (0*^3';?, Shittim, plur. of the same, used with ^S, ets, tree or wood; Sept. dcrTjiTTog., Vulg. setim), a tree, generally regarded as the acacia, the wood of which was extensively employed in the construction of the tabernacle, the boards and pillars being made of it ; the ark of the covenant and the staves for carrj'ing it, the table of show-bread with its staves, the altar of bnrnt-otferings and the altar of incense with their respective staves, were also construct- ed out of this wood (see Exod. ch. xxv, xxvi, xxxvi, xxxvii, xxxviii). In Isa. xli, 19 the same tree is men- tioned with the "cedar, the myrtle, and the oil-tree," as one which God would plant in the wilderness. The Heb. terra (HlJ'j) is, by Jablonski, Celsius, and many other authors, derived from the Egyptian word, the 3 being dropped ; and, from an Arabic MS. cited by Cel- sius, it appears that the Arabic term also comes from the Egyptian, the true Arabic name for the acacia be- ing karadh (^Hierob. i, 508). The Egyptian name of the acacia is sont, sunt, or sanih. See Jablonski {Opusc. i, 261), Rossius (Etymol. JEgypt. p. 273), and Prosper Al- pinus {Plant. ^Eyypit. p. 6), who thus speaks of this tree : " The acacia, which the Egyptians call sant, grows in localities in Egypt remote from the sea, and large quan- tities of this tree are produced on the mountains of Si- nai, overhanging the Red Sea. That this tree is, with- out doubt, the true acacia of the ancients, or the Egyp- tian thorn, is clear from several indications, especially from the fact that no other spinous tree occurs in Egypt which so well answers to the required characters. These trees grow to the size of a mulberry -tree, and spread IX.— Y Y
their branches aloft." " The acacia-tree," says Dr. Shaw, "being by much the largest and most common tree in these deserts (Arabia Petnea), we have some reason to conjecture that the shittim wood was the wood of the acacia, especially as its flowers are of an excellent smell, for the shittah tree is, in Isa. xli, 19, joined with the mjTtle and other fragrant shrubs." Bruce, as quoted by Dr. Harris, remarks that " the acacia seems the only indigenous tree in the Thebaid. The male is called the Saiel ; from it proceeds the gum-arabic on incision with an axe. This gum chief!}' comes from Arabia Petraea, where these trees are most numerous." Kitto says the required species is found in either the Acacia rjummife- ra or in the A . Seyul, or rather in both. They both grow abundantly in the valleys of that region in which the Israelites wandered for forty years, and both supply products which must have rendered them of much val- ue to the Israelites. We think the probability is that the .'1. Seyal sup]died the shittim wood, if, indeed, the name did not denote acacia wood in general. This tree grows from fifteen to twenty feet in height. So M. Bove, " Le lendemain, en traversant le Voode (Wady) Schen, je vis un grand nombre d'.4 cacia Seyal ; cet arbre s'eleve a la hauteur de vingt a vingt-cinq pieds. Les Arabes font avec son bois du charbon qu'ils vont vendre a Suez." The A. Seyal is very common in some parts of the peninsula of Sinai (M. Bove, Voyage du Caire au Mont Sinai, Ami. des Scienc. Nat. 1834, sec. sen i, 166; Stanley, Sin. and Pal. p. 20, 69, 298). These trees are more common in Arabia than in Palestine, though there is a valley on the west side of the Dead Sea, the Wady Seyal, which derives its name from a few acacia-frees there. The .4. Seyal, like the .4. Arahica, yields the well-known substance called gum-arabic, which is ob- tained by incisions in the bark, but it is impossible to say whether the ancient Jews were acquainted with its use. From the tangled thickets into which the stem of this tree expands, Stanlej' thinks is to be traced the use of the plural form of the Heb. noun Shittim. "The wild acacia {Mimosa Nilotica), under the name o^ Sunt," the same writer says {ibid. p. 20), " everywhere represents the ' seneh' or ' senna' of the burning bush." But neither of these conjectures appears to be well founded. Besides the above, there is another species, the A. tortilis, com- mon on Mount Sinai. Although none of the above- named trees are sufficiently large to yield planks ten cubits long by one and a half cubits wide, which we are told was the size of the boards that formed the taber- nacle (Exod. xxxvi, 21), j-et there is an acacia that grows near Cairo, viz. the A . serissa, which would sup- ply boards of the required size. There is, however, no evidence to show that this tree ever grew in the penin- sula of Sinai. And though it would be unfair to draw any conclusion from such negative evidence, still it is probable that "the boards" (D'^^wTiSri) were supplied by one of the other acacias. There is, however, no ne- cessity to limit the meaning of the Heb. 'C^'\^_ (kiresh) to " a single plank." In Ezek. xxvii, 6 the same word, iu the singular number, is applied in a collective sense to " the deck" of a ship (comp. our " on board"). The ke- resh of the tabernacle, therefore, may denote "two or more boards joined together," which, from being thus united, may have been expressed by a singular noun. These acacias, which are for the most part tropical plants, must not be confounded with the tree {Robinia pseudo-acacia) popularly known by this name in Eng- land, which is a North American plant, and belongs to a different genus and suborder. The true acacias, most of which possess hard and durable wood (comp. Pliny, H. N. iii, 19; Josephns, Ant. iii, 6, 1), belong to the order Leguminos<r, sul)order MimosefP. Livingstone {Trail, in S. Africa, abridged ed., p. 77) thinks the A. giraffa (camel-thorn) supplied the wood for the taber- nacle, etc. " It is," he adds, " an imperishable wood, while that which is usually supposed to be the shittim {^A. NUotica) wants beauty and soon decays." — Kitto;