שָׁשַׁי
Shashai, an Israelite
Definition
Shashai is a proper name of an Israelite man listed among those who had married foreign women during the post-exilic period. The name appears only in Ezra 10:40, where Shashai is one of the individuals who agreed to divorce his foreign wife in response to Ezra's call for covenant faithfulness. As a proper noun, it refers solely to this specific historical individual. There are no other biblical senses or meanings for this term.
Biblical Usage
The word is used exactly once in the Old Testament, in Ezra 10:40. It appears in a list of men who had taken foreign wives, a practice condemned by Ezra as a violation of Israel's covenant with God (Ezra 9-10). The usage is purely as a personal identifier within a genealogical or list context, with no narrative or descriptive elaboration.
Etymology
The name Shashai (שָׁשַׁי) is likely derived from the Hebrew root שֵׁשׁ (shesh, H8336), meaning 'six' or 'white marble/ alabaster,' which can imply 'whitish' or 'bright.' It is a gentilic form, meaning 'the Shashan' or possibly 'the white one.' It may be related to a place name or denote a characteristic. The exact derivation remains uncertain, but it follows a common pattern for Hebrew personal names.
Semantic Range
While the name Shashai itself is not theologically loaded, its single biblical occurrence is theologically significant. It places Shashai among those who confronted a crisis of religious and ethnic identity after the Babylonian exile. His agreement to divorce his foreign wife (Ezra 10:40) connects him to the themes of covenant obedience, separation from pagan influences, and the struggle to maintain a distinct community dedicated to God—central concerns in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.
In the cultural context of the Persian period, personal names often carried meaning or identified familial or geographic origins. Shashai's inclusion in Ezra's list highlights the social and religious pressure within the restored Jewish community to conform to a strict interpretation of the Mosaic law, particularly regarding intermarriage with surrounding peoples, which was seen as a threat to the community's survival and purity.
No direct synonyms as a proper name. Related are other Israelite names in the same list, e.g., Shimei (H8096) and Mattithiah (H4993).
Word Details
How this works
Hebrew definitions are from Brown-Driver-Briggs (1906) and Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (1890), both public domain. BDB was groundbreaking for its era but reflects 19th-century assumptions about Semitic etymology. Modern scholarship (HALOT, DCH) has revised many entries. Use these definitions as a starting point for exploration, not as the final word on a term's meaning in context.
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