David Kolinsky suggested SLH as a way to understand SLM. But SLH, per
Psalm 119: 118 and Lamentations 1: 15, means “trodden down”. That doesn’t
fit Jacob’s ladder at all. At Job 28: 16, 19, SLH means “to value”, which
may entail the concept of “weighing” something in order to “value” it.
But that does not help explain how the angels moved between earth and the
gate of heaven. I don’t see where in the Bible SLH means “to draw up and
away”.
Isaac Fried suggested CLM as a way to understand SLM. CLM means “image”.
It’s neither “tall” nor “massive”, and it’s hard to see how an image
would help angels move between earth and the gate of heaven.
More interesting is that in responding to a suggestion of David Kolinsky,
Isaac Fried said: “It is possible that SULM is plural for SAL, 'basket',
and that SULAM is kind of a basket elevator.”
That at least is a possibility. But one wonders why “baskets” in the
plural would imply the odd concept of a “basket elevator”, without further
explanation. And to me, (LH implies taking active steps to “go up”, rather
than being passively raised up by a basket, and YRD likewise implies taking
active steps to “go down”, rather than being passively lowered in a
basket. Are those the two verbs we would expect to see at Genesis 28: 12 if
angels were riding up and down in baskets?
Rather than a mechanical notion of a “basket elevator”, I see Hebrew SLM
as more likely deriving from the Hurrian common word $ilum, meaning “
something that allows (pleasant) relations to occur”, or “bridge” (used in a
metaphorical, non-literal sense), or perhaps best: “gateway”.
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois
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