Signs of cultural adaptation from the Septuagint Vocabulary: the lexical mapping of the Hebrew biblical imagery for “protection” in the light of coeval documentary sources

The linguistic data collected for the present paper are the first results of an underway more extensive research on the biblical imagery for protection across the boundaries of traditions and languages through a corpus-based semantic contrastive investigation of the Ancient Hebrew and Greek vocabulary. We will focus here in particular on the Greek stem σκέπα-, which renders a number of different Hebrew lexemes as: צֵל “shadow” (Gen 19:8; Ps 16:8; 35:8; 62:8; 91:1; 121:5; Isa 16:3; 25:4; 49:2; Hos 4:13; 14:8; Ezek 31:12.17); מַחְסֶּה “refuge” (Isa 4:6; Job 24:8); מָעוֹז “place of safety” (Isa 25:4); מָכוֹן “abode” (Sir 6:29); הַצָּלָה “deliverance” (Esth 4:14); סֵתֶר “covering, hiding place, secrecy” (Ps 60:5; Isa 16:4), סִתְרָה “shelter, protection” (Deut 32:28) and also אֹהֵב “friend” (Sir 6:14)