Demons and new gods (32:17)

Says Israel “sacrificed to demons, not to God, to gods they had not known, to newly arrived gods, which your fathers did not fear” (32:17, BSB). The words “to demons” render לַשֵּׁדִים (lashedim), and “not to God” renders לֹא אֱלֹהַ (lo eloah). The Song sets these beside “foreign gods” (32:16) and “that which is not God” (32:21). The same word returns in Ps 106:37, “They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons,” and the next verse speaks of sacrifice “to the idols of Canaan” (Ps 106:38).

BDB (1906) lists only these two occurrences. It glosses the word “appar. demon” and calls it a “loan-word from As. šêdu, a protecting spirit, esp. of bull-colossus,” comparing an Aramaic word for “demon” (BDB 993–994). On BDB’s account, then, the Hebrew term comes from Assyrian vocabulary for a guardian spirit; the Song applies it to beings that are “not God.”

Uncertain Whether Paul alludes to 32:17 when he writes that pagan sacrifices “are offered to demons, not to God” (1 Cor 10:20) is taken up with the Song’s New Testament uses.