I. Name

The phrase māgēn ʾabrāhām, ‘Shield of Abraham’, occurs only in Sir. 51.12 [in the Hebrew text, not in LXX], the final song of thanksgiving in the context of a liturgical antiphony (cf. Ps. 136). Alt (1929) and Leslie (1936) assumed that māgēn ʾabrāhām was a special name of the god of Abraham, because God is described as presenting himself as “a shield for you” (ʾānōkî māgēn lāk, “I am a shield for you”, Gen. 15.1). The suggestion cannot be properly understood outside the context of Alt’s hypothesis concerning th…