I. Name

The word tĕrāpîm is found 15 times in the Hebrew Bible, occurring only in the plural even when it denotes one image (1 Sam. 19.13, 1 Sam. 16; cf. A. R. Johnson, The Cultic Prophet in Ancient Israel [Cardiff 1962] 32 n. 3, who suggests that some forms of the plural may be occurrences of the singular with mimation). For the most part the Septuagint translators chose to simply transliterate the term, yet on occasion they associated it with idols (eidōlon;Gillulim) or a carved image (glyptos). There is even …