Lilith

Lilith is the English form of the Hebrew lilit. It appears only in Isaiah 34:14, in a poem about the ruin of Edom, where wild creatures fill the abandoned cities and the lilit rests there and finds a place to settle. The Great Isaiah Scroll from Qumran reads the word as a plural, liliyyot.

Translations differ widely. The King James Version reads screech owl, the NIV night creatures, and the NRSV Lilith. The Greek Septuagint reads a demon in the verse, and the Latin Vulgate renders it lamia, a child-killing female monster of Greek myth.

Mesopotamian incantation texts name a class of spirits: the male lilû, the female lilītu, and the maiden-demon ardat lilî, associated with desert lands and with danger to pregnant women and infants. Some scholars link the Hebrew lilit to these spirits; others connect it to the Hebrew laylah, night. Evidence once used for the link, including the Burney Relief (now generally identified as Inanna or Ishtar) and the Arslan Tash amulets, is disputed.

The Dead Sea Scrolls name Lilith among hostile spirits in the Songs of the Sage. The Babylonian Talmud mentions her in several passages, including Eruvin 100b, Niddah 24b, and Shabbat 151b. Some rabbinic authorities, including Maimonides and Menachem Meiri, rejected her existence.

The story that Lilith was Adam’s first wife comes from the Alphabet of Ben Sira (about AD 700-1000), which some readers treat as satire. It does not come from Isaiah or any other book of the Bible.

Some scholars, such as Judit Blair, argue that every creature in the list of Isaiah 34:14 is a real animal and that no Old Testament passage refers to demons. Many translations likewise render the se’irim in the same verse as wild goats.