We've been asked repeatedly about the origin of the Magen David, the "Shield of David," which has become an internationally recognized symbol of Jewishness. We asked our friend and ministry partner, Mottel Baleston, for an explanation, and here is an excerpt of what he wrote.
"Several possibilities have been suggested about the origin of the Magen David:
1. The term 'Shield of David' is the original and ancient name of the Star of David because it was the symbol used on the shields of David's army when they went into battle. Although this explanation seems simple and attractive, there is as yet no archaeological or textual evidence to support it.
2. The star has 12 straight edges and is used as a symbol of Judaism to represent the 12 tribes.
3. Some in traditional Judaism hold that each of the triangles’ three corners represents the continuous relationship between the Creator, Israel, and the Torah. Some Messianic Jews see the three points of each triangle as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
4. In recent years, all sorts of devotional meanings for the three points have arisen after the fact, limited only by imagination: kindness, love, and compassion; honor, devotion, and honesty. You can invent your own.
5. Historically, an alternative name for the six-pointed star was 'The Seal of Solomon.' This idea states that King Solomon had a large, six-pointed signet ring that was pressed into warm wax on documents as a sign of his authority.
6. For the sixth point in this question about the six-pointed star, I present the reason that makes most sense to me, and it’s one that you’ve probably never heard. During the First Temple period and the lives of Kings David and Solomon, the Hebrew alphabet was written in characters that looked very different from what you see today. Our current set of Hebrew letters only became dominant after the return from the Babylonian Captivity, where many of these basic shapes were derived from the characters the Jewish people encountered in Babylon and wrote out in Aramaic. Scholars call the form of pre-captivity Hebrew letters 'Proto-Hebrew.' These were the letters in use in King David’s day. In Hebrew from any time period, the name David is made up of the letters Dalet, Vav, Dalet (דוד)—or, as we might express it in English letters, DVD. So, there are two different letters in David’s name, with the Dalet repeated. In the Proto-Hebrew of King David’s day, the letter Dalet was represented by a triangle (◁), much the same as the Greek letter Delta (△). So, if you take the two triangles that represent the two Dalets in David’s name and invert one, you wind up with the Magen David, the Shield of David. Any Hebrew speaker of the time of the Kingdom of Israel would have recognized the two Dalets superimposed on one another as a logo for David, their king.
In the end, it must be said that all of these possibilities, while interesting, are speculation. We can add the question of the origin of Magen David to the long list of questions we will have in the Kingdom!"
Thanks, Mottel, for this very interesting explanation!
The rest of his article was published in the Ariel Magazine, Spring 2024 / Volume 1 / #50, pp 06 -07.It has been republished here with permission by the copyright owner: Ariel Ministries USA, 11926 Radium St, San Antonio, TX 78216, USA. © 2022 by Ariel Ministries USA. All rights reserved.
