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Satyr

Topics · Updated 2026-05-06

UPDV does not render the older English word "satyr" anywhere. Where the KJV reads "satyr," the underlying Hebrew is rendered "he-goats" in the worship contexts and "wild goats" / "wild goat" in the desolation oracles. The two registers are distinct: in the legal and historical texts the creatures are objects of forbidden sacrifice; in the prophets they are inhabitants of ruined cities.

He-goats as forbidden objects of sacrifice

The Levitical statute closes the door on a practice already current in Israel: "And they will no more sacrifice their sacrifices to the he-goats, which they go whoring after. This will be a statute forever to them throughout their generations" (Le 17:7). The framing — "they go whoring after" — makes the prohibition a sexual-fidelity figure for apostate worship.

Centuries later, when Jeroboam consolidates a rival sanctuary system, the same creatures reappear among the official appointments of his priesthood: "and he appointed for himself priests for the high places, and for the he-goats, and for the calves which he had made" (2Ch 11:15). The he-goats stand alongside the calves as objects of a state-sponsored apostate worship.

Wild goats in the haunted ruins

The two Isaiah oracles use a related Hebrew term to populate the wreckage of fallen empires. Of Babylon: "But wild beasts of the desert will lie there; and their houses will be full of doleful creatures; and ostriches will stay there, and wild goats will dance there" (Isa 13:21). Of Edom: "And the wild beasts of the desert will meet with the wolves, and the wild goat will cry to his companion; yes, the night-monster will settle there, and will find her a place of rest" (Isa 34:14).

The two oracles share a vocabulary of haunting — desert beasts, ostriches, doleful creatures, the night-monster — and the wild goats fit into that landscape as creatures of the unhabitable place. Where the Levitical and Chronicles texts placed the he-goats inside the worship system as objects of false devotion, the Isaiah texts move the related creatures outside, into the ruins where no city-life remains.