αδων <Semitic; Hellenistic period>
👉 αδων (cj.; mss.: ᾅδου) – ‘Lord!’ (LXX: Jer. 41(34).5), αδωναι lit. ‘my Lord!’ (LXX: 1 Sam. 1.11; Aquila: Ps. 29.9, 34.17; Cyrill. α 1109; etc.) and αδωναιε ‘id.’ (LXX: Judic.B 13.8, 16.28); the latter two forms appear also in Greek magical texts: αδωναι (SEG 31 621.1: 2nd-3rd c. CE; PGM IV 385, 389 etc.: 4th c. CE), αδωναιε (PGM IV 1560, 1735: 4th c. CE).
🅔 All three forms are transliterations of the Biblical Hebrew word ʾāḏôn ‘lord, master’. In the case of αδων, the Septuagint manuscripts have a corrupted expression ἕως ᾅδου ‘To hell!’ instead of Ὦ αδων ‘Alas, Adōn! (Lord!)’. The forms αδωναι and αδωναιε mean literally ‘my Lord!’; they are equivalents of Biblical Hebrew ʾāḏônāy / ʾāḏōnāy (with a suffixal possessive pronoun, 1st sg.). However, the form αδωναι does not always have an exact counterpart in the Hebrew original, e.g. it stands for yhwh in Aquila: Ps. 29.9; interestingly, it occurs together with other names of God at the beginning of a prayer said by Hanna: Αδωναι κύριε ελωαι σαβαωθ ‘Adōnai, Lord, Elōai, Sabaōth’ (LXX: 1 Sam. 1.11), which is a rendering of the expression yhwh ṣəḇāʾôṯ ‘Yahweh (Lord) of hosts’ (BH: 1 Sam. 1.11); cf. ελωαι and σαβαωθ.
📖 Data: DCH: I, 119-122; HALOT: 12f. Ref.: GELS: 8; Tov 1999: 165.