TO BE LOST, to stray — and TO PERISH; one verb, and English has to choose. The participle oved is the word of the creed, a wandering Aramean was my father (Deuteronomy 26:5), and the shelf's split — 'wandering' against 'ready to perish' — is the verb's own two senses. ⭐ The strayed-animal sense: Deuteronomy 22:3, anything of your brother's that is lost; Saul's father's donkeys, which were lost (1 Samuel 9:3); Psalm 119:176, I have strayed like a lost sheep, and Jeremiah 50:6's lost sheep (none of the last three yet on these pages). The perishing sense is Deuteronomy's own drumbeat — you shall surely perish at 4:26, 8:19 and 30:18 — and in the intensive stem it is the verb of 12:2, you shall utterly destroy all the places. ⚠ The Aramaic Targum read the creed's word as that transitive stem, done by Laban to Jacob — the Aramean sought to destroy my father — and Jerome followed it, which is why the Douay reads 'The Syrian pursued my father'; a reading reported, not adopted, since the Hebrew participle is intransitive. The noun from the root is Abaddon, destruction personified, the angel of the Abyss at Revelation 9:11 (already on these pages). → first discussed at Deut 26:5