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b. shadow of death: a Biblical expression (= Septuagint and New Testament σκιὰ θανάτου, Vulgate umbra mortis) embodying an ancient interpretation of Hebrew çalˈmāveth, as if < çēl shadow + ˈmāveth death.Ewald and many other scholars, however, think the word should be pronounced çalmūth (or as plural ç^elāmōth = Arabic ẓalamāt), and that it comes from the Semitic root found in Arabic as ẓalima to be dark. However this may be, it is in the Old Testament merely a poetic word for intense darkness (so the margin of the Revised Version, ‘deep darkness’). But the phrase ‘shadow of death’ has (in English as in Christian Latin and other languages) often been used with various meanings naturally suggested by the words; the commonest use is to denote the gloom and horror of approaching dissolution. the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm xxiii. 4 in English versions from Coverdale 1535; the earlier versions follow the Vulgate and Septuagint, which read ‘midst’ instead of ‘valley’): often applied to the experience of being brought by illness apparently near to the grave. The Land of the Shadow of Death: a rhetorical name for a tract of Western Africa in which the mortality among the white inhabitants is very great.