'Thou shalt not be afraid of any bugs by night:' the word has been altered to 'terror.' When we come to the particular names of demons, we find many of them bearing traces of the splendours from which they have declined. 'Siva,' the Hindu god of destruction, has a meaning ('auspicious') derived from Svi, 'thrive'--thus related ideally to Pluto, 'wealth'--and, indeed, in later ages, appears to have gained the greatest elevation. In a story of the Persian poem Masnavi, Ahriman is mentioned with Bahman as a fire-fiend, of which class are the Magian demons and the Jinns generally; which, the sanctity of fire being considered, is an evidence of their high origin. Avicenna says that the genii are ethereal animals. Lucifer--light-bearing--is the fallen angel of the morning star. Loki--the nearest to an evil power of the Scandinavian personifications--is the German leucht, or light. Azazel--a word inaccurately rendered 'scape-goat' in the Bible--appears to have been originally a deity, as the Israelites were originally required to offer up one goat to Jehovah and another to Azazel, a name which appears to signify the 'strength of God.' Gesenius and Ewald regard Azazel as a demon belonging to the pre-Mosaic religion, but it can hardly be doubted that the four arch-demons mentioned by the Rabbins--Samaël, Azazel, Asaël, and Maccathiel--are personifications of the elements as energies of the deity. Samaël would appear to mean the 'left hand of God;' Azazel, his strength; Asaël, his reproductive force; and Maccathiel, his retributive power, but the origin of these names is doubtful.. Although Azazel is now one of the Mussulman names for a devil, it would appear to be nearly related to Al Uzza of the Koran, one of the goddesses of whom the significant tradition exists, that once when Mohammed had read, from the Sura called 'The Star,' the question, 'What think ye of Allat, Al Uzza, and Manah, that other third goddess?' he himself added, 'These are the most high and beauteous damsels, whose intercession is to be hoped for,' the response being afterwards attributed to a suggestion of Satan. [6] Belial is merely a word for godlessness; it has become personified through the misunderstanding of the phrase in the Old Testament by the translators of the Septuagint, and thus passed into christian use, as in 2 Cor. vi. 15, 'What concord hath Christ with Belial?' The word is not used as a proper name in the Old Testament, and the late creation of a demon out of it may be set down to accident.