[11] Nouns derived from the root included shachen ("neighbor")[12] and mishkan (a dwelling-place, whether a secular home[13] or a holy site such as the Tabernacle[14]).
[15] While shekhinah is a feminine word in Hebrew, it primarily seemed to be featured in masculine or androgynous contexts referring to a divine manifestation of the presence of God, based especially on readings of the Talmud.
[18][19] The prophets made numerous references to visions of the presence of God, particularly in the context of the Tabernacle or Temple, with figures such as thrones or robes filling the Sanctuary.
It is also reported as being present in other contexts: The Talmud states that "the Shekhinah rests on man neither through gloom, nor through sloth, nor through frivolity, nor through levity, nor through talk, nor through idle chatter, but only through a matter of joy in connection with a mitzvah.
It is only afterwards in the targums and rabbinic literature that the Hebrew term shekhinah, or Aramaic equivalent shekinta, is found, and then becomes extremely common.
[29] In the post-temple era usage of the term shekhinah may provide a solution to the problem of God being omnipresent and thus not dwelling in any one place.
The Liberal Jewish prayer-book for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (Machzor Ruach Chadashah) contains a creative prayer based on Avinu Malkeinu, in which the feminine noun shekhinah is used in the interests of gender neutrality.
The Azamer Bishvachin song, written in Aramaic by Luria (his name appears as an acrostic of each line) and sung at the evening meal of Shabbat is an example of this.
Three preceding days to the right, three succeeding days to the left, and amid them the Sabbath bride with adornments she goes, vessels and robes ... May the Shechinah become a crown through the six loaves on each side through the doubled-six may our table be bound with the profound Temple services[34] A paragraph in the Zohar starts: "One must prepare a comfortable seat with several cushions and embroidered covers, from all that is found in the house, like one who prepares a canopy for a bride.
"[36] "In the imagery of the Kabbalah the shekhinah is the most overtly female sefirah, the last of the ten sefirot, referred to imaginatively as 'the daughter of God'.
The harmonious relationship between the female shekhinah and the six sefirot which precede her causes the world itself to be sustained by the flow of divine energy.
"[39][40] In Kabbalah, the shekhinah is identified with the tenth sefirah (Malkuth), and the source of life for humans on earth below the sefirotic realm.
[42] Lois Roden, whom the original Branch Davidian Seventh-Day Adventist Church acknowledged as their teacher/prophet from 1978 to 1986, laid heavy emphasis on women's spirituality and the feminine aspect of God.
[44] A modern translator of the Quran, N. J. Dawood, states that "tranquility" is the English word for the Arabic meaning of sakīnah, yet it could be "an echo of the Hebrew shekeenah (the Holy Presence).
Although related to Hebrew shekhinah, the spiritual state is not an "indwelling of the Divine Presence"[48][need quotation to verify] The ordinary Arabic use of the word's root is "the sense of abiding or dwelling in a place".