lxxviii, 45; cv, 30; Rev. xvi, 13. When God plagued Pharaoh and his
people, the river Nile, which was the object of great admiration to the
Egyptians, was made to contribute to their punishment. “The river
brought forth frogs abundantly;” but the circumstance of their coming up
into the bed chambers, and into the ovens and kneading troughs, needs
explanation to us, whose domestic apartments and economy are so
different from those of the ancient nations. Their lodgings were not in
upper stories, but in recesses on the ground floor; and their ovens were
not like ours, built on the side of a chimney, and adjacent to a
fireplace, where the glowing heat would frighten away the frogs, but
they dug a hole in the ground, in which they placed an earthen pot,
which having sufficiently heated, they stuck their cakes to the inside
to be baked. To find such places full of frogs when they came to heat
them in order to bake their bread, and to see frogs in the beds where
they sought repose, must have been both disgusting and distressing in
the extreme. Frogs were reckoned unclean by the Hebrews.
FRONTLETS. Leo of Modena thus describes them: The Jews take four pieces
of parchment, and write, with an ink made on purpose, and in square
letters, these four passages, one on each piece: 1. “Sanctify unto me
all the first-born,” &c, Exodus xiii, 1–10. 2. “And when the Lord shall
bring thee into the land of the Canaanites,” &c, verses 11–16. 3. “Hear,
O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord,” &c, Deut. vi, 4–9. 4. “If you
shall hearken diligently unto my commandments,” &c, Deut. xi, 13–21.
This they do in obedience to these words of Moses: “These commandments
shall be for a sign unto thee upon thine hand, and for a memorial
between thine eyes.” These four little pieces of parchment are fastened
together, and a square formed of them, on which the letter ש is written;
then a little square of hard calf’s skin is put upon the top, out of
which come two leathern strings an inch wide, and a cubit and a half, or
thereabouts, in length. This square is put on the middle of the
forehead, and the strings being girt about the head, make a knot in the
form of the letter ד: they then are brought before, and fall on the
breast. It is called _teffila-schel-rosch_, or the _tephila_ of the
head. The most devout Jews put it on both at morning and noon-day
prayer; but the generality of the Jews wear it only at morning prayer.
Only the chanter of the synagogue is obliged to put it on at noon as
well as morning.
It is a question, whether the use of frontlets, and other phylacteries,
was literally ordained by Moses. They who believe their use to be
binding, observe, that the text of Moses speaks as positively of this as
of other precepts; he requires the commandments of God to be written on
the doors of houses, as a sign on their hands, and as an ornament on
their foreheads, Exod. xiii, 16. If there be any obligation to write
these commandments on their doors, as the text intimates, there is the
same for writing them on their hands and foreheads. On the contrary,
others maintain that these precepts should be taken figuratively and
allegorically, as denoting that the Jews should very carefully preserve
the remembrance of God’s law, and observe his commands; that they should
always have them before them, and never forget them. Prior to the
Babylonish captivity, no traces of them appear in the history of the
Jews. The prophets never inveigh against the omission or neglect of
them, nor was there any question concerning them in the reformation of
manners at any time among the Hebrews. The almost general custom in the
east of wearing phylacteries and frontlets, determines nothing for the
antiquity or usefulness of this practice. The Caraite Jews, who adhere
to the letter of the law, and despise traditions, call the rabbinical
Jews bridled asses, because they wear these tephilim and frontlets. See
PHYLACTERY.
FRUIT, the product of the earth, as trees, plants, &c. “Blessed shall be
the fruit of thy ground and cattle.” The fruit of the body signifies
children: “Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body.” By fruit is
sometimes meant reward: “They shall eat of the fruit of their own ways,”
Prov. i, 31; they shall receive the reward of their bad conduct, and
punishment answerable to their sins. The fruit of the lips is the
sacrifice of praise or thanksgiving, Heb. xiii, 15. The fruit of the
righteous, that is, the counsel, example, instruction, and reproof of
the righteous, is a tree of life, is a means of much good, both temporal
and eternal; and that not only to himself, but to others also, Prov. xi,
30. Solomon says, in Prov. xii, 14, “A man shall be satisfied with good
by the fruit of his mouth;” that is, he shall receive abundant blessings
from God as the reward of that good he has done, by his pious and
profitable discourses. “Fruits meet for repentance,” Matt. iii, 8, is
such a conduct as befits the profession of penitence.
2. The fruits of the Spirit are those gracious habits which the Holy
Spirit of God produces in those in whom he dwelleth and worketh, with
those acts which flow from them, as naturally as the tree produces its
fruit. The Apostle enumerates these fruits in Galatians v, 22, 23. The
same Apostle, in Eph. v, 9, comprehends the fruits of the sanctifying
Spirit in these three things; namely, goodness, righteousness, and
truth. The fruits of righteousness are such good works and holy actions
as spring from a gracious frame of heart: “Being filled with the fruits
of righteousness,” Phil. i, 11. Fruit is taken for a charitable
contribution, which is the fruit or effect of faith and love: “When I
have sealed unto them this fruit,” Rom. xv, 28; when I have safely
delivered this contribution. When fruit is spoken of good men, then it
is to be understood of the fruits or works of holiness and
righteousness; but when of evil men, then are meant the fruits of sin,
immorality, and wickedness. This is our Saviour’s doctrine, Matt. vii,
16–18.
3. Uncircumcised fruit, or impure, of which there is mention in Lev.
xix, 23, is the fruit for the first three years of a tree newly planted;
it was reputed unclean, and no one was permitted to eat of it in all
that time. In the fourth year it was offered to the Lord; after which it
was common, and generally eaten. Various reasons are assigned for this
precept. As (1.) Because the first-fruits were to be offered to God, who
required the best: but in this time the fruit was not come to
perfection. (2.) It was serviceable to the trees themselves, which grew
the better and faster; being early stripped of those fruits which
otherwise would have derived to themselves, and drawn away, much of the
strength from the root and tree. (3.) It tended to the advantage of men,
both because the fruit was then waterish, undigestible, and unwholesome;
and because hereby men were taught to bridle their appetites, a lesson
of great use and absolute necessity in a godly life.
FUEL. In preparing their victuals, the orientals are, from the extreme
scarcity of wood in many countries, reduced to use cow dung for fuel. At
Aleppo, the inhabitants use wood and charcoal in their rooms, but heat
their baths with cow dung, the parings of fruit, and other things of a
similar kind, which they employ people to gather for that purpose. In
Egypt, according to Pitts, the scarcity of wood is so great, that at
Cairo they commonly heat their ovens with horse or cow dung, or dirt of
the streets; what wood they have, being brought from the shores of the
Black Sea, and sold by weight. Chardin attests the same fact: “The
eastern people always used cow dung for baking, boiling a pot, and
dressing all kinds of victuals that are easily cooked, especially in
countries that have but little wood;” and Dr. Russel remarks, in a note,
that “the Arabs carefully collect the dung of the sheep and camel, as
well as that of the cow; and that the dung, offals, and other matters,
used in the bagnios, after having been new gathered in the streets, are
carried out of the city, and laid in great heaps to dry, where they
become very offensive. They are intolerably disagreeable, while drying,
in the town, adjoining to the bagnios; and are so at all times when it
rains, though they be stacked, pressed hard together, and thatched at
top.” These statements exhibit, in a very strong light, the extreme
misery of the Jews, who escaped from the devouring sword of
Nebuchadnezzar: “They that did feed delicately are desolate in the
streets; they that were brought up in scarlet embrace dunghills,” Lam.
iv, 5. To embrace dunghills, is a species of wretchedness, perhaps
unknown to us in the history of modern warfare; but it presents a
dreadful and appalling image, when the circumstances to which it alludes
are recollected. What can be imagined more distressing to those who
lived delicately, than to wander without food in the streets? What more
disgusting and terrible to those who had been clothed in rich and
splendid garments, than to be forced, by the destruction of their
palaces, to seek shelter among stacks of dung, the filth and stench of
which it is almost impossible to endure? The dunghill, it appears from
Holy Writ, is one of the common retreats of the mendicant. This imparts
great force and beauty to a passage in the song of Hannah: “He raiseth
up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth the beggar from the dunghill,
to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of
glory,” 1 Sam. ii, 8. The change in the circumstances of that excellent
woman, she reckoned as great, (and it was to her as unexpected,) as the
elevation of a poor despised beggar from a nauseous and polluting
dunghill, rendered tenfold more fetid by the intense heat of an oriental
sun, to one of the highest and most splendid stations on earth.
2. Dung is used as fuel in the east only when wood cannot be had; for
the latter, and even any other combustible substance, is preferred when
it can be obtained. The inhabitants of Aleppo, according to Russel, use
thorns and fuel of a similar kind for those culinary purposes which
require haste, particularly for boiling, which seems to be the reason
that Solomon mentions the “crackling of thorns under a pot,” rather than
in any other way. The same allusion to the use of thorns for boiling
occurs in other parts of the sacred volume: thus, the Psalmist speaks of
the wicked, “Before your pots can feel the thorns, he shall take them
away as with a whirlwind, both living, and in his wrath.” The Jews are
sometimes compared in the prophets to “a brand plucked out of the
burning,” Amos iv, 11; Zech. iii, 2; a figure which Chardin considers as
referring to vine twigs, and other brushwood which the orientals
frequently use for fuel, and which, in a few minutes, must be consumed
if they are not snatched out of the fire; and not to those battens, or
large branches, which will lie a long time in the fire before they are
reduced to ashes. If this idea be correct, it displays in a stronger and
more lively manner the seasonable interposition of God’s mercy, than is
furnished by any other view of the phrase. The same remark applies to
the figure by which the Prophet Isaiah describes the sudden and complete
destruction of Rezin, and the son of Remaliah; only in this passage, the
firebrands are supposed to be smoking; that is, in the opinion of
Harmer, having the steam issuing with force from one end, in consequence
of the fire burning violently at the other. The words of the prophet
are: “Take heed and be quiet; fear not, neither be faint-hearted, for
the two tails of these smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of Rezin
with Syria, and of the son of Remaliah,” Isaiah vii, 4. It is not easy
to conceive an image more striking than this; the remains of two small
twigs burning with violence at one end, as appears by the steaming of
the other, are soon reduced to ashes; so shall the kingdoms of Syria and
Israel sink into ruin and disappear.
3. The scarcity of fuel in the east obliges the inhabitants to use, by
turns, every kind of combustible matter. The withered stalks of herbs
and flowers, the tendrils of the vine, the small branches of myrtle,
rosemary, and other plants, are all used in heating their ovens and
bagnios. We can easily recognise this practice in these words of our
Lord: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not,
neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, that Solomon, in all his
glory, was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe
the grass of the field, which today is, and to-morrow is cast into the
oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?” Matt.
vi, 28–30. The grass of the field, in this passage, evidently includes
the lilies of which our Lord had just been speaking, and, by
consequence, herbs in general; and in this extensive sense the word
χόρτος is not unfrequently taken. These beautiful productions of nature,
so richly arrayed, and so exquisitely perfumed, that the splendour even
of Solomon is not to be compared with theirs, shall soon wither and
decay, and be used as fuel to heat the oven and the bagnio. Has God so
adorned these flowers and plants of the field, which retain their beauty
and vigour but for a few days, and are then applied to some of the
meanest purposes of life; and will he not much more clothe you who are
the disciples of his own Son, who are capable of immortality, and
destined to the enjoyment of eternal happiness?
FULNESS. “The fulness of time” is the time when the Messiah appeared,
which was appointed by God, promised to the fathers, foretold by the
prophets, expected by the Jews themselves, and earnestly longed for by
all the faithful: “When the fulness of the time was come, God sent his
Son,” Gal. iv, 4. The fulness of Christ is the superabundance of grace
with which he was filled: “Of his fulness have all we received,” John i,
16. And whereas men are said to be filled with the Holy Ghost, as John
the Baptist, Luke i, 15; and Stephen, Acts vi, 5; this differs from the
fulness of Christ in these three respects: (1.) Grace in others is by
participation, as the moon hath her light from the sun, rivers their
waters from the fountain: but in Christ all that perfection and
influence which we include in that term is originally, naturally, and of
himself. (2.) The Spirit is in Christ infinitely and above measure, John
iii, 34; but in the saints by measure according to the gift of God, Eph.
iv, 16. The saints cannot communicate their graces to others, whereas
the gifts of the Spirit are in Christ as a head and fountain, to impart
them to his members. “We have received of his fulness,” John i, 16. It
is said, that “the fulness of the Godhead dwells in Christ bodily,” Col.
ii, 2; that is, the whole nature and attributes of God are in Christ,
and that really, essentially, or substantially; and also personally, by
nearest union; as the soul dwells in the body, so that the same person
who is man is God also. The church is called the fulness of Christ, Eph.
i, 23. It is the church which makes him a complete and perfect head; for
though he has a natural and personal fulness as God, yet, as Mediator,
he is not full and complete, without his mystical body, (as a king is
not complete without his subjects,) but receives an outward, relative,
and mystical fulness from his members.
FUNERAL RITES. See BURIAL.
FURNACE, a fireplace for melting gold and other metals. “The fining pot
is for silver, the furnace for gold,” Prov. xvii, 3. It signifies also a
place of cruel bondage and oppression, such as Egypt was to the
Israelites, who there met with much hardship, rigour, and severity, to
try and purge them, Deut. iv, 20; Jer. xi, 4; the sharp and grievous
afflictions and judgments, wherewith God tries his people, Ezek. xxii,
18; xx, 22; also a place of torment, as Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace,
Dan. iii, 6, 11. On the last we may remark, that this mode of putting to
death is not unusual in the east in modern times. After speaking of the
common modes of punishing with death in Persia, Chardin says, “But there
is still a particular way of putting to death such as have transgressed
in civil affairs, either by causing a dearth, or by selling above the
tax by a false weight, or who have committed themselves in any other
manner: they are put upon a spit and roasted over a slow fire, Jer.
xxix, 22. Bakers, when they offend, are thrown into a hot oven. During
the dearth in 1668, I saw such ovens heated in the royal square in
Ispahan, to terrify the bakers, and deter them from deriving advantage
from the general distress.”
GABBATHA, a place in Pilate’s palace, from whence he pronounced sentence
of death upon Jesus Christ, John xix, 13. This was probably an eminence,
or terrace, paved with marble, for the Hebrew means _elevated_.
GABRIEL, one of the principal angels of heaven. He was sent to the
Prophet Daniel, to explain to him the visions of the ram and goat, and
the mystery of the seventy weeks, which had been revealed to him, Dan.
viii, 15; ix, 21; xi, 1, &c. The same angel was sent to Zechariah, to
declare to him the future birth of John the Baptist, Luke i, 11, &c. Six
months after this he appeared to a virgin, whose name was Mary, of the
city of Nazareth, as related Luke i, 26, &c.
GAD was the name of the son of Jacob and Zilpah, Leah’s servant, Gen.
xxx, 9–11. Leah, Jacob’s wife, gave him also Zilpah, that by her she
might have children. Zilpah brought a son, whom Leah called Gad, saying,
“A troop cometh.” Gad had seven sons, Ziphion, Haggi, Shuni, Ezbon, Eri,
Arodi, and Areli, Genesis xlvi, 16. Jacob, blessing Gad, said, “A troop
shall overcome him, but he shall overcome at the last,” Gen. xlix, 19;
and Moses, in his last song, mentions Gad as “a lion which teareth the
arm with the crown of the head,” &c, Deut. xxxiii, 20, 21. The tribe of
Gad came out of Egypt in number forty-five thousand six hundred and
fifty. After the defeat of the kings Og and Sihon, Gad and Reuben
desired to have their lot in the conquered country, and alleged their
great number of cattle. Moses granted their request, on condition that
they would accompany their brethren, and assist in the conquest of the
land beyond Jordan. Gad had his inheritance between Reuben south, and
Manasseh north, with the mountains of Gilead east, and Jordan west.
2. GAD, a prophet, David’s friend, who followed him when persecuted by
Saul. The Scripture calls him a prophet and David’s seer, 2 Sam. xxiv,
11. The first time we find him with this prince is when he fled into the
land of Moab, 1 Sam. xxii, 5, to secure his father and mother in the
first year of Saul’s persecution. The Prophet Gad warned him to return
into the land of Judah. After David had determined to number his people,
the Lord sent to him the Prophet Gad, to offer him his choice of three
scourges: seven years’ famine, or three months’ flight before his
enemies, or three days’ pestilence. Gad also directed David to erect an
altar to the Lord, in the threshing floor of Ornan or Araunah, the
Jebusite, 2 Sam. xxiv, 13–19; and he wrote a history of David’s life,
cited in 1 Chron. xxix, 29.
GADARA, a city which gave name to the country of the Gadarenes; situated
on a steep rocky hill on the river Hieromax, or Yermuck, about five
miles from its junction with the Jordan. It was a place of considerable
note in the time of Josephus, and the metropolis of Peræa, or the
country beyond Jordan. It was also celebrated for its hot baths. The
vicinity was likewise called the country of the Gergesenes, from Gerasa,
or Gergesa, another considerable city in the same neighbourhood. Thus
the miracle of our Lord performed here is represented by St. Mark to
have been done in the country of the Gadarenes, Mark v, 1; and by St.
Matthew, in that of the Gergesenes, Matt. viii, 28.
GALATIA, a province of the Lesser Asia, bounded on the west by Phrygia,
on the east by the river Haylys, on the north by Paphlagonia, and on the
south by Lycaonia. The Galatians are said to have been descended from
those Gauls, who, finding their own country too strait for them, left
it, after the death of Alexander the Great, in quest of new settlements.
Quitting their own country, they migrated eastward along the Danube till
they came where the Saave joins that river; then dividing themselves
into three bodies, under the conduct of different leaders, one of these
bodies entered Pannonia; another marched into Thrace; a third into
Illyricum and Macedonia. The party which proceeded into Thrace, crossed
the Bosphorus into the Lesser Asia, and hiring themselves to Nicomedes,
king of Bithynia, assisted him to subdue his brother Zipetes, with whom
he was then at war; and as a reward of their services they received from
him a country in the middle of Asia Minor, which from them was afterward
called _Gallo-Græcia_, and, by contraction, Galatia. As their inland
situation in a great measure cut them off from all intercourse with more
civilized nations, the Galatians long remained a rude and illiterate
people. And as a proof of this, it is mentioned by Jerom, that when the
Apostle Paul preached the Gospel among them, and for many ages
afterward, they continued to speak the language of the country from
whence they came out.
2. Paul and Barnabas carried the light of the Gospel into the regions of
Galatia at a very early period; and it appears from the epistle which
the former subsequently wrote to the churches in that country, that they
had at first received it with great joy, Gal. iv, 15. But some Judaizing
teachers getting access among them soon after the Apostle’s departure,
their minds became corrupted from the simplicity that was in Christ
Jesus; and, though mostly Gentiles, they were beginning to mingle
circumcision, and other Jewish observances, with their faith in Christ,
in order to render it more available to their salvation. This occasioned
Paul’s writing his epistle to those churches; and his object throughout
nearly the whole of it is to counteract the pernicious influence of the
doctrine of those false teachers particularly as it respected the
article of justification, or a sinner’s acceptance with God. And in no
part of the Apostle’s writings is that important doctrine handled in a
more full and explicit manner; nor does he any where display, such a
firm, determined, and inflexible opposition to all who would corrupt the
truth from its simplicity. He begins by expressing his astonishment that
they were so soon turned aside “unto another gospel,” but instantly
checking himself, he recals the word and declares, “it is not another
gospel,” but a perversion of the Gospel of Christ. “And though we, or an
angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we
have preached unto you, let him be accursed.” There are in his epistle
several other things equally pointed and severe, particularly his
expostulation on the folly and absurdity of their conduct in subjecting
themselves to the Jewish yoke of bondage, Gal. iii, 1. “The erroneous
doctrines of the Judaizing teachers,” says Dr. Macknight, “and the
calumnies they spread for the purpose of discrediting St. Paul’s
apostleship, no doubt occasioned great uneasiness of mind to him and to
the faithful in that age, and did much hurt, at least for a while, among
the Galatians. But in the issue these evils have proved of no small
service to the church in general; for by obliging the Apostle to produce
the evidences of his apostleship, and to relate the history of his life,
especially after his conversion, we have obtained the fullest assurance
of his being a real Apostle, called to the office by Jesus Christ
himself; consequently we are assured that our faith in the doctrines of
the Gospel, as taught by him, (and it is he who hath taught the peculiar
doctrines of the Gospel most fully,) is not built on the credit of a
man, but on the authority of the Spirit of God, by whom St. Paul was
inspired in the whole of the doctrine which he has delivered to the
world.”
GALBANUM, חלבנה, Exod. xxx, 34. Michaëlis makes the word a compound of
חלב, _milk_ or _gum_, (for the Syriac uses the noun in both senses,) and
לבן], _white_, as being the white milk or gum of a plant. It is the
thickened sap of an umbelliferous plant, called _metopion_, which grows
on Mount Amanus, in Syria, and is frequently found in Persia, and in
some parts of Africa. It was an ingredient in the holy incense of the
Jews.