But we will desist from increasing this catalogue of definitions, for fear of being charged with slander on the Hebrew lexicons. Must not that be a very strange language in which one little word of only three letters has so many varied and adverse meanings? Yet, in all sobriety, we might double the number. If each and every Hebrew word were like this, thus loaded with lexicographical learning, we beg to know who would undertake and what would be the use of its study; for surely, from the same page, there might be a very great number of adverse and contradictory translations, all equally correct. But, if such catalogue is not legitimate, to what cause are we to look for its existence? to some abiding influence, secret but persevering, in the minds of the lexicographers for the last thousand years? Or shall we rather confine our views to the casualities of hurried translations and bad readings, to the facility of the copyist in book-making, instead of the laborious study of the investigator?
This circumstance, from whatever cause it may have sprung, will impose on us some labour to show the correctness of our proposition, to wit, the word עֶבֶדʿebed ebed, however used, and in whatever form, is never used in Hebrew disconnected from the idea of slavery.
We first propose to show that the Hebrew is abundantly supplied with words to express all these other meanings, disconnected with the idea of slavery.
Aware that such examination may be extremely uninteresting to the most of us, yet, deeming it of great importance to our subject, we humbly ask indulgence, while we examine a few of the most leading terms as examples, whose significations have been appropriated to the word עֶבֶדʿebed ebed.
LESSON II.
But, before we enter into such examination, it may be proper to remark that the Hebrew, in common with all the Shemitic languages, makes abundant use of what we call rhetorical figures. The word בֵּןbēn ben means a son; but by prosopopœia it is made to mean an arrow. Thus, Lam. iii. 13, “He hath caused the arrows of his quiver,” בְּנֵי֖ אַשְׁפָת֥וֹbĕnēy ʾašpātô beney, ashpatho—literally, the sons of his quiver, from the notion that the arrow is the produce, issue, adjunct, &c. of the quiver. We might quote a great number of instances where the word בֵּןbēn ben, by the same figure, is used to express some other idea than son, yet never unassociated with the primitive idea but, what would be the value of the lexicographical assertion that this word in Hebrew meant an arrow? The following fifteen verses are wholly of the same character: “He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath made me drunk with wormwood.”
The Arabians have a common way of expressing “one of great affliction,” by saying that he is a “wormwood beater.” Yet the Arabic word that means affliction, by no means is synonymous of wormwood.
The figure of Lamentations is also used in Ps. cxxvii. 4, 5: “As awards are in the hand of a mighty man, so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them.” Yet, the word אֶת־אַשְׁפָּתֹוֹʾet-ʾašpātōô is in no sense a synonyme of whatever word for which it is here figuratively used. A singular instance of this figure is found in Lam. ii. 13: “Let not the apple of thine eye cease;” בַּת־עֵינֵֽךְbat-ʿênēk bath eynek, the daughter of the eye. The translators have understood this to mean the “pupil,” otherwise called the apple of the eye; but, the word bath, daughter, shows that the thing meant is a produce of the eye; hence, it cannot mean the apple or pupil of the eye, but tears. But how stupid the page that shall put down as a signification of the word בַּתbat bath, an apple, or the apple of the eye, or the pupil, or yet, what it here means, a tear?
These two words ben, a son, and bath, a daughter, sometimes beth, are associated in so many different forms of figure and in connection or compound with other Hebrew words, to express some complex idea, that, if each different idea thus conveyed was to be considered a legitimate signification of these words, their description would be quite lengthy, and contradictory; for instance, Gen. xxiv. 16, בְּתוּלָ֕הbĕtûlâ is used to mean a virgin. But, 1 Sam. i. 16, בַת־בְּלִיַּעַלbat-bĕliyyaʿal is used to mean quite a different character, as if of different origin. In Eccl. xii. 4, בְּנוֹ֥ת הַשִּׂ֥ירbĕnôt haśśîr is generally understood to mean the voice of an old man. But in Dan. xi. 17, בַ֤ת הַנׇּשִׁים֨bat hannŏšîm is understood to mean a princess. We might multiply examples without number; yet, in all instances, the leading idea, a daughter, is ever present: other primitive words, whose signification was an idea of great and leading interest, will be found in similar use. And it may be remarked, that, at one age of the world, when a large proportion of the children of men were slaves, that the word signifying that condition would be naturally and exceedingly often used in a figurative manner. Even among us, our word servant, which, from use, has become merely a milder term to express the same idea, is in the mouth of every devout man, while slave is in constant use among the moral and political agitators of the day.