5. Those that were invited to the marriage were expected to appear in their best and gayest attire. If the bridegroom was in circumstances to afford it, wedding garments were prepared for all the guests, which were hung up in the antechamber for them to put on over the rest of their clothes, as they entered the apartments where the marriage feast was prepared. To refuse, or even to neglect, putting on the wedding garment, was reckoned an insult to the bridegroom; aggravated by the circumstance that it was provided by himself for the very purpose of being worn on that occasion, and was hung up in the way to the inner apartment, that the guests must have seen it, and recollected the design of its suspension. This accounts for the severity of the sentence pronounced by the king, who came in to see the guests, and found among them one who had neglected to put it on: “And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither, not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless,” Matt. xxii, 11, because it was provided at the expense of the entertainer, and placed full in his view. “Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
The following extract will show the importance of having a suitable garment for a marriage feast, and the offence taken against those who refuse it when presented as a gift. “The next day, Dec. 3d, the king sent to invite the ambassadors to dine with him once more. The Mehemander told them, it was the custom that they should wear over their own clothes the best of those garments which the king had sent them. The ambassadors at first made some scruple of that compliance; but when they were told that it was a custom observed by all ambassadors, and that no doubt the king would take it very ill at their hands if they presented themselves before him without the marks of his liberality, they at last resolved to do it; and, after their example, all the rest of the retinue.”
BRIER. This word occurs several times in our translation of the Bible, but with various authorities from the original. 1. הברקנים, Judges viii, 7, 16, is a particular kind of thorn. 2. חדק, Prov. xv, 19; Micah vii, 4. It seems hardly possible to determine what kind of plant this is. Some kind of tangling prickly shrub is undoubtedly meant. In the former passage there is a beautiful opposition, which is lost in our rendering: “The narrow way of the slothful is like a perplexed path among briers; whereas the broad road” (elsewhere rendered causeway) “of the righteous is a high bank;” that is, free from obstructions, direct, conspicuous, and open. The common course of life of these two characters answers to this comparison. Their manner of going about business, or of transacting it, answers to this. An idle man always takes the most intricate, the most oblique, and eventually the most thorny, measures to accomplish his purpose; the honest and diligent man prefers the most open and direct. In Micah, the unjust judge, taking bribes, is a brier, holding every thing that comes within his reach, hooking all that he can catch. 3. סרבים, Ezek. ii, 6. This word is translated by the Septuagint, παροιϛρήσουσιν, stung by the œstrus, or gadfly; and they use the like word in Hosea iv, 16, where, what in our version is “a backsliding heifer,” they render “a heifer stung by the œstrus.” These coincident renderings lead to the belief that both places may be understood of some venomous insect. The word סרר may lead us to sarran, by which the Arabs thus describe “a great bluish fly, having greenish eyes, its tail armed with a piercer, by which it pesters almost all horned cattle, settling on their heads, &c. Often it creeps up the noses of asses. It is a species of gadfly; but carrying its sting in its tail.” 4. סלון, Ezek. xxviii, 24, and סלונים, Ezek. ii, 6, must be classed among thorns. The second word Parkhurst supposes to be a kind of thorn, overspreading a large surface of ground, as the dewbrier. It is used in connection with קוצ, which, in Gen. iii, 18, is rendered thorns. The author of “Scripture Illustrated” queries, however, whether, as it is associated with “scorpions” in Ezek. ii, 6, both this word and serebim may not mean some species of venomous insects. 5. סרפד, mentioned only in Isaiah lv, 13, probably means a prickly plant; but what particular kind it is impossible to determine. 6. שמיר. This word is used only by the Prophet Isaiah, and in the following places: Isa. v, 6; vii, 23–25; ix, 17; x, 17; xxvii, 4; and xxxii, 13. It is probably a brier of a low kind; such as overruns uncultivated lands.
BRIMSTONE, גפרית, Gen. xix, 24; Deut. xxix, 23; Job xviii, 15; Psalm xi, 6; Isaiah xxx, 33; xxxiv, 9; Ezek. xxxviii, 22. It is rendered θεῖον by the Septuagint, and is so called in Luke xvii, 29. Fire and brimstone are represented in many passages of Scripture as the elements by which God punishes the wicked; both in this life, and another. There is in this a manifest allusion to the overthrow of the cities of the plain of the Jordan, by showers of ignited sulphur, to which the physical appearances of the country bear witness to this day. The soil is bituminous, and might be raised by eruptions into the air, and then inflamed and return in horrid showers of overwhelming fire. This awful catastrophe, therefore, stands as a type of the final and eternal punishment of the wicked in another world. In Job. xviii, 15, Bildad, describing the calamities which overtake the wicked person, says, “Brimstone shall be scattered upon his habitation.” This may be a general expression, to designate any great destruction: as that in Psalm xi, 6, “Upon the wicked he shall rain fire and brimstone.” Moses, among other calamities which he sets forth in case of the people’s disobedience, threatens them with the fall of brimstone, salt, and burning like the overthrow of Sodom, &c, Deut. xxix, 23. The Prophet Isaiah, xxxiv, 9, writes that the anger of the Lord shall be shown by the streams of the land being turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone. See [Dead Sea].
BROOK is distinguished from a river by its flowing only at particular times; for example, after great rains, or the melting of the snow; whereas a river flows constantly at all seasons. However, this distinction is not always observed in the Scripture; and one is not unfrequently taken for the other,--the great rivers, such as the Euphrates, the Nile, the Jordan, and others being called brooks. Thus the Euphrates, Isaiah xv, 7, is called the brook of willows. It is observed that the Hebrew word, נחל, which signifies a brook, is also the term for a valley, whence the one is often placed for the other, in different translations of the Scriptures. To deal deceitfully “as a brook,” and to “pass away as the stream thereof,” is to deceive our friend when he most needs and expects our help and comfort, Job vi, 15; because brooks, being temporary streams, are dried up in the heats of summer, when the traveller most needs a supply of water on his journey.
BROTHER. 1. A brother by the same mother, a uterine brother, Matt. iv, 21; xx, 20. 2. A brother, though not by the same mother, Matt. i, 2. 3. A near kinsman, a cousin, Matt. xiii, 55; Mark vi, 3. Observe, that in Matt. xiii, 55, James, and Joses, and Judas, are called the ἀδελφοὶ, brethren, of Christ, but were most probably only his cousins by his mother’s side; for James and Joses were the sons of Mary, Matt. xxvii, 56; and James and Judas, the sons of Alpheus, Luke vi, 15, 16; which Alpheus is therefore probably the same with Cleopas, the husband of Mary, sister to our Lord’s mother, John xix, 25.
BUCKLER. See [Arms].
BUILD. Beside the proper and literal signification of this word, it is used with reference to children and a numerous posterity. Sarah desires Abraham to take Hagar to wife, that by her she may be builded up, that is, have children to uphold her family, Gen. xvi, 2. The midwives who refused obedience to Pharaoh’s orders, when he commanded them to put to death all the male children of the Hebrews, were rewarded for it; God built them houses, that is, he gave them a numerous posterity. The Prophet Nathan tells David that God would build his house; that is, give him children and successors, 2 Sam. vii, 27. Moses, speaking of the formation of the first woman, says, God built her with the rib of Adam, Gen. ii, 22.
BUL, the eighth month of the ecclesiastical year of the Jews, and the second month of the civil year. It answers to October, and consists of twenty-nine days. On the sixth day of this month the Jews fasted, because on that day Nebuchadnezzar put to death the children of Zedekiah in the presence of their unhappy father, whose eyes, after they had been witnesses of this sad spectacle, he ordered to be put out, 2 Kings xxv, 7. We find the name of this month mentioned in Scripture but once, 1 Kings vi, 38.
BULL, the male of the beeve kind; and it is to be recollected that the Hebrews never castrated animals. There are several words translated “bull” in Scripture, of which the following is a list, with the meaning of each: שור, a bove, or cow, of any age. תאו, the wild bull, oryx, or buffalo, occurs only Deut. xiv, 5; and in Isaiah li, 20, תוא, with the interchange of the two last letters. אבירי, a word implying strength, translated “bulls,” Psalm xxii, 12; l, 13; lxviii, 30; Isaiah xxxiv, 7; Jer. xlvi, 15. בקר, herds, horned cattle of full age. פר, a full grown bull, or cow, fit for propagating. עגל, a full grown, plump young bull; and in the feminine, a heifer. תור, Chaldee taur, and Latin taurus; the ox accustomed to the yoke: occurs only in Ezra vi, 9, 17; vii, 17; Dan. iv, 25, 32, 33; xxii, 29, 30.