With plaintive sighs and music’s solemn sound;
Alternately they sing, alternate flow
The obedient tears, melodious in their wo.” Pope.
In Egypt, the lower class of people call in women who play on the tabor; and whose business it is, like the hired mourners in other countries, to sing elegiac airs to the sound of that instrument, which they accompany with the most frightful distortions of their limbs. These women attend the corpse to the grave, intermixed with the female relations and friends of the deceased, who commonly have their hair in the utmost disorder; their heads covered with dust; their faces daubed with indigo, or at least rubbed with mud; and howling like maniacs. Such were the minstrels whom our Lord found in the house of Jairus, making so great a noise round the bed on which the dead body of his daughter lay. The noise and tumult of these retained mourners, and the other attendants, appear to have begun immediately after the person expired. It is evident that this sort of mourning and lamentation was a kind of art among the Jews: “Wailing shall be in the streets; and they shall call such as are skilful of lamentation to wail,” Amos v, 16. Mourners are still hired at the obsequies of Hindoos and Mohammedans, as in former times. To the dreadful noise and tumult of the hired mourners, the following passage of Jeremiah indisputably refers; and shows the custom to be derived from a very remote antiquity: “Call for the mourning women that they may come; and send for cunning women, that they may come, and let them make haste, and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids gush out with waters,” Jer. ix, 17. The funeral processions of the Jews in Barbary are conducted nearly in the same manner as those in Syria. The corpse is borne by four to the place of burial: in the first rank march the priests, next to them the kindred of the deceased; after whom come those that are invited to the funeral; and all singing in a sort of plain song, the forty-ninth Psalm. Hence the Prophet, Amos viii, 3, warns his people that public calamities were approaching, so numerous and severe, as should make them forget the usual rites of burial, and even to sing one of the songs of Zion over the dust of a departed relative. This appears to be confirmed by a prediction in the eighth chapter: “And the songs of the temple shall be howlings in that day, saith the Lord God; there shall be many dead bodies in every place; they shall cast them forth with silence;” they shall have none to lament and bewail; none to blow the funeral trump or touch the pipe and tabor; none to sing the plaintive dirge, or express their hope of a blessed resurrection, in the strains of inspiration. All shall be silent despair. See [Sepulchres].
BUSH. סנה. This word occurs in Exod. iii, 2, 4, and Deut. xxxiii, 16, as the name of the bush in which God appeared to Moses. If it be the χιονὸς mentioned by Dioscorides, it is the white thorn. Celsius calls it the rubus fructicosus. The number of these bushes in this region seems to have given the name to the mountain Sinai. The word נהללים, found only in Isa. vii, 19, and there rendered “bushes,” means fruitful pastures.
BUTTER is taken in Scripture, as it has been almost perpetually in the east, for cream or liquid butter, Prov. xxx, 33; 2 Sam. xvii, 29. The ancient way of making butter in Arabia and Palestine was probably nearly the same as is still practised by the Bedoween Arabs, and Moors in Barbary, and which is thus described by Dr. Shaw: “Their method of making butter is by putting the milk or cream into a goat’s skin turned inside out, which they suspend from one side of the tent to the other; and then pressing it to and fro in one uniform direction, they quickly separate the unctious and wheyey parts. In the Levant they tread upon the skin with their feet, which produces the same effect.” The last method of separating the butter from the milk, perhaps may throw light upon a passage in Job of some difficulty: “When I washed my steps with butter, and the rock poured me out rivers of oil,” Job xxxi, 6. The method of making butter in the east illustrates the conduct of Jael, the wife of Heber, described in the book of Judges: “And Sisera said unto her, Give me, I pray thee, a little water to drink, for I am thirsty: and she opened a bottle of milk, and gave him drink and covered him.” In the Song of Deborah, the statement is repeated: “He asked water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter in a lordly dish,” Judges iv, 19; v, 25. The word חמאה, which our translators rendered butter, properly signifies cream; which is undoubtedly the meaning of it in this passage: for Sisera complained of thirst, and asked a little water to quench it;--a purpose to which butter is but little adapted. Mr. Harmer, indeed, urges the same objection to cream, which, he contends, few people would think a very proper beverage for one that was extremely thirsty; and concludes that it must have been butter-milk which Jael, who had just been churning, gave to Sisera. But the opinion of Dr. Russel is preferable,--that the hemah of the Scriptures is probably the same as the haymak of the Arabs, which is not, as Harmer supposed, simple cream, but cream produced by simmering fresh sheep’s milk for some hours over a slow fire. It could not be butter newly churned, which Jael presented to Sisera, because the Arab butter is apt to be foul, and is commonly passed through a strainer before it is used: and Russel declares, he never saw butter offered to a stranger, but always haymak; nor did he ever observe the orientals drink butter-milk, but always leban, which is coagulated sour milk, diluted with water. It was leban, therefore, which Pococke mistook for butter-milk, with which the Arabs treated him in the Holy Land. A similar conclusion may be drawn concerning the butter and milk which the wife of Heber presented to Sisera: they were forced cream or haymak, and leban, or coagulated sour milk, diluted with water, which is a common and refreshing beverage in those sultry regions. In Isaiah vii, 15, butter and honey are mentioned as food which, in Egypt and other places in the east, is in use to this day. The butter and honey are mixed, and the bread is then dipped in it.
BYSSUS. By this word we generally understand that fine Egyptian linen of which the priests’ tunics were made. But we must distinguish three kinds of commodities, which are generally comprehended under the name of linen: 1. The Hebrew בד, which signifies linen: 2. שש, which signifies cotton: 3. בוץ, which is commonly called bussus, and is the silk growing from a certain shell fish, called pinna. We do not find the name butz in the text of Moses, though the Greek and Latin use the word byssus, to signify the fine linen of certain habits belonging to the priests. The word butz occurs only in 1 Chron. xv, 27; Ezek. xxvii, 16; Esther i, 6. In the Chronicles we see David dressed in a mantle of butz, with the singers and Levites. Solomon used butz in the veils of the temple and sanctuary. Ahasuerus’s tents were upheld by cords of butz; and Mordecai was clothed with a mantle of purple and butz, when king Ahasuerus honoured him with the first employment in his kingdom. Lastly, it is observed that there was a manufacture of butz in the city of Beersheba, in Palestine. This butz must have been different from common linen, since in the same place where it is said, David wore a mantle of byssus, we read likewise that he had on a linen ephod.
CAB, or KAB, a Hebrew measure, containing three pints one-third of our wine measure, or two pints five-sixths of our corn measure.
CABBALA, a mysterious kind of science, delivered to the ancient Jews, as they pretend, by revelation, and transmitted by oral tradition to those of our times; serving for the interpretation of the books both of nature and Scripture. The word is variously written, as Cabala, Caballa, Kabbala, Kabala, Cabalistica, Ars Cabala, and Gaballa. It is originally Hebrew, קבלה, and properly signifies reception; formed from the verb קבל, to receive by tradition, or from father to son; especially in the Chaldee and Rabbinical Hebrew. Cabbala, then, primarily denotes any sentiment, opinion, usage, or explication of Scripture, transmitted from father to son. In this sense the word cabbala is not only applied to the whole art, but also to each operation performed according to the rules of that art. Thus it is, rabbi Jacob Ben Ascher, surnamed Baal-Hatturim, is said to have compiled most of the cabbalas invented on the books of Moses before his time. As to the origin of the cabbala, the Jews relate many marvellous tales. They derive the mysteries contained in it from Adam; and assert, that whilst the first man was in paradise, the angel Raphael brought him a book from heaven, which contained the doctrines of heavenly wisdom; and that when Adam received this book, angels came down from heaven to learn its contents; but that he refused to admit them to the knowledge of sacred things, intrusted to himself alone: that, after the fall, this book was taken back into heaven; that, after many prayers and tears, God restored it to Adam; and that it passed from Adam to Seth. The Jewish fables farther relate, that the book being lost, and the mysteries contained in it almost forgotten, in the degenerate age preceding the flood, they were restored by special revelation to Abraham, who transmitted them to writing in the book “Jezirah;” and that the revelation was renewed to Moses, who received a traditionary and mystical, as well as a written and preceptive, law from God. Accordingly, the Jews believe that God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai, not only the law, but also the explication of that law; and that Moses, after his coming down, retiring to his tent, rehearsed to Aaron both the one and the other. When he had done, the sons of Aaron, Eleazar and Ithamar, were introduced to a second rehearsal. This being over, the seventy elders that composed the sanhedrim were admitted; and, lastly, the people, as many as pleased; to all of whom Moses again repeated both the law and explanation, as he received them from God: so that Aaron heard it four times, his sons thrice, the elders twice, and the people once. Now, of the two things which Moses taught them, the laws and the explanation, only the first were committed to writing; which is what we have in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. As to the second, or the explication of those laws, they were contented to impress it well in their memory, to teach it their children; they to theirs, &c. Hence the first part they call simply the law, or the written law; the second, the oral law, or cabbala. Such is the original notion of the cabbala.
2. The cabbala being again lost amidst the calamities of the Babylonish captivity, was once more revealed to Esdras; and it is said to have been preserved in Egypt, and transmitted to posterity through the hands of Simeon Ben Setach, Elkanah, Akibha, Simeon Ben Jochai, and others. The only warrantable inference from these accounts, which bear the obvious marks of fiction, is, that the cabbalistic doctrine obtained early credit among the Jews as a part of their sacred tradition, and was transmitted, under this notion, by the Jews in Egypt to their brethren in Palestine. Under the sanction of ancient names, many fictitious writings were produced, which greatly contributed to the spreading of this mystical system. Among these were “Sepher Happeliah,” or the book of wonders; “Sepher Hakkaneh,” or the book of the pen; and “Sepher Habbahir,” or the book of light. The first unfolds many doctrines said to have been delivered by Elias to the rabbi Elkanah; the second contains mystical commentaries on the divine commands; and the third illustrates the most sublime mysteries. Among the profound doctors who, beside the study of tradition, cultivated with great industry the cabbalistic philosophy, the most celebrated persons are the rabbis Akibba, who lived soon after the destruction of Jerusalem, and Simeon Ben Jochai, who flourished in the second century. To the former is ascribed the book entitled “Jezirah,” concerning the creation; and to the latter, the book “Sohar,” or brightness; and these are the principal sources from which we derive our knowledge of the cabbala.