FROG, צפרדע; Arabic, akurrak; Greek, βάτραχος; Exod. viii, 2–14; Psalm 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.