Humiliated at this sight, the assassins remembered that Michal was a royal daughter
whose husband, escaped from their clutches, was just the man to reward them with a
hempen neckcloth on his accession to the throne; so, apologizing for their intrusion, the
emissaries withdrew.
Goats appear to have been favorites with our translators. Not content with transmuting
jewels into “ goat’s hair ” and filling the royal “ bolster” with this rare, elastic, and odoriferous
article, they must needs metamorphose one of the sublimest Hebrew names of Deity
into a “ scape-goat ” /
N . — Leviticus xvi. 8, 10, 26.
“ And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the Lord, and the other for the scapegoat....
But the goat, on which the lot fell to’ he the scapegoat, shall he presented alive before the Lord, to
make an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness.. . . And he
that let go the goat for the scapegoat, shall wash his clothes,*’ &e.
AZAZLW&zazel— is the Hebrew word. “ This terrible and venerable name of God
(says Lanci) through the pens of biblical glossers has been a devil, a mountain, a wilderness,
and a he-goat! ” (89)
It will give an idea of the lucidity of Rabbinical criticism, to quote the following: —
“ Aben Esra, according to his habitual manner when he is in trouble, enunciates in the
style of an oracle: * If thou art capable of comprehending the mystery of Az&ztt, thou
wilt learn also the mystery of his name; for it has similar associates in Scripture; I
will tell thee by allusion one portion of the mystery; when thou shalt have thirty-three
years, thou wilt comprehend us.’ He finishes abruptly without saying anything more allegorically
or otherwise.” (90)
The ante-Christian Hebrew text was undivided into words. Our preceptor re-divides
AZAZeL into two distinct nouns; AZAZ and EL. The latter, every sciolist knows, means
the strong, the puissant par excellence, the Omnipotent. AZAZ, identical with the Arabic
dzcbz, has its radical monosyllable in dZ, “ to conquei” and “ to be victorious;” wherefore,
IZAZ-^L signifies the ‘ ‘God of victory11—here used in the sense of the 11 Author of death,”
in juxta-position to IeHOwaH, the “ Author of life:” to' the latter of which Authors the
Jews were enjoined to offer & dead goat; while, by contrast, to the former they were to
offer a live one. Thus, death to the Life-giver— life to the Death-dealer. The symbolical
antithesis is grand and beautiful.
For the sake of perspicuity we submit a free translation to the reader: — “ And Aaron
shall place lots upon the two he-goats; one lot to IeHOwaH, and one lot to AZAZ-iFL. . . .
And the he-goat upon which the lot has fallen to AZAZ-J£L shall be placed alive before
IeHOwaH, to become exempted by him, to be sent forth to AZAZ-AJL in the desert. . . .
And he who shall have led forth the he-goat to AZAZ-jE'L shall cleanse his clothes,” &c.
In verse 9, the other he-goat offered to IeHOwaH was to be killed.
Having thus .entirely misapprehended the sense of the above passages* it was quite natural
that our gifted translators, one Divine Name having vanished through their skill, should
have been blinded to many others. Here is one of them: —•
O . — Job xxi. 15.
“What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? and what profit should we have, if we pray unto
him?”
We have illustrated, under the preceding letter N, the splendor of antithesis which Hebrew
literature conceived in the selection of Divine Names; and herein leniency may be
accorded to the English interpreters, because neither they nor early or later scholiasts,
could have anticipated a discovery due to the profoundest Semitic savant of our genera(
89) Sagra Serittura; ch. iii. § 1; — Parcdipomeni; ii. p . 354.
(90) Ca h e n : iii. p. 68. It may he well to warn cavillers that this subject has been studied. We do not agree
in H engstenberg’s idea (Egypt and the Books o f Moses; p p . 169-184), that dzazel is “ Satan.” For parallelisms
on the sacrifice of he-goats to the God-Preserver and the God-Destroyer, conf. R ighellini ( Examen ; ii. p. 246);
M o v e r s (Die Phoenizier ; i. p. 367); and Watsbx (Génies Psychopompes; Aug. 1845; p p . 295, 296 — and Personnage
de la Mort; Aug. 1847; p p . 325, 3 2 é ) in the Remue Archéologique.
tion, the affable Professor (for thirty-nine years) of Sacred Philology at the Roman
Vaticafi.,(91)
The original of the substantive rendered “ profit” is NUAIL— a noun which, occurring
but once amid the 5642 (92) words preserved, in the Hebrew and Chaldee Bibles, to our day
(fragments, so to say, -of the ancient tongue)—■ is unique; and consequently its signification
is recoverable solely through its extant radical in Arabian dialects. Its true root is
vital,'“ to be eminent” ; and its sense, “ the most sublime." The prototype of “ Almighty ”
is textually SAaDal; literally, “ the most valorous" Let the reader now compare king
James’s version with the subjoined : —- * 4r.
■ “Who is the most Valokous (SAaDal), that to him we must be servants? who the most
Sublime (NUSIL), that we should go [out of our way] to meet him ? ”
Variety is pleasing, so we skip oyer to
V.^-Micah, v. 2.
“ But thou Eeth-lehem Ephrata, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee
shall he còme*forth unto me that a to be ruler in Israel.” --
The emendation suggested relates principally to the word rendered “ thousands,” of
which the singular, in the unpunctuated Hebrew, is ALUPA.
ALePA, N, first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, in its Phoenician original is the tachygraph
of a Bull’s head ; and its name is derived from that of the animal, because the bull is
“leader” of the herd..(.93) Hence ALePA became a title as the “ leader,” general, dux,
or chief; of which examples are numerous in the discrepant so-called “ Dukes” of Edom,
\ &e. ; corruption of the Latin “ dux, duces” ; which, with more propriety in English, should
I be rendered chiefs. Copying the Latin and Greek versions, without archæological ‘knowledge
of the Hebrew tongue, our translators have read Elf-im “ thousands,” when Chiefs is
[ its real meaning ; thus : —
“And thou Bethlehem of Euphrata, [even] if thou art little among thè Chiefs of Juda,
I will cause to issue from thee the dominator of Israel.” (94)
Without regard to the fantastical and spurious headings to this Chapter in our version,
we may add, that the reading of Chiefs is as old as the Second century b. o, when the
LXX Greek version was made by the Hellenistic Jews of Alexandria ; because about 68-69
a. d. the author of the “ Good Tidings according to Matthew,” in citing the above passage
¡from Micah, read “ P r i n c e s (95) and he does not appear to have been acquainted(96)
[with the Hebrew Text. Panins and De Rossi even contend that the,speech of Christ,
: Xpiaros, was Greek. (97) But, we wander from our theme.
IQ. — Isaiah xviii. 1, 2.
“Woe to the land shadowing with wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia;— That sendeth ambassadors
by the sea, even in vessels of bulrushes upon the waters, saying, So, ye swift messengers,
to a nation scattered and peeled, to a people terrible from their beginning hitherto a nation
meted out and trodden down, whose land the rivers have spoiled.”
[ We cite this passage not with a view of destroying' the interpretation of the forty-seven,
pnthis instance excusable enough, but by way of elucidating how meritorious it would he
|to reconstruct their time-worn edifice, guided by the lights which Oriental, and particularly
Egyptian, researches of our living generation oast upon subjects until this century utterly
; All interpreters here have been at fault. The LXX render ’Ova15% irXoAvv rripvyie__i. e.
1 <e terree navium alts. The Vulgate—Vce terree cymbalo alarum. Cahen substitutes__“ Ah!
I (91) li s c i: Op. cit.; p . 354, &c.
I Ï ï llDSDra> ai,ud Gbsenids, in Parker’s De Wctte; i. p. 459 ; — Mum: Palestine; p. 436. I
I ' Gesenius: Script. Ling. Phoenicioe; 1838; p. 19.
É i l § I 2 2;— “ Trop petit pour être parmi les chefs de see noie 1. > Iehouda\,” Cahen: xn. pp. 963, 97• —
I (95) Matt, ii, 6; S h a r p e ’s New Test.; p. 3.
r H Of Christianity; 1845; pp. 123,124: 'and Christian Theism; pp. 82, 83.
(. <) Gesenius ; Heb. Sprache und Schrift; 1815 ; p. 46.
76