International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
J
Jaakan — Jarha
Jaakan
Jaakan - ja'-a-kan.
See BEEROTH BENE-JAAKAN.
Jaakobah
Jaakobah - ja-a-ko'-ba, ja-ak'-o-ba (ya`aqobhah, for meaning compare JACOB, I, 1, 2): 1 Chronicles 4:36, a Simeonite prince.
Jaala; Jaalah
Jaala; Jaalah - ja'-a-la, ja-a'-la (ya`ala', meaning unknown, Nehemiah 7:58) and (ya`alah, "mountain goat" (?), Ezra 2:56): The name of a family of returned exiles, "children of Solomon's servants" = "Jeeli" in 1 Esdras 5:33.
Jaalam
Jaalam - ja'-a-lam: the King James Version for JALAM (which see).
Jaanai
Jaanai - ja'-a-ni: the King James Version for JANAI (which see).
Jaar
Jaar - ja'-ar (ya`ar, "forest" or "wood"): Is only once taken as a proper name (Psalms 132:6 the Revised Version margin), "We found it in the field of Jaar." It may be a shortened form of the name Kiriath-jearim, where the ark had rested 20 years.
See KIRIATH-JEARIM.
Jaare-oregim
Jaare-oregim - ja'-a-re-or'-e-jim, -or'e-gim (ya`are'oreghim): In 2 Samuel 21:19, given as the name of a Bethlehemite, father of Elhanan, who is said to have slain Goliath the Gittite (compare 1 Samuel 17:1-58). The name is not likely to be a man's name; the second part means "weavers" and occurs also as the last word of the verse in the Massoretic Text, so it is probably a scribal error here due to repetition. The first part is taken to be (1) an error for ya`ir (see JAIR), which is to be read in the parallel section in 1 Chronicles 20:5; (2) in 2 Samuel 23:24 Elhanan is the son of Dodo, also a Bethlehemite, and Klostermann would read here Dodai as the name of Elhanan's father.
David Francis Roberts
Jaareshiah
Jaareshiah - ja-ar-e-shi'-a (ya`areshyah, meaning unknown): In 1 Chronicles 8:27, a Benjamite, "son" of Jeroham. The King James Version has "Jaresiah."
Jaasai; Jaasau
Jaasai; Jaasau - ja'-a-si, ja'-a-so.
See JAASU.
Jaasiel
Jaasiel - ja-a'-si-el (ya`asi'el, "God makes" (?)): In 1 Chronicles 11:47, a Mezobaite, one of "the mighty men of the armies," and probably = "Jaasiel" of 1 Chronicles 27:21, "the son of Abner," and a Benjamite tribal prince of David's. the King James Version "Jasiel."
Jaasu; Jassai; Jaasau
Jaasu; Jassai; Jaasau - ja'-a-su (the Revised Version (British and American) and Kethibh, ya`asu, meaning uncertain); (the Revised Version margin and Qere, ya`asay), (the King James Version): In Ezra 10:37, one of those who had married foreign wives. Septuagint translates the consonantal text as a verb, kai epoiesan, "and they did." 1 Esdras 9:34 has "Eliasis."
Jaazaniah
Jaazaniah - ja-az-a-ni'-a (ya'azanyahu, in 2 Kings 25:23; Ezekiel 8:11; ya'azanyah, in Jeremiah 35:3; Ezekiel 11:1, "Yah hears"):
(1) In 2 Kings 25:23, "son of the Maacathite," and one of the Judean "captains of the forces" who joined Gedaliah, the Babylonian governor appointed by Nebuchadrezzar over Judah, at Mizpah. He is the "Jezaniah" of Jeremiah 40:8; 42:1. Though not mentioned by name, he was presumably one of those captains who joined Johnnan in his attack on Ishmael after the latter had slain Gedaliah (Jeremiah 41:11-18). He is also the same as Azariah of Jeremiah 43:2, a name read by the Septuagint's Codex Vaticanus in Jeremiah 42:1 also. Jeremiah 43:5 relates how Johnnan and his allies, Jaazaniah (= Azariah) among them, left Judah with the remnant, and took up their abode in Egypt.
(2) In Jeremiah 35:3, son of Jeremiah (not the prophet), and a chief of the Rechabite clansmen from whose "staunch adherence to the precepts of their ancestor" Jeremiah "points a lesson for his own countrymen" (Driver, Jeremiah, 215).
(3) In Ezekiel 8:11, son of Shaphan, and one of the seventy men of the ciders of Israel whom Ezekiel saw in a vision of Jerusalem offering incense to idols.
(4) In Ezekiel 11:1, son of Azzur, and one of the Ezekiel 25:1-17 men whom Ezekiel saw in his vision of Jerusalem, at the East door of the Lord's house, and against whose iniquity he was commanded to prophesy (Ezekiel 11:1-13).
David Francis Roberts
Jaazer
Jaazer - ja'-a-zer (ya`azer).
See JAZER.
Jaaziah
Jaaziah - ja-a-zi'-a (ya`aziyahu, "Yah strengthens"): In 1 Chronicles 24:26, 27, a Levite, "son" of Merari. But the Massoretic Text is corrupt. The Septuagint's Codex Vaticanus reads (Ozeid), which some take to suggest Uzziah (compare 27:25); see Curtis, Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Books of Chronicles, 274-75; See Kittel, at the place.
Jaaziel
Jaaziel - ja-a'-zi-el (ya`azi'el, "God strengthens"): In 1 Chronicles 15:18, a Levite, one of the musicians appointed to play upon instruments at the bringing up of the ark by David. Kittel and Curtis, following the Septuagint (Ozeiel), read "Uzziel," the name they adopt for Aziel in 15:20, and for Jeiel in 16:5.
Jabal
Jabal - ja'-bal (yabhal, meaning uncertain): In Genesis 4:20, a son of Lamech by Adah. He is called `the father of those who dwell in tents and (with) herds.' So Gunkel, Genesis 3., 52, who says that the corresponding word in Arabic means "the herdsman who tends the camels." Skinner, Gen, 120, says that both Jabal and Jubal suggest yobhel, which in Phoenician and Hebrew "means primarily `ram,' then `ram's horn' as a musical instrument, and finally `joyous music' (in the designation of the year of Jubilee)." See also Skinner, Gen, 103, on the supposed connection in meaning with Abel.
David Francis Roberts
Jabbok
Jabbok - jab'-ok (yabboq, "luxuriant river"): A stream in Eastern Palestine first named in the history of Jacob, as crossed by the patriarch on his return from Paddan-aram, after leaving Mahanaim (Genesis 32:22 ff). On the bank of this river he had his strange conflict with an unknown antagonist. The Jabbok was the northern boundary of the territory of Sihon the Amorite (Numbers 21:24). It is also named as the border of Ammon (Deuteronomy 3:16). It is now called Nahr ez-Zerqa, "river of blue," referring to the clear blue color of its water. It rises near to `Amman--Rabbath Ammon--and makes a wide circuit, flowing first to the East, then to the Northwest, until it is joined by the stream from Wady Jerash, at which point it turns westward, and flows, with many windings, to the Jordan, the confluence being just North of ed-Damiyeh. It drains a wider area than any other stream East of the Jordan, except the Yarmuk. The bed of the river is in a deep gorge with steep, and in many places precipitous, banks. It is a great cleft, cutting the land of Gilead in two. It is lined along its course by a luxuriant growth of oleander which, in season, lights up the valley with brilliant color. The length of the stream, taking no account of its innumerable windings, is about 60 miles. The mouth of the river has changed its position from time to time. In the lower reaches the vegetation is tropical. The river is fordable at many points, save when in full flood. The particular ford referred to in Genesis 32:1-32 cannot now be identified.
W. Ewing
Jabesh
Jabesh - ja'-besh (yabhesh): A short form of JABESH-GILEAD (which see).
Jabesh-gilead
Jabesh-gilead - ja'-besh-gil'-e-ad (yabhesh gil`adh; or simply yabhish, "dry"): A city East of the Jordan, in the deliverance of which from Nahash the Ammonite Saul's military prowess was first displayed (1 Samuel 11:1 ff). At an earlier time the inhabitants failed to share with their brethren in taking vengeance upon Benjamin. This laxity was terribly punished, only 400 virgins being spared alive, who afterward became wives to the Benjamites (Judges 21:1-25). The gratitude of the inhabitants to Saul was affectingly proved after the disaster to that monarch on Gilboa (1 Samuel 31:1-13). David, hearing of their deed, sent an approving message, and sought to win their loyalty to himself (2 Samuel 2:4 ff). Robinson (Biblical Researches, III, 39) thought it might be represented by ed-Deir, about 6 miles from Pella (Fachil), on the southern bank of Wady Yabis. The distance from Pella agrees with the statement of Eusebius, Onomasticon (s.v.). Others (Oliphant, Land of Gilead, 277 f; Merrill, East of Jordan, 430, etc.) would identify it with the ruins of Meriamin, about 3 miles Southeast of Pella, on the North of Wady Yabis. The site remains in doubt; but the ancient name still lingers in that of the valley, the stream from which enters the Jordan fully 9 miles Southeast of Beisan.
W. Ewing
Jabez
Jabez - ja'-bez (ya`bets, "sorrow" ("height)):
(1) Place: An unidentified town probably in the territory of Judah, occupied by scribes (1 Chronicles 2:55). For an ingenious reconstruction of the passage see EB , under the word
(2) Person: The head of a family of Judah, noted for his "honorable" character, though "his mother bare him with sorrow" (1 Chronicles 4:9-10), ya`bets being interpreted as if it stood for ya`tsebh, "he causes pain." The same play upon words recurs in his prayer, "that it be not to my sorrow!" His request was granted, "and the sorrow implied by his ominous name was averted by prayer" (Dummelow, in the place cited.).
Jabin
Jabin - ja'-bin (yabhin, "one who is intelligent," "discerning." The word may have been a hereditary royal title among the northern Canaanites. Compare the familiar usage of par`oh melekh mitsrayim):
(1) "The king of Hazor," the leading city in Northern Palestine, who led an alliance against Joshua. He was defeated at the waters of Merom, his city was taken and he was slain (Joshua 11:1-9).
(2) "The king of Canaan, that reigned (or had reigned) in Hazor." It is not clear whether he dwelt in Hazor or Harosheth, the home of Sisera, the captain of his host at the time of the story narrated in Jgs. He oppressed Israel in the days preceding the victory of Deborah and Barak. To the Israelites he must have been but a shadowy figure as compared with his powerful captain, Sisera, for the song makes no mention of him and there is nothing to indicate that he even took part in the battle that freed Israel (Judges 4:2, 7, 17, 23-24 bis; Psalms 83:9-10).
Ella Davis Isaacs
Jabneel; Jabneh
Jabneel; Jabneh - jab'-ne-el, jab'-ne (yabhne'el, "God is builder"; Septuagint Lebna, Swete reads Lemna; the Apocrypha has Iamnia, Iamneia):
(1) A town on the northern border of the land assigned to Judah, near the western sea, mentioned in connection with Ekron (Joshua 15:11). The place is now represented by the modern village of Yebna which stands upon a hill a little to the South of the Nahr Rubin, about 12 or 13 miles South of Jaffa, on the road from there to Askelon, and about 4 miles from the sea. It had a port, now called Mina Rubin, a short distance South of the mouth of the river, some remains of which still exist. Its harbor was superior to that of Jaffa (PEFS, 1875, 167-68). It does not occur in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament except in the passage mentioned, but it appears under the form "Jabneh" (yabhneh) in 2 Chronicles 26:6, as is evident from the mention of Gath and Ashdod in connection with it. The Septuagint reads Gemna (Jabneh) where the Hebrew reads wa-yammah, "even unto the sea," in Joshua 15:46, where Ekron and Ashdod and other cities and villages are mentioned as belonging to Judah's inheritance. Josephus (Ant., V, i, 22) assigns it to the tribe of Dan. We have no mention of its being captured by Joshua or occupied by Judah until the reign of Uzziah who captured it and demolished its wall, in connection with his war upon the Philistines (2 Chronicles 26:6). The position of Jabneel was strong and was the scene of many contests, both in the period of the monarchy and that of the Maccabees. It is mentioned frequently in the account of the wars of the latter with the Syrians. It was garrisoned by the Seleucid kings, and served as a base for raiding the territory of Judah. When Judas Maccabeus defeated Gorgias and the Syrians he pursued them to the plains of Jabneel, but did not take the fortress (1 Maccabees 4:15). Gorgias was there attacked by the Jewish generals Joseph and Azarias, contrary to Judas' orders, who were repulsed with loss (1 Maccabees 5:56-60; Josephus, Ant, XII, viii, 6). Apollonius occupied it for King Demetrius (1 Maccabees 10:69); and Cendebeus for Antiochus, and from there harassed the Jews (1 Maccabees 15:40). Judas burned the port and navy of Jabneel (2 Maccabees 12:8-9). It was taken by Simon in 142 BC (Josephus, Ant, XIII, vi, 7; BJ, I, ii, 2), together with Gazara and Joppa, but was restored to its inhabitants by Pompey in 62 BC (Ant., XIV, iv, 4), and was rebuilt by Gabinius in 57 BC (BJ, I, viii, 4). It was restored to the Jews by Augustus in 30 AD. Herod gave it to his sister Salome and she bequeathed it to Julia, the wife of Augustus (Ant., XVIII, ii, 2; BJ, II, ix, 1). The town and region were prosperous in Roman times, and when Jerusalem was besieged by Titus the Sanhedrin removed to Jabneel, and it afterward became the seat of a great rabbinical school (Milman, History of the Jews, II, 411-12), but was suppressed in the persecution under Hadrian. Antonius allowed it to be revived, but it was again suppressed because of hostile language on the part of the rabbis (ibid., 451-52). The Crusaders built there the castle of Ibelin, supposing it to be the site of Gath. It was occupied by the Saracens, and various inscriptions in Arabic of the 13th and 14th centuries have been found there (SWP, II, 441-42).
(2) A town of Naphtali mentioned in Joshua 19:33, and supposed to be the site of the modern Yemma, Southwest of the sea of Galilee (SWP, I, 365). It is the Kefr Yama of the Talmud
H. Porter
Jacan
Jacan - ja'-kan (ya`kan, meaning not known; the King James Version, Jachan): A chief of a family descended from Gad (1 Chronicles 5:13).
Jachin
Jachin - ja'-kin (yakhin, "he will establish"):
(1) The 4th son of Simeon (Genesis 46:10; Exodus 6:15; Numbers 26:12). In 1 Chronicles 4:24 his name is given as "Jarib" (compare the King James Version margin, the Revised Version margin). "Jachinites," the patronymic of the family, occurs in Numbers 26:12.
(2) Head of the 21st course of priests in the time of David (1 Chronicles 24:17). It is used as a family name in 1 Chronicles 9:10, and as such also in Nehemiah 11:10, where some of the course are included in the list of those who, having returned from Babylon, willingly accepted the decision of the lot, and abandoned their rural retreats to become citizens and guardians of Jerusalem (Nehemiah 11:1 f).
James Crichton
Jachin and Boaz
Jachin and Boaz - ja'-kin (yakhin, "he shall establish"; bo`az, "in it is strength," 1 Kings 7:15-22; 2 Kings 25:16-17; 2 Chronicles 3:15-17; Jeremiah 52:17): These were the names of the two bronze pillars that stood before the temple of Solomon. They were not used in supporting the building; their appearance, therefore, must have been solely due to moral and symbolic reasons. What these are it is not easy to say. The pillars were not altar pillars with hearths at their top, as supposed by W.R. Smith (Religion of the Semites, 191, 468); rather they were "pillars of witness," as was the pillar that witnessed the contract between Jacob and Laban (Genesis 31:52). At difficulty arises about the height of the pillars. The writers in Kings and Jeremiah affirm that the pillars before the porch were 18 cubits high apiece (1 Kings 7:15; Jeremiah 52:21), while the Chronicler states that they were 35 cubits (2 Chronicles 3:15). Various methods have been suggested of reconciling this discrepancy, but it is more probable that there is a corruption in the Chronicler's number. On the contruction of the pillars and their capitals, see TEMPLE. At the final capture of Jerusalem they were broken up and the metal of which they were composed was sent to Babylon (2 Kings 25:13, 16). In Ezekiel's ideal temple the two pillars are represented by pillars of wood (Ezekiel 40:49).
W. Shaw Caldecott
Jacimus
Jacimus - ja'-si-mus (Ant., XII, ix, 3).
See ALCIMUS.
Jacinth
Jacinth - ja'-sinth.
See HYACINTH; STONES, PRECIOUS.
Jackal
Jackal - jak'-ol:
(1) tannim, "jackals," the King James Version "dragons"; compare Arabic tinan, "wolf"; and compare tannin, Arab tinnin, "sea monster" or "monster" the English Revised Version "dragon" (Job 7:12 m; Psalms 74:13; 148:7; Isaiah 27:1; 51:9; Jeremiah 51:34), "serpent" (Exodus 7:9-10, 12; Deuteronomy 32:33; Psalms 91:13), the King James Version "whale" (Genesis 1:21; Job 7:12); but tannin, "jackals," the King James Version "sea monsters" (Lamentations 4:3), "jackal's well," the King James Version "dragon well" (Nehemiah 2:13), and tannim, "monster," the King James Version and the English Revised Version "dragon" (Ezekiel 29:3; 32:2).
(2) 'iyim, "wolves," the King James Version "wild beasts of the islands"; compare 'i, plural iyim, "island"; also 'ayyah, "a cry," 'awah, "to cry," "to howl"; Arabic `auwa', "to bark" (of dogs, wolves, or jackals); 'ibn 'awa', colloquially wawi, "jackal."
(3) tsiyim, "wild beasts of the desert."
(4) 'ochim, "doleful creatures."
"Jackals" occurs as a translation of tannim, the King James Version "dragons," in Job 30:29; Psalms 44:19; Isaiah 13:22; 34:13; 35:7; 43:20; Jeremiah 9:11; 10:22; 14:6; 49:33; 51:37; of the feminine plural form tannoth in Malachi 1:3, and of tannin in Nehemiah 2:13 and Lamentations 4:3. Tannim is variously referred to a root meaning "to howl," and to a root meaning "to stretch out" trop. "to run swiftly, i.e. with outstretched neck and limb extended" (Gesenius). Either derivation would suit "wolf" equally as well as "jackal." The expression in Jeremiah 10:22, "to make the cities of Judah a desolation, a dwelling-place of jackals," seems, however, especially appropriate of jackals. The same is true of Isaiah 34:13; Jeremiah 9:11; 49:33, and Jeremiah 51:37.
The jackal (from Persian shaghal), Canis aureus, is found about the Mediterranean except in Western Europe. It ranges southward to Abyssinia, and eastward, in Southern Asia, to farther India. It is smaller than a large dog, has a moderately bushy tail, and is reddish brown with dark shadings above. It is cowardly and nocturnal. Like the fox, it is destructive to poultry, grapes, and vegetables, but is less fastidious, and readily devours the remains of others' feasts. Jackals generally go about in small companies. Their peculiar howl may frequently be heard in the evening and at any time in the night. It begins with a high-pitched, long-drawn-out cry. This is repeated two or three times, each time in a higher key than before. Finally there are several short, loud, yelping barks. Often when one raises the cry others join in. Jackals are not infrequently confounded with foxes. They breed freely with dogs.
While tannim is the only word translated "jackal" in English Versions of the Bible, the words 'iyim, tsiyim, and 'ochim deserve attention. They, as well as tannim, evidently refer to wild creatures inhabiting desert places, but it is difficult to say for what animal each of the words stands. All four (together with benoth ya`anah and se`irim) are found in Isaiah 13:21-22: "But wild beasts of the desert (tsiyim) shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures ('ochim); and ostriches (benoth ya`anah) shall dwell there, and wild goats (se`irim) shall dance there. And wolves ('iyim) shall cry in their castles, and jackals (tannim) in the pleasant palaces."
In the King James Version 'iyim (Isaiah 13:22; 34:14; Jeremiah 50:39) is translated "wild beasts of the islands" (compare 'iyim, "islands"). the King James Version margin has merely the transliteration iim, the Revised Version (British and American) "wolves," the Revised Version margin "howling creatures." Gesenius suggests the jackal, which is certainly a howler. While the wolf has a blood-curdling howl, it is much more rarely heard than the jackal.
Tsiyim (Psalms 72:9; 74:14; Isaiah 13:21; 23:13; 34:14; Jeremiah 50:39) has been considered akin to tsiyah, "drought" (compare 'erets tsiyah, "a dry land" (Psalms 63:1)), and is translated in the Revised Version (British and American) as follows: Psalms 72:9, "they that dwell in the wilderness"; Psalms 74:14, "the people inhabiting the wilderness"; Isaiah 23:13, "them that dwell in the wilderness," the Revised Version margin "the beasts of the wilderness"; Isaiah 13:21; 34:14; Jeremiah 50:39, "wild beasts of the desert." There would be some difficulty in referring tsiyim in Psalms 72:9 to beasts rather than to men, but that is not the case in Psalms 74:14 and Isaiah 23:13. "Wild cats" have been suggested.
'Ochim, "doleful creatures," perhaps onomatopoetic, occurs only in Isaiah 13:21. The translation "owls" has been suggested, and is not unsuitable to the context.
It is not impossible that tannim and 'iyim may be different names of the jackals. 'Iyim, tsiyim, and tannim occur together also in Isaiah 34:13-14, and 'iyim and tsiyim in Jeremiah 50:39. Their similarity in sound may have much to do with their collocation. The recognized word for "wolf," ze'ebh (compare Arabic dhi'b), occurs 7 times in the Old Testament.
Alfred Ely Day
Jackal's Well
Jackal's Well - (`en ha-tannin; Septuagint has pege ton sukon, "fountain of the figs"; the King James Version dragon well): A well or spring in the valley of Hinnom between the "Gate of the Gai" and the Dung Gate (Nehemiah 2:13). No such source exists in the Wady er Rababi (see HINNOM, VALLEY OF) today, although it is very probable that a well sunk to the rock in the lower parts of this valley might strike a certain amount of water trickling down the valley-bottom. G.A. Smith suggests (Jerusalem, I, chapter iv) that this source may have arisen as the result of an earthquake, hence, the name "dragon," and have subsequently disappeared; but it is at least as likely that it received its name from the jackals which haunted this valley, as the pariah dogs do today, to consume the dead bodies which were thrown there.
See HINNOM, VALLEY OF; JACKAL.
E. W. G. Masterman
Jacob (1)
Jacob (1) - ja'-kub:
I. NAME
1. Form and Distribution
2. Etymology and Associations
II. HIS PLACE IN THE PATRIARCHAL SUCCESSION
1. As the Son of Isaac and Rebekah
2. As the Brother of Esau
3. As the Father of the Twelve
III. BIOGRAPHY
1. With Isaac in Canaan
2. To Aram and Back
3. In Canaan Again
4. Last Years in Egypt
IV. CHARACTER AND BELIEFS
1. Natural Qualities
2. Stages of Development
3. Attitude toward the Promise
4. How Far a "Type" of Israel
V. REFERENCES OUTSIDE OF GENESIS
1. In the Old Testament
2. In the New Testament
VI. MODERN INTERPRETATIONS OF JACOB
1. Personification of the Hebrew Nation
2. God and Demi-God
3. Character of Fiction
I. Name. 1. Form and Distribution: ya`aqobh (5 times ya`aqowbh); Iakob, is in form a verb in the Qal imperfect, 3rd masculine singular. Like some 50 other Hebrew names of this same form, it has no subject for the verb expressed. But there are a number of independent indications that Jacob belongs to that large class of names consisting of a verb with some Divine name or title (in this case 'El) as the subject, from which the common abbreviated form is derived by omitting the subject. (a) In Babylonian documents of the period of the Patriarchs, there occur such personal names as Ja-ku-bi, Ja-ku-ub-ilu (the former doubtless an abbreviation of the latter), and Aq-bu-u (compare Aq-bi-a-hu), according to Hilprecht a syncopated form for A-qu(?)-bu(-u), like Aq-bi-ili alongside of A-qa-bi-ili; all of which may be associated with the same root `aqabh, as appears in Jacob (see H. Ranke, Early Babylonian Personal Names, 1905, with annotations by Professor Hilprecht as editor, especially pp. 67, 113, 98 and 4). (b) In the list of places in Palestine conquered by the Pharaoh Thutmose III appears a certain J'qb'r, which in Egyptian characters represents the Semitic letters ya`aqobh-'el, and which therefore seems to show that in the earlier half of the 15th century BC (so Petrie, Breasted) there was a place (not a tribe; see W. M. Muller, Asien und Europa, 162 ff) in Central Palestine that bore a name in some way connected with "Jacob." Moreover, a Pharaoh of the Hyksos period bears a name that looks like ya`aqobh-'el (Spiegelberg, Orientalische Literaturzeitung, VII, 130). (c) In the Jewish tractate Pirqe Abhoth, iii.l, we read of a Jew named 'Aqabhyah, which is a name composed of the same verbal root as that in Jacob, together with the Divine name Yahu (i.e. Yahweh) in its common abbreviated form. It should be noted that the personal names `Aqqubh and Ya`aqobhah (accent on the penult) also occur in the Old Testament, the former borne by no less than 4 different persons; also that in the Palmyrene inscriptions we find a person named `ath`aqobh, a name in which this same verb `aqabh is preceded by the name of the god `Ate, just as in `Aqabhyah it is followed by the name Yahu.
2. Etymology and Associations: Such being the form and distribution of the name, it remains to inquire: What do we know of its etymology and what were the associations it conveyed to the Hebrew ear?
The verb in all its usages is capable of deduction, by simple association of ideas, from the noun "heel." "To heel" might mean: (a) "to take hold of by the heel" (so probably Hosea 12:3; compare Genesis 27:36); (b) "to follow with evil intent," "to supplant" or in general "to deceive" (so Genesis 27:36; Jeremiah 9:4, where the parallel, "go about with slanders," is interesting because the word so translated is akin to the noun "foot," as "supplant" is to "heel"); (c) "to follow with good intent," whether as a slave (compare our English "to heel," of a dog) for service, or as a guard for protection, hence, "to guard" (so in Ethiopic), "to keep guard over", and thus "to restrain" (so Job 37:4); (d) "to follow," "to succeed," "to take the place of another" (so Arabic, and the Hebrew noun 'eqebh, "consequence," "recompense," whether of reward or punishment).
Among these four significations, which most commends itself as the original intent in the use of this verb to form a proper name? The answer to this question depends upon the degree of strength with which the Divine name was felt to be the subject of the verb As Jacob-el, the simplest interpretation of the name is undoubtedly, as Baethgen urges (Beitrage zur sem. Religionsgeschichte, 158), "God rewardeth" ((d) above), like Nathanael, "God hath given," etc. But we have already seen that centuries before the time when Jacob is said to have been born, this name was shortened by dropping the Divine subject; and in this shortened form it would be more likely to call up in the minds of all Semites who used it, associations with the primary, physical notion of its root ((a) above). Hence, there is no ground to deny that even in the patriarchal period, this familiar personal name Jacob lay ready at hand--a name ready made, as it were--for this child, in view of the peculiar circumstances of its birth; we may say, indeed, one could not escape the use of it. (A parallel case, perhaps, is Genesis 38:28, 30, Zerah; compare Zerahiah.) The associations of this root in everyday use in Jacob's family to mean "to supplant" led to the fresh realization of its appropriateness to his character and conduct when he was grown ((b) above). This construction does not interfere with a connection between the patriarch Jacob and the "Jacob-els" referred to above (under 1, (b)), should that connection on other grounds appear probable. Such a longer form was perhaps for every "Jacob" an alternative form of his name, and under certain circumstances may have been used by or of even the patriarch Jacob.
II. Place in the Patriarchal Succession. 1. As the Son of Isaac and Rebekah: In the dynasty of the "heirs of the promise," Jacob takes his place, first, as the successor of Isaac. In Isaac's life the most significant single fact had been his marriage with Rebekah instead of with a woman of Canaan. Jacob therefore represents the first generation of those who are determinately separate from their environment. Abraham and his household were immigrants in Canaan; Jacob and Esau were natives of Canaan in the second generation, yet had not a drop of Canaanitish blood in their veins. Their birth was delayed till 20 years after the marriage of their parents. Rebekah's barrenness had certainly the same effect, and probably the same purpose, as that of Sarah: it drove Isaac to Divine aid, demanded of him as it had of Abraham that "faith and patience" through which they "inherited the promises" (Hebrews 6:12), and made the children of this pair also the evident gift of God's grace, so that Isaac was the better able "by faith" to "bless Jacob and Esau even concerning things to come" (Hebrews 11:20).
2. As the Brother of Esau: These twin brothers therefore share thus far the same relation to their parents and to what their parents transmit to them. But here the likeness ceases. "Being not yet born, neither having done anything good or bad, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth, it was said unto (Rebecca), The elder shall serve the younger" (Romans 9:11-12). In the Genesis-narrative, without any doctrinal assertions either adduced to explain it, or deduced from it, the fact is nevertheless made as clear as it is in Malachi or Romans, that Esau is rejected, and Jacob is chosen as a link in the chain of inheritance that receives and transmits the promise.
3. As Father of the Twelve: With Jacob the last person is reached who, for his own generation, thus sums up in a single individual "the seed" of promise. He becomes the father of 12 sons, who are the progenitors of the tribes of the "peculiar people." It is for this reason that this people bears his name, and not that of his father Isaac or that of his grandfather Abraham. The "children of Israel," the "house of Jacob," are the totality of the seed of the promise. The Edomites too are children of Isaac. Ishmaelites equally with Israelites boast of descent from Abraham. But the twelve tribes that called themselves "Israel" were all descendants of Jacob, and were the only descendants of Jacob on the agnatic principle of family-constitution.
III. Biography. The life of a wanderer (Deuteronomy 26:5 the Revised Version, margin) such as Jacob was, may often be best divided on the geographical principle. Jacob's career falls into the four distinct periods: that of his residence with Isaac in Canaan, that of his residence with Laban in Aram, that of his independent life in Canaan and that of his migration to Egypt.
1. With Isaac in Canaan: Jacob's birth was remarkable in respect of (a) its delay for 20 years as noted above, (b) that condition of his mother which led to the Divine oracle concerning his future greatness and supremacy, and (c) the unusual phenomenon that gave him his name: "he holds by the heel" (see above, I, 2). Unlike his twin brother, Jacob seems to have been free from any physical peculiarities; his smoothness (Genesis 27:11) is only predicated of him in contrast to Esau's hairiness. These brothers, as they developed, grew apart in tastes and habits. Jacob, like his father in his quiet manner of life and (for that reason perhaps) the companion and favorite of his mother, found early the opportunity to obtain Esau's sworn renunciation of his right of primogeniture, by taking advantage of his habits, his impulsiveness and his fundamental indifference to the higher things of the family, the things of the future (Genesis 25:32). It was not until long afterward that the companion scene to this first "supplanting" (Genesis 27:36) was enacted. Both sons meanwhile are to be thought of simply as members of Isaac's following, during all the period of his successive sojourns in Gerar, the Valley of Gerar and Beersheba (Genesis 26:1-35). Within this period, when the brothers were 40 years of age, occurred Esau's marriage with two Hittite women. Jacob, remembering his own mother's origin, bided his time to find the woman who should be the mother of his children. The question whether she should be brought to him, as Rebekah was to Isaac, or he should go to find her, was settled at last by a family feud that only his absence could heal. This feud was occasioned by the fraud that Jacob at Rebekah's behest practiced upon his father and brother, when these two were minded to nullify the clearly revealed purpose of the oracle (Genesis 25:23) and the sanctions of a solemn oath (Genesis 25:33). Isaac's partiality for Esau arose perhaps as much from Esau's resemblance to the active, impulsive nature of his mother, as from the sensual gratification afforded Isaac by the savory dishes his son's hunting supplied. At any rate, this partiality defeated itself because it overreached itself. The wife, who had learned to be eyes and ears for a husband's failing senses, detected the secret scheme, counterplotted with as much skill as unscrupulousness, and while she obtained the paternal blessing for her favorite son, fell nevertheless under the painful necessity of choosing between losing him through his brother's revenge or losing him by absence from home. She chose, of course, the latter alternative, and herself brought about Jacob's departure, by pleading to Isaac the necessity for obtaining a woman as Jacob's wife of a sort different from the Canaanitish women that Esau had married. Thus ends the first portion of Jacob's life.
2. To Aram and Back: It is no young man that sets out thus to escape a brother's vengeance, and perhaps to find a wife at length among his mother's kindred. It was long before this that Esau at the age of forty had married the Hittite women (compare Genesis 26:34 with Genesis 27:46). Yet to one who had hitherto spent his life subordinate to his father, indulged by his mother, in awe of a brother's physical superiority, and "dwelling in tents, a quiet (domestic) man" (Genesis 25:27), this journey of 500 or 600 miles, with no one to guide, counsel or defend, was as new an experience as if he had really been the stripling that he is sometimes represented to have been. All the most significant chapters in life awaited him: self-determination, love, marriage, fatherhood, domestic provision and administration, adjustment of his relations with men, and above all a personal and independent religious experience.
Of these things, all were to come to him in the 20 years of absence from Canaan, and the last was to come first; for the dream of Jacob at Beth-el was of course but the opening scene in the long drama of God's direct dealing with Jacob. Yet it was the determinative scene, for God in His latest and fullest manifestation to Jacob was just "the God of Beth-el" (Genesis 35:7; 48:3; 49:24).
With the arrival at Haran came love at once, though not for 7 years the consummation of that love. Its strength is naively indicated by the writer in two ways: impliedly in the sudden output of physical power at the well-side (Genesis 29:10), and expressly in the patient years of toil for Rachel's sake, which "seemed unto him but a few days for the love he had to her" (Genesis 29:20). Jacob is not primarily to be blamed for the polygamy that brought trouble into his home-life and sowed the seeds of division and jealousy in the nation of the future. Although much of Israel's history can be summed up in the rivalry of Leah and Rachel--Judah and Joseph--yet it was not Jacob's choice but Laban's fraud that introduced this cause of schism. At the end of his 7 years' labor Jacob received as wife not Rachel but Leah, on the belated plea that to give the younger daughter before the elder was not the custom of the country. This was the first of the "ten times" that Laban "changed the wages" of Jacob (Genesis 31:7, 41). Rachel became Jacob's wife 7 days after Leah, and for this second wife he "served 7 other years." During these 7 years were born most of the sons and daughters (Genesis 37:35) that formed the actual family, the nucleus of that large caravan that Jacob took back with him to Canaan. Dinah is the only daughter named; Genesis 30:21 is obviously in preparation for the story of Genesis 34:1-31 (see especially Genesis 34:31). Four sons of Leah were the oldest: Reuben, with the right of primogeniture, Simeon, Levi and Judah. Next came the 4 sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, the personal slaves of the two wives (compare ABRAHAM, iv, 2); the two pairs of sons were probably of about the same age (compare order in Genesis 49:1-33). Leah's 5th and 6th sons were separated by an interval of uncertain length from her older group. And Joseph, the youngest son born in Haran, was Rachel's first child, equally beloved by his mother, and by his father for her sake (33:2; compare 44:20), as well as because he was the youngest of the eleven (37:3).
Jacob's years of service for his wives were followed by 6 years of service rendered for a stipulated wage. Laban's cunning in limiting the amount of this wage in a variety of ways was matched by Jacob's cunning in devising means to overreach his uncle, so that the penniless wanderer of 20 years before becomes the wealthy proprietor of countless cattle and of the hosts of slaves necessary for their care (Genesis 32:10). At the same time the apology of Jacob for his conduct during this entire period of residence in Haran is spirited (Genesis 31:36-42); it is apparently unanswerable by Laban (Genesis 31:43); and it is confirmed, both by the evident concurrence of Leah and Rachel (Genesis 31:14-16), and by indications in the narrative that the justice (not merely the partiality) of God gave to each party his due recompense: to Jacob the rich returns of skillful, patient industry; to Laban rebuke and warning (Genesis 31:5-13, 24, 29, 42).
The manner of Jacob's departure from Haran was determined by the strained relations between his uncle and himself. His motive in going, however, is represented as being fundamentally the desire to terminate an absence from his father's country that had already grown too long (Genesis 31:30; compare Genesis 30:25)--a desire which in fact presented itself to him in the form of a revelation of God's own purpose and command (Genesis 31:3). Unhappily, his clear record was stained by the act of another than himself, who nevertheless, as a member of his family, entailed thus upon him the burden of responsibility. Rachel, like Laban her father, was devoted to the superstition that manifested itself in the keeping and consulting of teraphim, a custom which, whether more nearly akin to fetishism, totemism, or ancestor-worship, was felt to be incompatible with the worship of the one true God. (Note that the "teraphim" of Genesis 31:19, 34 f are the same as the "gods" of Genesis 31:30, 32 and, apparently, of Genesis 35:2, 4.) This theft furnished Laban with a pretext for pursuit. What he meant to do he probably knew but imperfectly himself. Coercion of some sort he would doubtless have brought to bear upon Jacob and his caravan, had he not recognized in a dream the God whom Jacob worshipped, and heard Him utter a word of warning against the use of violence. Laban failed to find his stolen gods, for his daughter was as crafty and ready-witted as he. The whole adventure ended in a formal reconciliation, with the usual sacrificial and memorial token (Genesis 31:43-55).
After Laban, Esau. One danger is no sooner escaped than a worse threatens. Yet between them lies the pledge of Divine presence and protection in the vision of God's host at Mahanaim: just a simple statement, with none of the fanciful detail that popular story-telling loves, but the sober record of a tradition to which the supernatural was matter of fact. Even the longer passage that preserves the occurrence at Peniel is conceived in the same spirit. What the revelation of the host of God had not sufficed to teach this faithless, anxious, scheming patriarch, that God sought to teach him in the night-struggle, with its ineffaceable physical memorial of a human impotence that can compass no more than to cling to Divine omnipotence (Genesis 32:22-32). The devices of crafty Jacob to disarm an offended and supposedly implacable brother proved as useless as that bootless wrestling of the night before; Esau's peculiar disposition was not of Jacob's making, but of God's, and to it alone Jacob owed his safety. The practical wisdom of Jacob dictated his insistence upon bringing to a speedy termination the proposed association with his changeable brother, amid the difficulties of a journey that could not be shared by such divergent social and racial elements as Esau's armed host and Jacob's caravan, without discontent on the one side and disaster on the other. The brothers part, not to meet again until they meet to bury their father at Hebron (Genesis 35:29).
3. In Canaan Again: Before Jacob's arrival in the South of Canaan where his father yet lived and where his own youth had been spent, he passed through a period of wandering in Central Palestine, somewhat similar to that narrated of his grandfather Abraham. To any such nomad, wandering slowly from Aram toward Egypt, a period of residence in the region of Mt. Ephraim was a natural chapter in his book of travels. Jacob's longer stops, recorded for us, were (1) at Succoth, East of the Jordan near Peniel, (2) at Shechem and (3) at Beth-el.
Nothing worthy of record occurred at Succoth, but the stay at Shechem was eventful. Genesis 34:1-31, which tells the story of Dinah's seduction and her brother's revenge, throws as much light upon the relations of Jacob and the Canaanites, as does chapter Genesis 14:1-24 or chapter Genesis 23:1-20 upon Abraham's relations, or chapter Genesis 26:1-35 upon Isaac's relations, with such settled inhabitants of the land. There is a strange blending of moral and immoral elements in Jacob and his family as portrayed in this contretemps. There is the persistent tradition of separateness from the Canaanites bequeathed from Abraham's day (chapter 24), together with a growing family consciousness and sense of superiority (34:7,14,31). And at the same time there is indifference to their unique moral station among the environing tribes, shown in Dinah's social relations with them (34:1), in the treachery and cruelty of Simeon and Levi (34:25-29), and in Jacob's greater concern for the security of his possessions than for the preservation of his good name (verse 30).
It was this concern for the safety of the family and its wealth that achieved the end which dread of social absorption would apparently never have achieved--the termination of a long residence where there was moral danger for all. For a second time Jacob had fairly to be driven to Beth-el. Safety from his foes was again a gift of God (Genesis 35:5), and in a renewal of the old forgotten ideals of consecration (Genesis 35:2-8), he and all his following move from the painful associations of Shechem to the hallowed associations of Beth-el. Here were renewed the various phases of all God's earlier communications to this patriarch and to his fathers before him. The new name of Israel, hitherto so ill deserved, is henceforth to find realization in his life; his fathers' God is to be his God; his seed is to inherit the land of promise, and is to be no mean tribe, but a group of peoples with kings to rule over them like the nations round about (Genesis 35:9-12). No wonder that Jacob here raises anew his monument of stone--emblem of the "Stone of Israel" (Genesis 49:24)--and stamps forever, by this public act, upon ancient Luz (Genesis 35:6), the name of Beth-el which he had privately given it years before (Genesis 28:19).
Losses and griefs characterized the family life of the patriarch at this period. The death of his mother's Syrian nurse at Beth-el (Genesis 35:8; compare Genesis 24:59) was followed by the death of his beloved wife Rachel at Ephrath (Genesis 35:19; 48:7) in bringing forth the youngest of his 12 sons, Benjamin. At about the same time the eldest of the 12, Reuben, forfeited the honor of his station in the family by an act that showed all too clearly the effect of recent association with Canaanites (Genesis 35:22). Finally, death claimed Jacob's aged father, whose latest years had been robbed of the companionship, not only of this son, but also of the son whom his partiality had all but made a fratricide; at Isaac's grave in Hebron the ill-matched brothers met once more, thenceforth to go their separate ways, both in their personal careers and in their descendants' history (Genesis 35:29).
Jacob now is by right of patriarchal custom head of all the family. He too takes up his residence at Hebron (Genesis 37:14), and the story of the family fortunes is now pursued under the new title of "the generations of Jacob" (Genesis 37:2). True, most of this story revolves about Joseph, the youngest of the family save Benjamin; yet the occurrence of passages like Genesis 38:1-30, devoted exclusively to Judah's affairs, or Genesis 46:8-27, the enumeration of Jacob's entire family through its secondary ramifications, or Genesis 49:1-33, the blessing of Jacob on all his sons--all these prove that Jacob, not Joseph, is the true center of the narrative until his death. As long as he lives he is the real head of his house, and not merely a superannuated veteran like Isaac. Not only Joseph, the boy of 17 (37:2), but also the self-willed elder sons, even a score of years later, come and go at his bidding (Genesis 42:1-38 through Genesis 45:1-28). Joseph's dearest thought, as it is his first thought, is for his aged father (Genesis 43:7, 27; 44:19; and especially Genesis 45:3, 9, 13, 23, and Genesis 46:29).
4. Last Years in Egypt: It is this devotion of Joseph that results in Jacob's migration to Egypt. What honors there Joseph can show his father he shows him: he presents him to Pharaoh, who for Joseph's sake receives him with dignity, and assigns him a home and sustenance for himself and all his people as honored guests of the land of Egypt (Genesis 47:7-12). Yet in Beersheba, while en route to Egypt, Jacob had obtained a greater honor than this reception by Pharaoh. He had found there, as ready to respond to his sacrifices as ever to those of his fathers, the God of his father Isaac, and had received the gracious assurance of Divine guidance in this momentous journey, fraught with so vast a significance for the future nation and the world (Genesis 46:1-4): God Himself would go with him into Egypt and give him, not merely the gratification of once more embracing his long-lost son, but the fulfillment of the covenant-promise (Genesis 15:13-16) that he and his were not turning their backs upon Canaan forever. Though 130 years of age when he stood before Pharaoh, Jacob felt his days to have been "few" as well as "evil," in comparison with those of his fathers (Genesis 47:9). And in fact he had yet 17 years to live in Goshen (Genesis 47:28).
These last days are passed over without record, save of the growth and prosperity of the family. But at their close came the impartation of the ancestral blessings, with the last will of the dying patriarch. After adopting Joseph's sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, as his own, Jacob blesses them, preferring the younger to the elder as he himself had once been preferred to Esau, and assigns to Joseph the "double portion" of the firstborn--that "preeminence" which he denies to Reuben (Genesis 48:22; 49:4). In poetry that combines with the warm emotion and glowing imagery of its style and the unsurpassed elevation of its diction, a lyrical fervor of religious sentiment which demands for its author a personality that had passed through just such course of tuition as Jacob had experienced, the last words of Jacob, in Genesis 49:1-33, mark a turning-point in the history of the people of God. This is a translation of biography into prophecy. On the assumption that it is genuine, we may confidently aver that it was simply unforgetable by those who heard it. Its auditors were its theme. Their descendants were its fulfillment. Neither the one class nor the other could ever let it pass out of memory.
It was "by faith," we are well reminded, that Jacob "blessed" and "worshipped" "when he was dying" (Hebrews 11:21). For he held to the promises of God, and even in the hour of dissolution looked for the fulfillment of the covenant, according to which Canaan should belong to him and to his seed after him. He therefore set Joseph an example, by "giving commandment concerning his bones," that they might rest in the burial-place of Abraham and Isaac near Hebron. To the accomplishment of this mission Joseph and all his brethren addressed themselves after their father's decease and the 70 days of official mourning. Followed by a "very great company" of the notables of Egypt, including royal officials and representatives of the royal family, this Hebrew tribe carried up to sepulture in the land of promise the embalmed body of the patriarch from whom henceforth they were to take their tribal name, lamented him according to custom for 7 days, and then returned to their temporary home in Egypt, till their children should at length be "called" thence to become God's son" (Hosea 11:1) and inherit His promises to their father Jacob.
IV. Character and Beliefs. In the course of this account of Jacob's career the inward as well as the outward fortunes of the man have somewhat appeared. Yet a more comprehensive view of the kind of man he was will not be superfluous at this point. With what disposition was he endowed--the natural nucleus for acquired characteristics and habits? Through what stages did he pass in the development of his beliefs and his character? In particular, what attitude did he maintain toward the most significant thing in his life, the promise of God to his house? And lastly, what resemblances may be traced in Israel the man to Israel the nation, of such sort that the one may be regarded as "typical" of the other? These matters deserve more than a passing notice.
1. Natural Qualities: From his father, Jacob inherited that domesticity and affectionate attachment to his home circle which appears in his life from beginning to end. He inherited shrewdness, initiative and resourcefulness from Rebekah--qualities which she shared apparently with her brother Laban and all his family. The conspicuous ethical faults of Abraham and Isaac alike are want of candor and want of courage. It is not surprising, therefore, to find the same failings in Jacob. Deceit and cowardice are visible again and again in the impartial record of his life. Both spring from unbelief. They belong to the natural man. God's transformation of this man was wrought by faith--by awakening and nourishing in him a simple trust in the truth and power of the Divine word. For Jacob was not at any time in his career indifferent to the things of the spirit, the things unseen and belonging to the future. Unlike Esau, he was not callous to the touch of God. Whether through inheritance, or as a fruit of early teaching, he had as the inestimable treasure, the true capital of his spiritual career, a firm conviction of the value of what God had promised, and a supreme ambition to obtain it for himself and his children. But against the Divine plan for the attainment of this goal by faith, there worked in Jacob constantly his natural qualities, the non-moral as well as the immoral qualities, that urged him to save himself and his fortunes by "works"--by sagacity, cunning, compromise, pertinacity--anything and everything that would anticipate God's accomplishing His purpose in His own time and His own way. In short, "the end justifies the means" is the program that, more than all others, finds illustration and rebuke in the character of Jacob.
2. Stages of Development: Starting with such a combination of natural endowments, social, practical, ethical, Jacob passed through a course of Divine tuition, which, by building upon some of them, repressing others and transfiguring the remainder, issued in the triumph of grace over nature, in the transformation of a Jacob into an Israel. This tuition has been well analyzed by a recent writer (Thomas, Genesis, III, 204 f) into the school of sorrow, the school of providence and the school of grace. Under the head of sorrow, it is not difficult to recall many experiences in the career just reviewed: long exile; disappointment; sinful passions of greed, anger, lust and envy in others, of which Jacob was the victim; perplexity; and, again and again, bereavement of those he held most dear.
But besides these sorrows, God's providence dealt with him in ways most remarkable, and perhaps more instructive for the study of such Divine dealings than in the case of any other character in the Old Testament. By alternate giving and withholding, by danger here and deliverance there, by good and evil report, now by failure of "best laid schemes" and now by success with seemingly inadequate means, God developed in him the habit--not native to him as it seems to have been in part to Abraham and to Joseph,--of reliance on Divine power and guidance, of accepting the Divine will, of realizing the Divine nearness and faithfulness.
And lastly, there are those admirably graded lessons in the grace of God, that were imparted in the series of Divine appearances to the patriarch, at Beth-el, at Haran, at Peniel, at Beth-el again and at Beersheba. For if the substance of these Divine revelations be compared, it will be found that all are alike in the assurance (1) that God is with him to bless; (2) that the changes of his life are ordained of God and are for his ultimate good; and (3) that he is the heir of the ancestral promises.
It will further be found that they may be arranged in a variety of ways, according as one or another of the revelations be viewed as the climax. Thus (1), agreeing with the chronological order, the appearance at Beersheba may well be regarded as the climax of them all. Abraham had gone to Egypt to escape a famine (Genesis 12:10), but he went without revelation, and returned with bitter experience of his error. Isaac essayed to go to Egypt for the same cause (Genesis 26:1 f), and was prevented by revelation. Jacob now goes to Egypt, but he goes with the express approval of the God of his fathers, and with the explicit assurance that the same Divine providence which ordained this removal (Genesis 50:20) will see that it does not frustrate any of the promises of God. This was a crisis in the history of the "Kingdom of God" on a paragraph with events like the Exodus, the Exile, or the Return.
(2) In its significance for his personal history, the first of these revelations was unique. Beth-el witnessed Jacob's choice, evidently for the first time, of his fathers' God as his God. And though we find Jacob later tolerating idolatry in his household and compromising his religious testimony by sin, we never find a hint of his own unfaithfulness to this first and final religious choice. This is further confirmed by the attachment of his later revelations to this primary one, as though this lent them the significance of continuity, and made possible the unity of his religious experience. So at Haran it was the "God of Beth-el" who directed his return (Genesis 31:13); at Shechem it was to Beth-el that he was directed, in order that he might at length fulfill his Beth-el vow, by erecting there an altar to the God who had there appeared to him (Genesis 35:1); and at Beth-el finally the promise of former years was renewed to him who was henceforth to be Israel (Genesis 35:9-15).
(3) Though thus punctuated with the supernatural, the only striking bit of the marvelous in all this biography is the night scene at Peniel. And this too may justly be claimed as a climax in Jacob's development. There he first received his new name, and though he deserved it as little in many scenes thereafter as he had deserved it before, yet the same could be said of many a man who has "seen the face of God," but has yet to grasp, like Jacob, the lesson that the way to overcome is through the helpless but clinging importunity of faith.
(4) Rather than in any of the other scenes, however, it was at Beth-el the second time that the patriarch reached the topmost rung on the ladder of development. As already noticed, the substance of all the earlier revelations is here renewed and combined. It is no wonder that after this solemn theophany we find Jacob, like Moses later, `enduring as seeing him who is invisible' (Hebrews 11:27), and "waiting for the salvation" (Genesis 49:18) of a God `who is not ashamed of him, to be called his God' (Hebrews 11:16), but is repeatedly called "the God of Jacob."
Finally, such a comparison of these revelations to Jacob reveals a variety in the way God makes Himself known. In the first revelation, naturally, the effort is made chiefly to impress upon its recipient the identity of the revealing God with the God of his fathers. And it has been remarked already that in the later revelations the same care is taken to identify the Revealer with the One who gave that first revelation, or else to identify Him, as then, with the God of the fathers. Yet, in addition to this, there is a richness and suitability in the Divine names revealed, which a mechanical theory of literary sources not only leaves unexplained but fails even to recognize. At Beth-el first it is Yahweh, the personal name of this God, the God of his fathers, who enters into a new personal relation with Jacob; now, of all times in his career, he needs to know God by the differential mark that distinguishes Him absolutely from other gods, that there may never be confusion as to Yahweh's identity. But this matter is settled for Jacob once for all. Thenceforth one of the ordinary terms for deity, with or without an attributive adjunct, serves to lift the patriarch's soul into communication with his Divine Interlocutor. The most general word of all in the Semitic tongues for deity is 'El, the word used in the revelations to Jacob at Haran in Gen (31:13), at Shechem (35:1), at Beth-el the second time (35:11) and at Beersheba (46:3). But it is never used alone. Like Allah in the Arabic language (= the God), so 'El with the definite article before it serves to designate in Hebrew a particular divinity, not deity in general. Or else 'El without the article is made definite by some genitive phrase that supplies the necessary identification: so in Jacob's case, El-beth-el (35:7; compare 31:13) or El-Elohe-Israel (33:20). Or, lastly, there is added to 'El some determining title, with the force of an adjective, as Shaddai (translated "Almighty") in 35:11 (compare 43:3). In clear distinction from this word, 'El, with its archaic or poetic flavor, is the common Hebrew word for God, 'Elohim. But while 'Elohim is used regularly by the narrator of the Jacob-stories in speaking, or in letting his actors speak, of Jacob's God, who to the monotheistic writer is of course the God and his own God, he never puts this word thus absolutely into the mouth of the revealing Deity. Jacob can say, when he awakes from his dream, "This is the house of 'Elohim," but God says to him in the dream, "I am the God ('Elohim) of thy father" (28:17,13). At Mahanaim Jacob says, "This is the host of 'Elohim" (32:2), but at Beersheba God says to Jacob, "I am .... the God ('Elohim) of thy father" (46:3). Such are the distinctions maintained in the use of these words, all of them used of the same God, yet chosen in each case to fit the circumstances of speaker, hearer and situation.
The only passage in the story of Jacob that might appear to be an exception does in fact but prove the rule. At Peniel the angel of God explains the new name of Israel by saying, "Thou hast striven with God ('Elohim) and with men, and hast prevailed." Here the contrast with "men" proves that 'Elohim without the article is just the right expression, even on the lips of Deity: neither Deity nor humanity has prevailed against Jacob (Genesis 32:28).
Throughout the entire story of Jacob, therefore, his relations with Yahweh his God, after they were once established (Genesis 28:13-16), are narrated in terms that emphasize the Divinity of Him who had thus entered into covenant-relationship with him: His Divinity--that is to say, those attributes in which His Divinity manifested itself in His dealings with Jacob.
3. Attitude toward the Promise: From the foregoing, two things appear with respect to Jacob's attitude toward the promise of God. First, with all his faults and vices he yet was spiritually sensitive; he responded to the approaches of his God concerning things of a value wholly spiritual--future good, moral and spiritual blessings. And second, he was capable of progress in these matters; that is, his reaction to the Divine tuition would appear, if charted, as a series of elevations, separated one from another, to be sure, by low levels and deep declines, yet each one higher than the last, and all taken collectively lifting the whole average up and up, till in the end faith has triumphed over sight, the future over present good, a yet unpossessed but Divinely promised Canaan over all the comfort and honors of Egypt, and the aged patriarch lives only to "wait for Yahweh's salvation" (Genesis 49:18).
The contrast of Jacob with Esau furnishes perhaps the best means of grasping the significance of these two facts for an estimate of Jacob's attitude toward the promise. For in the first place, Esau, who possessed so much that Jacob lacked--directness, manliness, a sort of bonhomie, that made him superficially more attractive than his brother--Esau shows nowhere any real "sense" for things spiritual. The author of Hebrews has caught the man in the flash of a single word, "profane" bebelos)--of course, in the older, broader, etymological meaning of the term. Esau's desires dwelt in the world of the non-sacred; they did not aspire to that world of nearness to God, where one must `put off the shoes from off his feet, because the place whereon he stands is holy ground.' And in the second place, there is no sign of growth in Esau. What we see him in his father's encampment, that we see him to the end--so far as appears from the laconic story. With the virtues as well as the vices of the man who lives for the present--forgiving when strong enough to revenge, condescending when flattered, proud of power and independent of parental control or family tradition--Esau is as impartially depicted by the sacred historian as if the writer had been an Edomite instead of an Israelite: the sketch is evidently true to life, both from its objectivity and from its coherence.
Now what Esau was, Jacob was not. His fault in connection with the promises of God, the family tradition, the ancestral blessing, lay not in despising them, but in seeking them in immoral ways. Good was his aim; but he was ready to "do evil that good might come." He was always tempted to be his own Providence, and God's training was clearly directed, both by providential leadings and by gracious disclosures, to this corresponding purpose: to enlighten Jacob as to the nature of the promise; to assure him that it was his by grace; to awaken personal faith in its Divine Giver; and to supplement his "faith" by that "patience" without which none can "inherit the promises." The faith that accepts was to issue at length in the faith that waits.
4. How Far a "Type" of Israel: A nation was to take its name from Jacob-Israel, and there are some passages of Scripture where it is uncertain whether the name designates the nation or its ancestor. In their respective relations to God and to the world of men and nations, there is a true sense in which the father was a "type" of the children. It is probably only a play of fancy that would discover a parallel in their respective careers, between the successive stages of life in the father's home (Canaan), life in exile, a return, and a second exile. But it is not fanciful to note the resemblance between Jacob's character and that of his descendants. With few exceptions the qualities mentioned above (IV, 2) will be found, mutatis mutandis, to be equally applicable to the nation of Israel. And even that curriculum in which the patriarch learned of God may be viewed as a type of the school in which the Hebrew people--not all of them, nor even the mass, but the "remnant" who approximated to the ideal Israel of the prophets, the "servant of Yahweh"--were taught the lessons of faith and patience, of renunciation and consecration, that appear with growing clearness on the pages of Isaiah, of Habakkuk, of Jeremiah, of Malachi. This is apparently Hosea's point of view in Hosea 12:2-4, 12.
A word of caution, however, is needed at this point. There are limits to this equation. Even critics who regard Jacob under his title of Israel as merely the eponymous hero, created by legend to be the forefather of the nation (compare below,VI , 1), must confess that Jacob as Jacob is no such neutral creature, dressed only in the colors of his children's racial qualities. There is a large residuum in Jacob, after all parallelisms have been traced, that refuses to fit the lines of Hebrew national character or history, and his typical relation in fact lies chiefly in the direction of the covenant-inheritance, after the fashion of Malachi's allusion (Malachi 1:2), interpreted by Paul (Romans 9:10-13).
V. References Outside of Genesis. Under his two names this personage Jacob or Israel is more frequently mentioned than any other in the whole of sacred history. Yet in the vast majority of cases the nation descended from him is intended by the name, which in the form of "Jacob" or "Israel" contains not the slightest, and in the form "children of Israel," "house of Jacob" and the like, only the slightest, if any, allusion to the patriarch himself. But there still remain many passages in both Testaments where the Jacob or Israel of Gen is clearly alluded to.
1. In the Old Testament: There is a considerable group of passages that refer to him as the last of the patriarchal triumvirate--Abraham, Isaac and Jacob: so particularly of Yahweh as the "God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob," and of the covenant-oath as having been "sworn unto Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." And naturally the nation that is known by his name is frequently called by some phrase, equivalent to the formal bene yisra'el, yet through its unusualness lending more significance to the idea of their derivation from him: so "seed of Jacob" and (frequently) "house of Jacob (Israel)." But there are a few Old Testament passages outside of Gen in which so much of Jacob's history has been preserved, that from these allusions alone a fair notion might have been gathered concerning the Hebrews' tradition of their common ancestor, even if all the story in Gen had been lost. These passages are: Joshua 24:3-4, 32; Psalms 105:10-23; Hosea 12:2-4, 12; Malachi 1:2 f. Besides these, there are other allusions, scattered a word here and a sentence there, from all of which together we learn as follows. God gave to Isaac twin sons, Esau and Jacob, the latter at birth taking the former by the heel. God elected Jacob to be the recipient of the covenant-promise made to his father Isaac and to his grandfather Abraham; and this choice involved the rejection of Esau. Yahweh appeared to Jacob at Beth-el and told him the land of Canaan was to be his and his seed's after him forever. Circumstances not explained caused Jacob to flee from his home in Canaan to Aram, where he served as a shepherd to obtain a wife as his wage. He became the father of 12 sons. He strove with the angel of God and prevailed amid earnest supplication. His name was by Yahweh Himself changed to Israel. Under Divine protection as God's chosen one and representative, his life was that of a wanderer from place to place; once only he bought a piece of land, for a hundred pieces, near Shechem, from Hamor, the father of Shechem. A famine drove him down to Egypt, but not without providential preparation for the reception there of himself and all his family, through the remarkable fortunes of his son Joseph, sold, exiled, imprisoned, delivered, and exalted to a position where he could dispose of rulers and nations. In Egypt the children of Jacob multiplied rapidly, and at his death he made the sons of Joseph the heirs of the only portion of Canaanitish soil that he had acquired.
From this it appears, first, that not much that is essential in the biography of Jacob would have perished though Genesis had been lost; and, second, that the sum of the incidental allusions outside Gen resemble the total impression of the narratives in Genesis--in other words, that the Biblical tradition is self-consistent. And it runs back to a date (Hosea, 8th century BC) little farther removed from the events recounted than the length of time that separates our own day from the Norman conquest, or the Fall of Constantinople from the Hegira, or Jesus Christ from Solomon.
2. In the New Testament: In the New Testament also there are, besides the references to Jacob simply as the father of his nation, several passages that recall events in his life or traits of his character. These are: John 4:5-6, 12; Acts 7:12, 14-16; Romans 9:10-13; Hebrews 11:9, 20 f. In the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman it appears that the Samaritans cherished the association of Jacob with the ground he bought near Shechem, and with the well he dug while sojourning there with his sons and his flocks; they prided themselves on its transmission to them through Joseph, not to the hated Jews through Judah, and magnified themselves in magnifying Jacob's "greatness" and calling him "our father." Stephen's speech, as Luke reports it, includes in its rapid historical flight a hint or two about Jacob beyond the bare fact of his place in the tribal genealogy. Moved by the famine prevailing in Egypt and Canaan, Jacob twice dispatches his sons to buy grain in Egypt, and the second time Joseph is made known to his brothers, and his race becomes manifest to Pharaoh. At Joseph's behest, Jacob and all the family remove to Egypt. There all remain until their death, but the "fathers" (Joseph and his brethren; compare Jerome, Epistola cviii, edition Migne) are buried in the family possession near Shechem. (Here emerges one of those divergences from the Old Testament tradition that are a notable feature of Stephen's speech, and that have furnished occasion for much speculation upon their origin, value and implications. See commentaries on Acts.) Paul's interest in Jacob appears in connection with his discussion of Divine election, where he calls attention to the oracle of Genesis 25:23 and to the use already made of the passage by Malachi (Genesis 1:2 f), and reminds his readers that this choice of Jacob and rejection of Esau was made by God even before these twin sons of Isaac and Rebecca were born. Finally, the author of He, when charting the heroes of faith, focuses his glass for a moment upon Jacob: first, as sharing with Abraham and Isaac the promise of God and the life of unworldly, expectant faith (Hebrews 11:9); and second, as receiving from Isaac, and at his death transmitting to his grandsons, blessings that had value only for one who worships and believes a God with power over "things to come" (Hebrews 11:20 f).
VI. Modern Interpretations of Jacob. For those who see in the patriarchal narratives anything--myth, legend, saga--rather than true biography, there is, of course, a different interpretation of the characters and events portrayed in the familiar Genesis-stories, and a different value placed upon the stories themselves.
Apart from the allegorizing treatment accorded them by Philo the Jew and early Christian writers of like mind (see specimen in ABRAHAM), these views belong to modern criticism. To critics who make Hebrew history begin with the settlement of Canaan by the nomad Israelites fresh from the desert, even the Mosaic age and the Egyptian residence are totally unhistorical--much more so these tales of a pre-Mosaic patriarchal age. Yet even those writers who admit the broad outlines of a residence of the tribes in Egypt, an exodus of some sort, and a founder of the nation named Moses, are for the most part skeptical of this cycle of family figures and fortunes in a remote age, with its nomads wandering between Mesopotamia and Canaan. and to and fro in Canaan, its circumstantial acquaintance with the names and relationships of each individual through those 4 long patriarchal generations, and its obvious foreshadowing of much that the later tribes were on this same soil to act out centuries later. This, we are told, is not history. Whatever else it may be, it is not a reliable account of such memorable events as compel their own immortality in the memories and through the written records of mankind.
1. Personification of the Hebrew Nation: The commonest view held, collectively of the entire narrative, specifically of Jacob, is that which sees here the precipitate from a pure solution of the national character and fortunes. Wellhausen, e.g., says (Prolegomena(6), 316): "The material here is not mythical, but national; therefore clearer (namely, than in Genesis 1:1-31 through Genesis 11:1-32) and in a certain sense historical. To be sure there is no historical knowledge to be gained here about the patriarchs, but only about the time in which the stories concerning them arose in the people of Israel; this later time with its inward and outward characteristics is here unintentionally projected into the gray antiquity and mirrored therein like a glorified phantasm .... (p. 318). Jacob is more realistically drawn than the other two (Abraham and Isaac)." In section IV, 4, above, we observed that, while many of Jacob's personal qualities prefigured the qualities of the later Hebrew people, there were some others that did not at all fit this equation. Wellhausen himself remarks this, in regard to the contrast between warlike Israel and the peaceful ancestors they invented for themselves. In his attempt to account for this contrast, he can only urge that a nation condemned to eternal wars would naturally look back upon, as well as forward to, a golden age of peace. (An alternative explanation he states, only to reject.) He fails to observe that this plea does not in the least alter the fact--his plea is indeed but a restatement of the fact--that this phenomenon is absolutely at variance with his hypothesis of how these stories of Jacob and the rest came to be what they are (see Meyer, Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstamme, 250 ff).
2. God and Demi-God: This general view, which when carried to its extreme implications (as by Steuernagel, Die Einwanderung der israelitischen Stamme in Kanaan, 1901) comes perilously near the reductio ad absurdum that is its own refutation, has been rejected by that whole group of critics, who, following Noldeke, see in Jacob, as in so many others of the patriarchs, an original deity (myth), first abased to the grade of a hero (heroic legend), and at last degraded to the level of a clown (tales of jest or marvel). Adherents of this trend of interpretation differ widely among themselves as to details, but Jacob is generally regarded as a Canaanitish deity, whose local shrine was at Shechem, Beth-el or Peniel, and whose cult was taken over by the Hebrews, their own object of worship being substituted for him, and the outstanding features of his personality being made over into a hero that Israel appropriated as their national ancestor, even to the extent of giving him the secondary name of Israel. Stade attempted a combination of this "mythical" view with the "national" view in the interest of his theory of primitive animism, by making the patriarch a "mythological figure revered as an eponymous hero." This theory, in any form, requires the assumption, which there is nothing to support, that Jacob (or Jacob-el) is a name originally belonging to a deity and framed to fit his supposed character. At first, then, it meant "'El deceives" or "'El recompenses" (so B. Luther, ZATW, 1901, 60 ff; compare also the same writer, as well as Meyer himself, in the latter's Israeliten, etc., 109 ff, 271 ff). Meyer proposes the monstrosity of a nominal sentence with the translation, " `He deceives' is 'El." Thus, the first element of the name Jacob came to be felt as the name itself (= "Jacob is God"), and it was launched upon its course of evolution into the human personage that Genesis knows. It suffices to say with regard to all this, that in addition to its being inherently improbable--not to say, unproved--it goes directly in the face of the archaeological evidence adduced under I, 1, above. The simple fact that Jacob(-el) was a personal name for men, of everyday occurrence in the 2nd-3rd millenniums BC, is quite enough to overthrow this whole hypothesis; for, as Luther himself remarks (op. cit., 65), the above evolution of the name is essential to the "mythical" theory: "when this alteration took place cannot be told; yet it has to be postulated, since otherwise it remains inexplicable, how personal names could arise out of these formations (like Jacob-el) by rejection of the 'El."
3. Character of Fiction: The inadequacy of the two theories hitherto advanced to account for the facts of Genesis being thus evident, Gunkel and others have explicitly rejected them and enunciated a third theory, which may be called the saga-theory. According to Gunkel, "to understand the persons of Genesis as nations is by no means a general key to their interpretation"; and, "against the whole assumption that the principal patriarchal figures are originally gods is this fact first and foremost, that the names Jacob and Abraham are shown by the Babylonian to be customary personal names, and furthermore that the tales about them cannot be understood at all as echoes of original myths." In place of these discredited views Gunkel (compare also Gressmann,ZATW , 1910, 1 ff) makes of Jacob simply a character in the stories (marvelous, humorous, pathetic and the like) current in ancient Israel, especially on the lips of the professional story-teller. Whereas much of the material in these stories came to the Hebrews from the Babylonians, Canaanites or Egyptians, Jacob himself is declared to have belonged to the old Hebrew saga, with its flavor of nomadic desert life and sheep-raising. "The original Jacob may be the sly shepherd Jacob, who fools the hunter Esau; another tale, of the deceit of a father-in-law by his son-in-law, was added to it--the more naturally because both are shepherds; a third cycle, about an old man that loves his youngest son, was transferred to this figure, and that youngest son received the name of Joseph at a time when Jacob was identified with Israel's assumed ancestor `Israel.' Thus our result is, that the most important patriarchs are creations of fiction" (Schriften des Altes Testament, 5te Lieferung, 42).
It is so obvious that this new attitude toward the patriarchs lends itself to a more sympathetic criticism of the narrative of Genesis, that critics who adopt it are at pains to deny any intention on their part of rehabilitating Jacob and others as historical figures. "Saga," we are told, "is not capable of preserving through so many centuries a picture" of the real character or deeds of its heroes, even supposing that persons bearing these names once actually lived; and we are reminded of the contrast between the Etzel of saga and the Attila of history, the Dietrich of saga and the Theodoric of history. But as against this we need to note, first, that the long and involved course of development through which, ex hypothesi, these stories have passed before reaching their final stage (the Jahwist document (Jahwist), 9th century BC; Gunkel, op. cit., 8, 46) involves a very high antiquity for the earlier stages, and thus reduces to a narrow strip of time those "so many centuries" that are supposed to separate the actual Jacob from the Jacob of saga (compare ABRAHAM, vii, 4); and second, that the presuppositions as to the origin, nature and value of saga with which this school of criticism operates are, for the most part, only an elaborate statement of the undisputed major premise in a syllogism, of which the minor premise is: the Genesis-stories are saga. Against this last proposition, however, there lie many weighty considerations, that are by no means counterbalanced by those resemblances of a general sort which any student of comparative literature can easily discern (see also Baethgen, op. cit., 158).
James Oscar Boyd
Jacob (2)
Jacob (2) - (ya`aqobh; Iakob):
(1) The patriarch (see preceding article).
(2) The father of Joseph the husband of Mary (Matthew 1:15-16).
(3) Patronymic denoting the Israelites (Isaiah 10:21; 14:1; Jeremiah 10:16).
Jacob, Testament of
Jacob, Testament of - See APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE.
Jacob's Well
Jacob's Well - (pege tou Iakob):
1. Position of Well: In John 4:3 ff we read that our Lord "left Judea, and departed again into Galilee. And he must needs pass through Samaria. So he cometh to a city of Samaria, called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph: and Jacob's well was there." When Jacob came to Shechem on his return from Paddanaram he encamped "before," i.e. East of the city, and bought the land on which he had spread his tent (Genesis 33:18 f). This is doubtless the "portion" (Hebrew shekhem) spoken of in Genesis 48:22; although there it is said to have been taken with sword and bow from the Amorites. Where the pass of Shechem opens to the East, near the northern edge of the valley, lies the traditional tomb of Joseph. On the other side of the vale, close to the base of Gerizim, is the well universally known as Bir Ya`qub, "the well of Jacob." The position meets perfectly the requirements of the narrative. The main road from the South splits a little to the East, one arm leading westward through the pass, the other going more directly to the North. It is probable that these paths follow pretty closely the ancient tracks; and both would be frequented in Jesus' day. Which of them He took we cannot tell; but, in any case, this well lay in the fork between them, and could be approached with equal ease from either.
See SYCHAR.
2. Why Dug: In the chapter quoted, it is said that Jacob dug the well (Genesis 48:12). The Old Testament says nothing of this. With the copious springs at `Ain `Askar and BalaTa, one might ask why a well should have been dug here at all. We must remember that in the East, very strict laws have always governed the use of water, especially when there were large herds to be considered. The purchase of land here may not have secured for Jacob such supplies as he required. There was danger of strife between rival herdsmen. The patriarch, therefore, may have dug the well in the interests of peace, and also to preserve his own independence.
3. Consensus of Tradition: Jew, Samaritan, Moslem and Christian agree in associating this well with the patriarch Jacob. This creates a strong presumption in favor of the tradition: and there is no good reason to doubt its truth. Standing at the brink of the well, over-shadowed by the giant bulk of Gerizim, one feels how naturally it would be spoken of as "this mountain."
4. Description: For long the well was unprotected, opening among the ruins of a vaulted chamber some feet below the surface of the ground. Major Anderson describes it (Recovery of Jerusalem, 465) as having "a narrow opening, just wide enough to allow the body of a man to pass through with arms uplifted, and this narrow neck, which is about 4 ft. long, opens into the well itself, which is cylindrically shaped, and about 7 ft. 6 inches in diameter. The mouth and upper part of the well are built of masonry, and the well appears to have been sunk through a mixture of alluvial soil and limestone fragments, till a compact bed of mountain limestone was reached, having horizontal strata which could be easily worked; and the interior of the well presents the appearance of having been lined throughout with rough masonry." The depth was doubtless much greater in ancient times; but much rubbish has fallen into it, and now it is not more than 75 ft. deep. It is fed by no spring, nor is the water conducted to it along the surface, as to a cistern. Its supplies depend entirely upon rainfall and percolation. Possibly, therefore, the water may never have approached the brim. The woman says "the well is deep." Pege, "spring," does not, therefore, strictly apply to it, but rather "tank" or "reservoir," phrear, the word actually used in verses 11 f. The modern inhabitants of Nablus highly esteem the "light" water of the well as compared with the "heavy" or "hard" water of the neighboring springs. It usually lasts till about the end of May; then the well is dry till the return of the rain. Its contents, therefore, differ from the "living" water of the perennial spring.
From the narratives of the pilgrims we learn that at different times churches have been built over the well. The Moslems probably demolished the last of them after the overthrow of the Crusaders in 1187. A description of the ruins with drawings, as they were 30 years ago, is given in PEF, II, 174, etc. A stone found in 1881 may have been the original cover of the well. It measures 3 ft. 9 inches X 2 ft. 7 inches X 1 ft. 6 in. The aperture in the center is 13 in. in diameter; and in its sides are grooves worn by the ropes used in drawing up the water (PEFS, 1881, 212 ff).
5. Present Condition: Some years ago the plot of ground containing the well was purchased by the authorities of the Greek church, and it has been surrounded by a wall. A chapel has been built over the well, and a large church building has also been erected beside it.
W. Ewing
Jacubus
Jacubus - ja-ku'-bus (Iakoubos; Codex Vaticanus reads Iarsouboos): In 1 Esdras 9:48 = "Akkub" in Nehemiah 8:7, a Levite who helped in the exposition of the law.
Jada
Jada - ja'-da (yadha`, "the knowing one"): Son of Onam and grandson of Jerahmeel by his wife Atarah (1 Chronicles 2:26, 28, 32).
Jadau
Jadau - ja'-do, ja-da'-u (yiddo, Kethibh; yadday, Qere the King James Version; but the Revised Version (British and American) IDDO): In Ezra 10:43, one of those who had married foreign wives. the Revised Version margin has "Jaddai" (= "Edos," 1 Esdras 9:35).
See IDDO.
Jaddai
Jaddai - jad'-i, jad'-a-i.
Jaddua
Jaddua - jad'-u-a, ja-du'-a (yaddua`, "known"):
(1) One of the "chiefs of the people" who with Nehemiah sealed the covenant, thus signifying their voluntary acceptance of the law and their solemn promise to submit to its yoke (Nehemiah 10:21 (Hebrews 22)).
(2) Son of Jonathan or Johanan, and great-grandson of Eliashib, the high priest in Nehemiah's time (Nehemiah 12:11, 22). He is the last of the high priests mentioned in the Old Testament, and held office during the reign of Darius the Persian, i.e. Darius III Codomannus, the last king of Persia (336-332 BC), who was overthrown by Alexander the Great. It is doubtless to him that Josephus refers in his romantic account of Alexander's entrance into Jerusalem (Ant., XI, viii, 4 f; vii, 2; viii, 7).
James Crichton
Jaddus
Jaddus - jad'-us (Codex Vaticanus, Iaddous; Codex Alexandrinus, Ioddous): the King James Version has "Addus" = Barzillai (Ezra 2:61; Nehemiah 7:63). Jaddus was removed from the office of the priesthood because he could not prove his right to it after the return to Jerusalem under Zerubbabel (1 Esdras 5:38). He is called Barzillai in the. Old Testament, because he married Augia, the daughter of Zorzelleus (Barzillai the Gileadite, in the Old Testament). Compare BARZILLAI.
Jadon
Jadon - ja'-don (yadhon, perhaps "he will judge" or "plead"): One who helped to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem in company with the men of Gibeon and of Mizpah (Nehemiah 3:7). He is called the "Meronothite," and another Meronothite is referred to in 1 Chronicles 27:30, but there is no mention of a place Meronoth. Jadon is the name given by Josephus (Ant., VIII, viii, 5; ix, 1) to "the man of God" from Judah who confronted Jeroboam as he burned incense at the altar in Bethel, and who was afterward deceived by the lie of the old prophet (1 Kings 13:1-34). Josephus may probably have meant Iddo the seer, whose visions concerning Jeroboam (2 Chronicles 9:29) led to his being identified in Jewish tradition with "the man of God", from Judah.
James Crichton
Jael
Jael - ja'-el (ya`el, "a wild or mountain goat," as in Psalms 104:18; Iael): The wife of Heber the Kenite and the slayer of Sisera (Judges 4:17-22; Judges 5:2-31). Jael emerges from obscurity by this single deed, and by the kindest construction can hardly be said to have reached an enviable fame. The history of this event is clear. For years Jabin the king of Canaan had oppressed Israel. For twenty years the Israelites had been subject to him, and, in largest measure, the instrument of their subjugation had been Sisera, the king's general, the "man of the iron chariots." Deborah, a prophetess of Israel, by her passion for freedom, had roused the tribes of Israel to do battle against Sisera. They defeated him at "Taanach by the waters of Megiddo," but Sisera sought in flight to save himself. He came to the "oaks of the wanderers," where the tribe of Heber lived. Here he sought, and was probably invited, to take shelter in the tent of Jael (Judges 4:17-18). There are two accounts of the subsequent events--one a prose narrative (Judges 4:19-22), the other a poetic one, found in Deborah's song of triumph (Judges 5:24-27). The two accounts are as nearly in agreement as could be expected, considering their difference in form.
It is evident that the tribe of Heber was regarded by both parties to the struggle as being neutral. They were descendants of Jethro, and hence, had the confidence of the Israelites. Though they had suffered somewhat at the hands of the Canaanites they had made a formal contract of peace with Jabin. Naturally Sisera could turn to the tents of Heber in Kedesh-naphtali with some confidence. The current laws of hospitality gave an added element of safety. Whether Jael met Sisera and urged him to enter her tent and rest (Judges 4:18), or only invited him after his appeal for refuge, the fact remains that he was her guest, was in the sanctuary of her home, and protected by the laws of hospitality: She gave him milk to drink, a mantle for covering, and apparently acquiesced in his request that she should stand guard at the tent and deny his presence to any pursuers. When sleep came to the wearied fugitive she took a "tent-pin, and took a hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the pin into his temples" (Judges 4:21), and having murdered him, goes forth to meet Barak the Israelite general and claims the credit for her deed. Some critics suggest that Sisera was not asleep when murdered, and thus try to convert Jael's treachery into strategy. But to kill your guest while he is drinking the milk of hospitality is little less culpable than to murder him while asleep. There is no evidence that Sisera offered Jael any insult or violence, and but little probability that she acted under any spiritual or Divine suggestion. It is really impossible to justify Jael's act, though it is not impossible to understand it or properly to appreciate Deborah's approval of the act as found in Judges 5:24. The motive of Jael may have been a mixed one. She may have been a sympathizer with Israel and with the religion of Israel. But the narrative scarcely warrants the interpretation that she felt herself as one called to render "stern justice on an enemy of God" (Expositor's Bible). Jael was unquestionably prudential. Sisera was in flight and Barak in pursuit. Probably her sympathy was with Barak, but certainly reflection would show her that it would not be wisdom to permit Barak to find Sisera in her tent. She knew, too, that death would be Sisera's portion should he be captured--therefore she would kill him and thus cement a friendship with the conqueror.
As to Deborah's praise of Jael (Judges 5:24), there is no call to think that in her hour of triumph she was either capable of or intending to appraise the moral quality of Jael's deed. Her country's enemy was dead and that too at the hand of a woman. The woman who would kill Sisera must be the friend of Israel. Deborah had no question of the propriety of meting out death to a defeated persecutor. Her times were not such as to raise this question. The method of his death mattered little to her, for all the laws of peace were abrogated in the times of war. Therefore Jael was blessed among women by all who loved Israel. Whether Deborah thought her also to be worthy of the blessing of God we may not tell. At any rate there is no need for us to try to justify the treachery of Jael in order to explain the words of Deborah.
C. E. Schenk
Jagur
Jagur - ja'-gur (yaghur): An unidentified town on the Edomite frontier of Judah in the South (Joshua 15:21).
Jah
Jah - ja.
Jahath
Jahath - ja'-hath (yachath, perhaps for yachteh, yachatheh, "he (God) will snatch up"):
(1) Son of Reaiah, son of Shobal, a descendant of Judah, and father of Ahumai and Lahad, the families of the Zorathites (1 Chronicles 4:2).
(2) A frequent name for a descendant of Levi:
(a) Son of Libni, son of Gershom, the eldest son of Levi (1 Chronicles 6:20, 43 (Hebrews 6:5, 20), where "son of Libni" is omitted).
(b) Son of Shimei, son of Gershom (1 Chronicles 23:10 f).
(c) One of the "sons" of Shelomoth, a descendant of Izhar, son of Kohath, the second son of Levi (1 Chronicles 24:22).
(d) A descendant of Merari, the third son of Levi, and an overseer in the repairing of the temple in the reign of Josiah (2 Chronicles 34:12).
James Crichton
Jahaz
Jahaz - ja'-haz (yahats, Isaiah 16:4; Jeremiah 48:34, yahatsah, or yahtsah, Numbers 21:23; Deuteronomy 2:32; Joshua 13:18; 21:36, the King James Version "Jahazah"; Judges 11:20; Jeremiah 48:21; 1 Chronicles 6:78, "Jahzah"): This is the place where in a great battle Israel overwhelmed Sihon king of the Amorites, and then took possession of all his territory (Numbers 21:23, etc.). It is named along with Beth-baal-meon and Kedemoth (Joshua 13:18), with Kedemoth (Joshua 21:37) pointing to a position in the Southeast of the Amorite territory. It was given to Reuben by Moses, and was one of the cities in the portion of that tribe assigned to the Merarite Levites. Mesha (MS, ll. 18 if) says that the king of Israel dwelt in Jahaz when at war with him. Mesha drove him out, and the city passed into the hands of Moab. It is referred to as a city of Moab in Isaiah 15:4; Jeremiah 48:21, 34. Cheyne thinks that either Jahaz or Kedemoth must be represented today by the important ruins of Umm er-Recac, about 2 1/2 hours North of Dibon toward the desert (EB, under the word). No certain identification is possible.
W. Ewing
Jahaziah
Jahaziah - ja-ha-zi'-a: the King James Version for JAHZEIAH (which see).
Jahaziel
Jahaziel - ja-ha'-zi-el (yachazi'el, "God sees"):
(1) In 1 Chronicles 12:4 (Hebrews 5:1-14), one of David's recruits at Ziklag, a Benjamite or maybe a Judean.
(2) In 1 Chronicles 16:6, one of two priests appointed by David to sound trumpets before the ark on its journey to Jerusalem. The Septuagint's Codex Vaticanus and Codex Alexandrinus, read "Uzziel."
(3) In 1 Chronicles 23:19; 24:23, a Levite, "son" of Hebron, a Kohathite. Kittel, following the Septuagint, reads "Uzziel."
(4) In 2 Chronicles 20:14, an Asaphite, son of Zechariah. He encouraged King Jehoshaphat of Judah and his subjects to fight against the Moabite and Ammonite invaders.
(5) In Ezra 8:5, an ancestor of one of the families of the Restoration. Read probably "of the sons of Zattu, Sheconiah the son of Jahaziel," following 1 Esdras 8:32 (= Jezelus).
David Francis Roberts
Jahdai
Jahdai - ja'-da-i, ja'-di (yahday, "Yah leads" (?); Baer reads yehday): In 1 Chronicles 2:47, where six sons of Jahdai are mentioned. "The name has been taken as that of another wife or concubine of Caleb; more probably Jahdai is a descendant of Caleb, whose name, in the original connection, has fallen from the text" (Curtis, Chronicles, 96).
Jahdiel
Jahdiel - ja'-di-el (yachdi'el, "God gives joy"): In 1 Chronicles 5:24, head of a Manassite family.
Jahdo
Jahdo - ja'-do (yachdo, meaning uncertain; Kittel suggests yachday = Jahdai): In 1 Chronicles 5:14, a Gileadite.
Jahleel
Jahleel - ja'-le-el (yachle'el, "wait for God!"): In Genesis 46:14; Numbers 26:26, a "son" (i.e. clan) of Zebulun.
Jahleelites, The
Jahleelites, The - ja'-le-el-its (hayachle'eli, coll. with article): In Numbers 26:26, the descendants of the clan of Jahleel.
Jahmai
Jahmai - ja'-ma-i, ja'-mi (yachmay, perhaps = yachmeyah, "may Yahweh protect!"): In 1 Chronicles 7:2, head of a clan of Issachar.
Jahweh
Jahweh - ya'-we.
Jahzah
Jahzah - ja'-za.
See JAHAZ.
Jahzeel and Jahziel
Jahzeel and Jahziel - ja'-ze-el (yachtse'el, "God divides," "apportions"): In Genesis 46:24; Numbers 26:48; and Numbers 23:1-30 manuscripts in 1 Chronicles 7:13; (yachatsi'el, same meaning as above): 1 Chronicles 7:13, a "son" (clan) of Naphtali.
Jahzeelites, The
Jahzeelites, The - ja'-ze-el-its (hayachtse'eli, coll. with article): In Numbers 26:48, descendants of the clan of Jahzeel.
Jahzeiah
Jahzeiah - ja-ze'-ya, ja'-ze-ya (yachzeyah, "Yah sees"): In Ezra 10:15, son of Tikvah, and a contemporary of Ezra. It is disputed whether he and Jonathan opposed or supported Ezra in the matter of prosecuting those who had married foreign wives = Ezekias, 1 Esdras 9:14, or Ezias.
See JONATHAN, 9.
Two translations of the Hebrew phrase (`amadh `al-zo'th) are given: (1) "stood over this matter," i.e. supported Ezra; so the King James Version ("were employed in this matter"), and so Septuagint, 1 Esdras 9:14, the Revised Version margin. This is supported by 9:4, "Let now our princes be appointed for all the assembly," where the same phrase is found. (2) the Revised Version (British and American) "stood up against this matter," so BDB, Gesenius, Bertheau, Stade. Both translations can be supported by parallels in Hebrew. The context is better suited by the former rendering.
David Francis Roberts
Jahzerah
Jahzerah - ja'-ze-ra, ja-ze'-ra (yachzerah, meaning unknown): In 1 Chronicles 9:12, an ancestor of Maasai and apparently = "Ahzai" of Nehemiah 11:13.
Jahziel
Jahziel - ja'-zi-el.
See JAHZEEL AND JAHZIEL.
Jailor
Jailor - jal'-er.
See PRISON.
Jair
Jair - ja'-er:
(1) Jair (ya'ir, "he enlightens" or "one giving light"):
(a) Son, i.e. descendant of Manasseh (Numbers 32:41; Deuteronomy 3:14; Joshua 13:30; 1 Kings 4:133:1 Kings 1:1-53 Ch 2:22 f). According to 1 Chronicles 2:21 f he was the son of ScRub, son of Hezron, a descendant of Judah, who married the daughter of Machir, son of Manasseh. He was thus descended both from Judah and Manasseh. At the time of the conquest he distinguished himself by taking the tent-villages HAVVOTH-JAIR (which see). The accounts of his exploit are difficult to harmonize (see ICC on above passages). Some would identify him with the Jair of Judges 10:3, holding that Manasseh's settlement in Northern Gilead and Bashan took place, not before Israel's passage of the Jordan, but after the settlement of the tribe on the West. For a criticism of this view see HGHL , 577, note
(b) One of the judges. He is said to have had 30 sons, who rode on 30 ass colts, and who had as many cities, known as Havvoth-jair (Judges 10:3-4). One tradition identifies (a) and (b). Others reconcile the two narratives by interpreting the word "son" in a non-literal sense.
(c) The father of Mordecai (Esther 2:5). In the Apocrypha (Additions to Esther 11:2) his name is given as "Jairus" (Iaeiros).
(2) Jair (Qere: ya`ir, "he arouses"; Kethibh: ya`ur; a different name from (1) above): The father of Elhanan, the giant-slayer (1 Chronicles 20:5). In the parallel passage (2 Samuel 21:19) his name is given as "Jaare-oregim," but the text should be corrected to Jair, "oregim" ('oreghim) having crept in from the line below through a copyist's error.
James Crichton
Jairite
Jairite - ja'-er-it (ya'iri, "of Jair"): In 2 Samuel 20:26, Ira the Jairite is "chief minister unto David." He was a descendant of Jair who was a Manassite (Numbers 32:41, etc.) and whose territory was in Gilead. Septuagint, Lucian, and Syriac suggest yattiri, "Jattirite," i.e. a native of Jattir mentioned in 1 Samuel 30:27 as one of the towns friendly to David when he was in Ziklag. It is not improbable that a native of Jattir would be given such a post by David.
See IRA, and compare 2 Samuel 23:38.
Jairus (1)
Jairus (1) - ja'-i-rus, ja-i'-rus (Iaeiros; 1 Esdras 5:31; Additions to Esther 11:2).
Jairus (2)
Jairus (2) - ja'-i-rus, ja-i'-rus (Iaeiros): A ruler in a synagogue near Capernaum whose only daughter, aged about 12 years, was raised from the dead by Jesus (Matthew 9:18-26; Mark 5:22-43; Luke 8:41-56). The accounts of the miracle are substantially the same, but vary in detail. According to Mark and Luke the arrival of Jairus in Capernaum fell immediately after the return of Jesus from Gadara, but according to Matthew the sequence of events was that Jesus had returned to Capernaum, had called Matthew, had joined the feast of the publicans, and had just finished His discourse on fasting when Jairus came to Him. Matthew and Mark both testify to the great faith of Jairus, who besought of Jesus that He should but lay His hand upon the maid and she should live. According to Matthew she was already dead when Jairus came to Capernaum; according to the others she was on the point of death; but all agree as to her death before the arrival of Jesus and His followers at her abode. Matthew implies that Jesus alone was present at the actual raising; Mark and Luke state that Peter, James, John and the parents were also there. The healing of the woman with the issue of blood by Jesus on the way is given by all.
C. M. Kerr
Jakan
Jakan - ja'-kan (ya`aqan).
See JAAKAN.
Jakeh
Jakeh - ja'-ke (yaqeh, perhaps from Arabic root meaning "carefully religious"; yaqe', as if from qi'): The father of Agur, the author of the sayings recorded in Proverbs 30:1. Nothing is known of either Jakeh or Agur. The immediate connection in the Hebrew text of ha-massa', "the prophecy" or "burden" (the King James Version "even the prophecy," the Revised Version (British and American) "the oracle") with ne'um, "oracle" (the King James Version "spake," the Revised Version (British and American) "saith") is quite exceptional, while the verse is unintelligible and the text, as the Septuagint shows, is evidently corrupt. The best emendation is that which changes ha-massa', "the prophecy," into ha-massa'i, "the Massaite," or into mimmassa', "of Massa" (Revised Version margin), Massa being the name of the country of an Ishmaelite tribe (compare Genesis 25:14; 1 Chronicles 1:30; Proverbs 31:1 the Revised Version margin).
See AGUR.
James Crichton
Jakim
Jakim - ja'-kim (yaqim, "he (God) lifteth Up"; compare ELIAKIM):
(1) A Benjamite, a son of Shimei (1 Chronicles 8:19).
(2) A priest, the head of the 12th of the 24 courses into which the priests were divided (1 Chronicles 24:12).
Jalam
Jalam - ja'-lam (ya`lam, according to BDB following Septuagint Ieglom, in Gen, from `alam, meaning "to conceal"; according to Gunkel, Gen3, 390, from ya`el, "mountain-goat"; see HPN , 90, note 5; King James Version Jaalam): In Genesis 36:5, 14, 18; 1 Chronicles 1:35, a son of Esau, mentioned as the 1 Chronicles 2:11-55nd son by Oholibamah; probably an Edomite clan.
Jalon
Jalon - ja'-lon (yalon, meaning unknown): In 1 Chronicles 4:17, a son of Ezrah, a Judahite.
Jambres
Jambres - jam'-brez.
See JANNES AND JAMBRES.
Jambri
Jambri - jam'-bri (hoi huioi Iambrein; 1 Maccabees 9:36-41): The sons of Jambri are said to have come out of Medeba (originally Med'ba), a city of the Moabites, and subsequently a possession of the Amorites, and to have carried off John, the brother of Jonathan, who succeeded Judas Maccabeus as leader of the Jews. The Israelites got possession of the place and assigned it to the tribe of Reuben. No mention is made elsewhere of the Jambri. In Josephus (Ant., XIII, i, 2) they are called "sons of Amaraeus."
James
James - jamz (Iacobos): English form of Jacob, and the name of 3 New Testament men of note:
(1) The Son of Zebedee, one of the Twelve Apostles (ho tou Zebedaiou):
A) The Son of Zebedee:
I. In the New Testament. 1. Family Relations, etc.: To the Synoptists alone are we indebted for any account of this James. He was the son of Zebedee and the brother of John (Matthew 4:21; Mark 1:19; Luke 5:10). As the Synoptists generally place the name of James before that of John, and allude to the latter as "the brother of James," it is inferred that James was the elder of the two brothers. His mother's name was probably Salome, the sister of the mother of Jesus (compare Matthew 27:56; Mark 15:40; John 19:25), but this is disputed by some (compare BRETHREN OF THE LORD). James was a fisherman by trade, and worked along with his father and brother (Matthew 4:21). According to Lk, these were partners with Simon (Matthew 5:10), and this is also implied in Mk (Matthew 1:19). As they owned several boats and employed hired servants (Luke 5:11; Mark 1:20), the establishment they possessed must have been considerable.
2. First Call: The call to James to follow Christ (Matthew 4:18-22; Mark 1:16-20; Luke 5:1-11) was given by Jesus as He was walking by the sea of Galilee (Matthew 4:18). There He saw "James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets; and he called them. And they straightway left the boat and their father, and followed him" (Matthew 4:21-22). The account of Luke varies in part from those of Matthew and Mark, and contains the additional detail of the miraculous draught of fishes, at which James and John also were amazed. This version of Luke is regarded by some as an amalgamation of the earlier accounts with John 21:1-8.
3. Probation and Ordination: As the above incident took place after the imprisonment of John the Baptist, when Jesus had departed into Galilee (Matthew 4:12; Mark 1:14), and as there is no mention of James among those who received the preliminary call recorded by John (compare John 1:35-51; 3:24, and compare ANDREW), it is probable that while Peter and Andrew made the pilgrimage to Bethany, James and the other partners remained in Galilee to carry on the business of their trade. Yet, on the return of Peter and Andrew, the inquiries of James must have been eager concerning what they had seen and heard. His mind and imagination became filled with their glowing accounts of the newly found "Lamb of God" (John 1:36) and of the preaching of John the Baptist, until he inwardly dedicated his life to Jesus and only awaited an opportunity to declare his allegiance openly. By this is the apparently abrupt nature of the call, as recorded by the Synoptists, to be explained. After a period of companionship and probationership with his Master, when he is mentioned as being present at the healing of Simon's wife's mother at Capernaum (Mark 1:29-31), he was ordained one of the Twelve Apostles (Matthew 10:2; Mark 3:17; Luke 6:14; Acts 1:13).
4. Apostleship: From this time onward he occupied a prominent place among the apostles, and, along with Peter and John, became the special confidant of Jesus. These three alone of the apostles were present at the raising of Jairus' daughter (Mark 5:37; Luke 8:51), at the Transfiguration (Mark 17:1-8; Mark 9:2-8; Luke 9:28-36), and at the Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36-46; Mark 14:32-42). Shortly after the Transfiguration, when Jesus, having "stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem" (Luke 9:51), was passing through Samaria, the ire of James and John was kindled by the ill reception accorded to Him by the populace (Luke 9:53). They therefore asked of Jesus, "Lord, wilt thou that we bid fire to come down from heaven, and consume them?" (Luke 9:54). "But he turned, and rebuked them" (Luke 9:55). It was probably this hotheaded impetuosity and fanaticism that won for them the surname "Boanerges, which is, Sons of thunder," bestowed on them when they were ordained to the Twelve (Mark 3:17). Yet upon this last occasion, there was some excuse for their action. The impression left by the Transfiguration was still deep upon them, and they felt strongly that their Lord, whom they had lately beheld "in his glory" with "countenance altered" and "glistering raiment," should be subjected to such indignities by the Samaritans. Upon the occasion of Jesus' last journey to Jerusalem (Mark 10:32), the two brothers gave expression to this presumptuous impetuosity in a more selfish manner (Mark 10:35-45). Presuming on their intimacy with Jesus, they made the request of him, "Grant unto us that we may sit, one on thy right hand, and one on thy left hand, in thy glory" (Mark 10:37). In the account of Matthew (20:20-28), the words are put in the mouth of their mother. The request drew forth the rebuke of Jesus (Mark 10:38), and moved the ten with indignation (Mark 10:40); but by the words of their Lord peace was again restored (Mark 10:42-45). After the arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem, when He "sat on the mount of Olives over against the temple," James was one of the four who put the question to Him concerning the last things (Mark 13:3, 1). He was also present when the risen Jesus appeared for the 3rd time to the disciples and the miraculous draught of fishes was made at the sea of Tiberias (John 21:1-14).
5. Death: James was the first martyr among the apostles, being slain by King Herod Agrippa I about 44 AD, shortly before Herod's own death. The vehemence and fanaticism which were characteristic of James had made him to be feared and hated among the Jewish enemies of the Christians, and therefore when "Herod the king put forth his hands to afflict certain of the church .... he killed James the brother of John with the sword" (Acts 12:1-2). Thus did James fulfill the prophecy of our Lord that he too should drink of the cup of his Master (Mark 10:39).
II. In Apocryphal Literature. According to the "Genealogies of the Twelve Apostles" (compare Budge, Contendings of the Apostles,II , 49), "Zebedee was of the house of Levi, and his wife of the house of Judah. Now, because the father of James loved him greatly he counted him among the family of his father Levi, and similarly because the mother of John loved him greatly, she counted him among the family of her father Judah. And they were surnamed `Children of Thunder,' for they were of both the priestly house and of the royal house." The Acts of John, a heretical work of the 2nd century, referred to by Clement of Alexandria in his Hypotyposis and also by Eusebius (Historia Ecclesiastica, III, 25), gives an account of the call of James and his presence at the Transfiguration, similar in part to that of the Gospels, but giving fantastic details concerning the supernatural nature of Christ's body, and how its appearances brought confusion to James and other disciples (compare Itennecke, Handbuch zu den neutestamentlichen Apokryphen, 423-59). The Acts of James in India (compare Budge,II , 295-303) tells of the missionary journey of James and Peter to India, of the appearance of Christ to them in the form of a beautiful young man, of their healing a blind man, and of their imprisonment, miraculous release, and their conversion of the people. According to the Martyrdom of James (Budge, II, 304-8), James preached to the 12 tribes scattered abroad, and persuaded them to give their first-fruits to the church instead of to Herod. The accounts of his trial and death are similar to that in Acts 12:1-2.
(1) James is the patron saint of Spain. The legend of his preaching there, of his death in Judea, of the transportation of his body under the guidance of angels to Iria and of the part that his miraculous appearances played in the history of Spain, is given in Mrs. Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art, I, 230-41.
(2) James the son of Alpheus (ho tou Alphaiou; for etymology, etc., of James, see above): One of the Twelve Apostles (Matthew 10:3; Mark 3:18; Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13). By Matthew and Mark he is coupled with Thaddaeus, and by Luke and Acts with Simon Zelotes. As Matthew or Levi is also called the son of Alpheus (compare Matthew 9:9; Mark 2:14), it is possible that he and James were brothers. According to the Genealogies of the Apostles (compare Budge, Contendings of the Apostles,II , 50), James was of the house of Gad. The Martyrdom of James, the son of Alpheus (compare Budge, ib, 264-66) records that James was stoned by the Jews for preaching Christ, and was "buried by the Sanctuary In Jerusalem."
This James is generally identified with James the Little or the Less, the brother of Joses and son of Mary (Matthew 27:56; Mark 15:40). In John 19:25 this Mary is called the wife of Cleophas (the King James Version) or Clopas (Revised Version), who is thus in turn identified with Alpheus. There is evidence in apocryphal literature of a Simon, a son of Clopas, who was also one of the disciples (compare NATHANAEL). If this be the same as Simon Zelotes, it would explain why he and James (i.e. as being brothers) were coupled together in the apostolic lists of Luke and Acts. Some have applied the phrase "his mother's sister" in John 19:25 to Mary the wife of Clopas, instead of to a separate person, and have thus attempted to identify James the son of Alpheus with James the brother of our Lord. For a further discussion of the problem, see BRETHREN OF THE LORD.
(3) James, "the Lord's brother" (ho adelphos tou Kuriou):he Less, the brother of Joses and son of Mary (Matthew 27:56; Mark 15:40). In John 19:25 this Mary is called the wife of Cleophas (the King James Version) or Clopas (Revised Version), who is thus in turn identified with Alpheus. There is evidence in apocryphal literature of a Simon, a son of Clopas, who was also one of the disciples (compare NATHANAEL). If this be the same as Simon Zelotes, it would explain why he and James (i.e. as being brothers) were coupled together in the apostolic lists of Luke and Acts. Some have applied the phrase "his mother's sister" in John 19:25 to Mary the wife of Clopas, instead of to a separate person, and have thus attempted to identify James the son of Alpheus with James the brother of our Lord. For a further discussion of the problem, see BRETHREN OF THE LORD.
B) James, "The Lord's Brother":
I. New Testament References. 1. In the Gospels: This James is mentioned by name only twice in the Gospels, i.e. when, on the visit of Jesus to Nazareth, the countrymen of our Lord referred in contemptuous terms to His earthly kindred, in order to disparage His preaching (Matthew 13:55; Mark 6:3). As James was one of "his brethren," he was probably among the group of Christ's relatives who sought to interview Him during His tour through Galilee with the Twelve (Matthew 12:46). By the same reasoning, he accompanied Jesus on His journey to Capernaum (John 2:12), and joined in attempting to persuade Him to depart from Galilee for Judea on the eve of the Feast of Tabernacles (John 7:3). At this feast James was present (John 7:10), but was at this time a non-believer in Jesus (compare John 7:5, "Even his brethren did not believe on him").
2. In the Epistles: Yet the seeds of conversion were being sown within him, for, after the crucifixion, he remained in Jerusalem with his mother and brethren, and formed one of that earliest band of believers who "with one accord continued stedfastly in prayer" (Acts 1:14). While there, he probably took part in the election of Matthias to the vacant apostleship (Acts 1:15-25). James was one of the earliest witnesses to the resurrection, for, after the risen Lord had manifested Himself to the five hundred, "he was seen of James" (1 Corinthians 15:7 the King James Version). By this his growing belief and prayerful expectancy received confirmation. About 37 or 38 AD, James, "the Lord's brother" (Galatians 1:19), was still in Jerusalem, and had an interview there for the first time with Paul, when the latter returned from his 3 years' sojourn in Damascus to visit Cephas, or Peter (Galatians 1:18-19; compare Acts 9:26). In several other passages the name of James is coupled with that of Peter. Thus, when Peter escaped from prison (about 44 AD), he gave instructions to those in the house of John Mark that they should immediately inform "James and the brethren" of the manner of his escape (Acts 12:17). By the time of the Jerusalem convention, i.e. about 51 AD (compare Galatians 2:1), James had reached the position of first overseer in the church (compare Acts 15:13, 19). Previous to this date, during Paul's ministry at Antioch, he had dispatched certain men thither to further the mission, and the teaching of these had caused dissension among the newly converted Christians and their leaders (Acts 15:1-2; Galatians 2:12). The conduct of Peter, over whom James seems to have had considerable influence, was the principal matter of contention (compare Galatians 2:11 if). However, at the Jerusalem convention the dispute was amicably settled, and the pillars of the church, James, John and Cephas, gave to Paul and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship (Galatians 2:9). The speech of James on this occasion (Acts 15:13-29), his sympathy with the religious needs of the Gentileworld (Acts 15:17), his desire that formalism should raise no barrier to their moral and spiritual advancement (Acts 15:19-20, 28-29), and his large-hearted tributes to the "beloved Barnabas and Paul" (Acts 15:25-26), indicate that James was a leader in whom the church was blessed, a leader who loved peace more than faction, the spirit more than the law, and who perceived that religious communities with different forms of observance might still live and work together in common allegiance to Christ. Once more (58 AD), James was head of the council at Jerusalem when Paul made report of his labors, this time of his 3rd missionary Journey (Acts 21:17 ff). At this meeting Paul was admonished for exceeding the orders he had received at the first council, in that he had endeavored to persuade the converted Jews also to neglect circumcision (Acts 21:21), and was commanded to join in the vow of purification (Acts 21:23-26). There is no Scriptural account of the death of James From 1 Corinthians 9:5 it has been inferred that he was married. This is, however, only a conjecture, as the passage refers to those who "lead about a sister, a wife" (the King James Version), while, so far as we know, James remained throughout his life in Jerusalem.
This James has been regarded as the author of the Epistle of James, "a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ"; compare JAMES,EPISTLE OF . Also, for details concerning his relationship to Christ, compare BRETHREN OF THE LORD.
II. References in Apocryphal Literature. James figures in one of the miraculous events recorded in the Gnostic "Gospel of the Infancy, by Thomas the Israelite philosopher," being cured of a snake-bite by the infant Jesus (compare Hennecke, Handbuch zu den neutestamentlichen Apokryphen, 73). According to the Gospel of the Hebrews (compare ib, 11-21), James had also partaken of the cup of the Lord, and refused to eat till he had seen the risen Lord. Christ acknowledged this tribute by appearing to James first. In the Acts of Peter (compare Budge, Contendings of the Apostles,II , 475), it is stated that "three days after the ascension of our Lord into heaven, James, whom our Lord called his `brother in the flesh,' consecrated the Offering and we all drew nigh to partake thereof: and when ten days had passed after the ascension of our Lord, we all assembled in the holy fortress of Zion, and we stood up to say the prayer of sanctification, and we made supplication unto God and besought Him with humility, and James also entreated Him concerning the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Offering." The Preaching of James the Just (compare Budge,II , 78-81) tells of the appointment of James to the bishopric of Jerusalem, of his preaching, healing of the sick and casting out of devils there. This is confirmed by the evidence of Clement of Alexandria (Euseb., HE, II, 1). In the Martyrdom of James the Just (compare Budge,II , 82-89), it is stated that J., "the youngest of the sons of Joseph," alienated, by his preaching, Piobsata from her husband Ananus, the governor of Jerusalem. Ananus therefore inflamed the Jews against James, and they hurled him down from off the pinnacle of the temple. Hegesippus, quoted by Eusebius (Historia Ecclesiastica, II, 23), and Josephus (Ant., XX, ix, 1), testify to the general truth of this. It is thus probable that James was martyred about 62 or 63 AD.
Besides the epistle which bears his name, James was also the reputed author of the Protevangelium Jacobi, a work which originated in the 2nd century and received later additions (compare Henn,NA , 47-63; also JOSEPH,HUSBAND OF MARY ).
C. M. Kerr
James, Epistle of
James, Epistle of - I. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EPISTLE
1. Jewish
2. Authoritative
3. Practical
II. AUTHOR OF THE EPISTLE
III. STYLE OF THE EPISTLE
1. Plainness
2. Good Greek
3. Vividness
4. Duadiplosis
5. Figures of Speech
6. Unlikeness to Paul
7. Likeness to Jesus
IV. DATE OF THE EPISTLE
V. HISTORY OF THE EPISTLE
VI. MESSAGE OF THE EPISTLE TO OUR TIMES
1. To the Pietist
2. To the Sociologist
3. To the Student of the Life and Character of Jesus
LITERATURE
I. Characteristics of the Epistle. 1. Jewish: The Epistle of James is the most Jewish writing in the New Testament. The Gospel according to Matthew was written for the Jews. The Epistle to the Hebrews is addressed explicitly to them. The Apocalypse is full of the spirit of the Old Testament. The Epistle of Jude is Jewish too. Yet all of these books have more of the distinctively Christian element in them than we can find in the Epistle of James. If we eliminate two or three passages containing references to Christ, the whole epistle might find its place iust as properly in the Canon of the Old Testament as in that of the New Testament, as far as its substance of doctrine and contents is concerned. That could not be said Of any other book in the New Testament. There is no mention of the incarnation or of the resurrection., the two fundamental facts of the Christian faith. The word "gospel" does not occur in the epistle There is no suggestion that the Messiah has appeared and no presentation of the possibility of redemption through Him. The teaching throughout is that of a lofty morality which aims at the fulfillment of the requirements of the Mosaic law. It is not strange therefore that Spitta and others have thought that we have in the Epistle of James a treatise written by an unconverted Jew which has been adapted to Christian use by the interpolation of the two phrases containing the name of Christ in 1:1 and 2:1. Spitta thinks that this can be the only explanation of the fact that we have here an epistle practically ignoring the life and work of Jesus and every distinctively Christian doctrine, and without a trace of any of the great controversies in the early Christian church or any of the specific features of its propaganda. This judgment is a superficial one, and rests upon superficial indications rather than any appreciation of the underlying spirit and principles of the book. The spirit of Christ is here, and there is no need to label it. The principles of this epistle are the principles of the Sermon on the Mount. There are more parallels to that Sermon in this epistle than can be found anywhere else in the New Testament in the same space. The epistle represents the idealization of Jewish legalism under the transforming influence of the Christian motive and life. It is not a theological discussion. It is an ethical appeal. It has to do with the outward life for the most part, and the life it pictures is that of a Jew informed with the spirit of Christ. The spirit is invisible in the epistle as in the individual man. It is the body which appears and the outward life with which that body has to do. The body of the epistle is Jewish, and the outward life to which it exhorts is that of a profoundly pious Jew. The Jews familiar with the Old Testament would read this epistle and find its language and tone that to which they were accustomed in their sacred books. James is evidently written by a Jew for Jews. It is Jewish in character throughout. This is apparent in the following particulars: (1) The epistle is addressed to the 12 tribes which are of the Dispersion (11). The Jews were scattered abroad through the ancient world. From Babylon to Rome, wherever any community of them might be gathered for commercial or social purposes, these exhortations could be carried and read. Probably the epistle was circulated most widely in Syria and Asia Minor, but it may have gone out to the ends of the earth. Here and there in the ghettos of the Roman Empire, groups of the Jewish exiles would gather and listen while one of their number read this letter from home. All of its terms and its allusions would recall familiar home scenes. (2) Their meeting-place is called "your synagogue" (2:2). (3) Abraham is mentioned as "our father" (2:21). (4) God is given the Old Testament name, "the Lord of Sabaoth" (5:4). (5) The law is not to be spoken against nor judged, but reverently and loyally obeyed. It is a royal law to which every loyal Jew will be subject. It is a law of liberty, to be freely obeyed (2:8-12; 4:11). (6) The sins of the flesh are not inveighed against in the epistle, but those sins to which the Jews were more conspicuously liable, such as the love of money and the distinction which money may bring (2:2-4), worldliness and pride (4:4-6), impatience and murmuring (5:7-11), and other sins of the temper and tongue (3:1-12; 4:11,12). (7) The illustrations of faithfulness and patience and prayer are found in Old Testament characters, in Abraham (2:21), Rahab (2:25), Job (James 5:11),and Elijah (James 5:17-18). The whole atmosphere of the epistle is Jewish.
2. Authoritative: The writer of this epistle speaks as one having authority. He is not on his defense, as Paul so often is. There is no trace of apology in his presentation of the truth. His official position must have been recognized and unquestioned. He is as sure of his standing with his readers as he is of the absoluteness of his message.
No Old Testament lawgiver or prophet was more certain that he spoke the word of the Lord. He has the vehemence of Elijah and the assured meekness of Moses. He has been called "the Amos of the New Testament," and there are paragraphs which recall the very expressions used by Amos and which are full of the same fiery eloquence and prophetic fervor. Both fill their writings with metaphors drawn from the sky and the sea, from natural objects and domestic experiences. Both seem to be countrybred and to be in sympathy with simplicity and poverty. Both inveigh against the luxury and the cruelty of the idle rich, and both abhor the ceremonial and the ritual which are substituted for individual righteousness. Malachi was not the last of the prophets. John the Baptist was not the last prophet of the Old Dispensation. The writer of this epistle stands at the end of that prophetic line, and he is greater than John the Baptist or any who have preceded him because he stands within the borders of the kingdom of Christ. He speaks with authority, as a messenger of God. He belongs to the goodly fellowship of the prophets and of the apostles. He has the authority of both. There are 54 imperatives in the 108 verses of this epistle.
3. Practical: The epistle is interested in conduct more than in creed. It has very little formulated theology, less than any other epistle in the New Testament; but it insists upon practical morality throughout. It begins and it closes with an exhortation to patience and prayer. It preaches a gospel of good works, based upon love to God and love to man. It demands liberty, equality, fraternity for all. It enjoins humility and justice and peace. It prescribes singleness of purpose and stedfastness of soul. It requires obedience to the law, control of the passions, and control of the tongue. Its ideal is to be found in a good life, characterized by the meekness of wisdom. The writer of the epistle has caught the spirit of the ancient prophets, but the lessons that he teaches are taken, for the most part, from the Wisdom literature of the Old Testament and the Apocrypha. His direct quotations are from the Pentateuch and the Book of Proverbs; but it has been estimated that there are 10 allusions to the Book of Proverbs, 6 to the Book of Job, 5 to the Book of Wisdom, and 15 to the Book of Ecclesiasticus. This Wisdom literature furnishes the staple of his meditation and the substance of his teaching. He has little or nothing to say about the great doctrines of the Christian church.
He has much to say about the wisdom that cometh down from above and is pure, peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, without hypocrisy (James 3:15-17). The whole epistle shows that the author had stored his mind with the rich treasure of the ancient wisdom, and his material, while offered as his own, is both old and new. The form is largely that of the Wisdom literature of the Jews. It has more parallels with Jesus the son of Sirach than with any writer of the sacred books.
The substance of its exhortation, however, is to be found in the Synoptics and more particularly in the Sermon on the Mount. Its wisdom is the wisdom of Jesus the son of Joseph, who is the Christ.
These are the three outstanding characteristics of this epistle In form and on the surface it is the most Jewish and least Christian of the writings in the New Testament. Its Christianity is latent and not apparent. Yet it is the most authoritative in its tone of any of the epistles in the New Testament, unless it be those of the apostle John. John must have occupied a position of undisputed primacy in the Christian church after the death of all the other apostles, when he wrote his epistles. It is noteworthy that the writer of this epistle assumes a tone of like authority with that of John. John was the apostle of love, Paul of faith, and Peter of hope. This writer is the apostle of good works, the apostle of the wisdom which manifests itself in peace and purity, mercy and morality, and in obedience to the royal law, the law of liberty. In its union of Jewish form, authoritative tone, and insistence upon practical morality, the epistle is unique among the New Testament books.
II. Author of the Epistle. The address of the epistle states that the writer is "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ" (James 1:1). The tradition of the church has identified this James with the brother of our Lord. Clement of Alexandria says that Peter and James and John, who were the three apostles most honored of the Lord, chose James, the Lord's brother, to be the bishop of Jerusalem after the Lord's ascension (Euscb., HE, II, 1). This tradition agrees well with all the notices of James in the New Testament books. After the death of James the brother of John, Peter was thrown into prison, and having been miraculously released, he asked that the news be sent to James and to the brethren (Acts 12:17). This James is evidently in authority in the church at this time. In the apostolical conference held at Jerusalem, after Peter and Paul and Barnabas had spoken, this same James sums up the whole discussion, and his decision is adopted by the assembly and formulated in a letter which has some very striking parallels in its phraseology to this epistle (Acts 15:6-29). When Paul came to Jerusalem for the last time he reported his work to James and all the elders present with him (Acts 21:18). In the Epistle to the Galatians Paul says that at the time of one of his visits to Jerusalem he saw none of the apostles save Peter and James the Lord's brother (Galatians 1:18-19). At another visit he received the right hand of fellowship from James and Cephas and John (Galatians 2:9). At a later time certain who came from James to Antioch led Peter into backsliding from his former position of tolerance of the Gentiles as equals in the Christian church (Galatians 2:12).
All of these references would lead us to suppose that James stood in a position of supreme authority in the mother-church at Jerusalem, the oldest church of Christendom. He presides in the assemblies of the church. He speaks the final and authoritative word. Peter and Paul defer to him. Paul mentions his name before that of Peter and John. When he was exalted to this leadership we do not know, but all indications seem to point to the fact that at a very early period James was the recognized executive authority in the church at Jerusalem, which was the church of Pentecost and the church of the apostles. All Jews looked to Jerusalem as the chief seat of their worship and the central authority of their religion. All Christian Jews would look to Jerusalem as the primitive source of their organization and faith, and the head of the church at Jerusalem would be recognized by them as their chief authority. The authoritative tone of this epistle comports well with this position of primacy ascribed to James.
All tradition agrees in describing James as a Hebrew of the Hebrews, a man of the most rigid and ascetic morality, faithful in his observance of all the ritual regulations of the Jewish faith. Hegesippus tells us that he was holy from his mother's womb. He drank no wine nor strong drink. He ate no flesh. He alone was permitted to enter with the priests into the holy place, and he was found there frequently upon his knees begging forgiveness for the people, and his knees became hard like those of a camel in consequence of his constantly bending them in his worship of God and asking forgiveness for the people (Euseb., HE, II, 23). He was called James the Just. All had confidence in his sincerity and integrity, and many were persuaded by him to believe on the Christ. This Jew, faithful in the observance of all that the Jews held sacred, and more devoted to the temple-worship than the most pious among them, was a good choice for the head of the Christian church. The blood of David flowed in his veins. He had all the Jew's pride in the special privileges of the chosen race. The Jews respected him and the Christians revered him. No man among them commanded the esteem of the entire population as much as he.
Josephus (Ant., XX, ix) tells us that Ananus the high priest had James stoned to death, and that the most equitable of the citizens immediately rose in revolt against such a lawless procedure, and Ananus was deposed after only three months' rule. This testimony of Josephus simply substantiates all that we know from other sources concerning the high standing of James in the whole community. Hegesippus says that James was first thrown from a pinnacle of the temple, and then they stoned him because he was not killed by the fall, and he was finally beaten over the head with a fuller's club; and then he adds significantly, "Immediately Vespasian besieged them" (Euscb., HE, II, 23). There would seem to have been quite a widespread conviction among both the Christians and the Jews that the afflictions which fell upon the holy city and the chosen people in the following years were in part a visitation because of the great crime of the murder of this just man. We can understand how a man with this reputation and character would write an epistle so Jewish in form and substance and so insistent in its demands for a practical morality as is the Epistle of James. All the characteristics of the epistle seem explicable on the supposition of authorship by James the brother of the Lord. We accept the church tradition without hesitation.
III. The Style of the Epistle. 1. Plainness: The sentence construction is simple and straightforward. It reminds us of the English of Bunyan and DeFoe. There is usually no good reason for misunderstanding anything James says. He puts his truth plainly, and the words he uses have no hidden or mystical meanings. His thought is transparent as his life.
2. Good Greek: It is somewhat surprising to find that the Greek of the Epistle of James is better than that of the other New Testament writers, with the single exception of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Of course this may be due to the fact that James had the services of an amanuensis who was a Greek scholar, or that his own manuscript was revised by such a man; but, although unexpected, it is not impossible that James himself may have been capable of writing such Greek as this.
It is not the good Greek of the classics, and it is not the poor and provincial Greek of Paul. There is more care for literary form than in the uncouth periods Of the Gentile apostle, and the vocabulary would seem to indicate an acquaintance with the literary as well as the commercial and the conversational Greek "Galilee was studded with Greek towns, and it was certainly in the power of any Galilean to gain a knowledge of Greek .... We may reasonably suppose that our author would not have scrupled to avail himself of the opportunities within his reach, so as to master the Greek language, and learn something of Greek philosophy. This would be natural, even if we think of James as impelled only by a desire to gain wisdom and knowledge for himself; but if we think of him also as the principal teacher of the Jewish believers, many of whom were Hellenists, instructed in the wisdom of Alexandria, then the natural bent would take the shape of duty: he would be a student of Greek in order that he might be a more effective instructor to his own people" (Mayor, The Epistle of James, ccxxxvi). The Greek of the epistle is the studied Greek of one who was not a native to it, but who had familiarized himself with its literature. James could have done so and the epistle may be proof that he did.
3. Vividness: James is never content to talk in abstractions. He always sets a picture before his own eyes and those of his readers. He has the dramatic instinct. He has the secret of sustained interest. He is not discussing things in general but things in particular. He is an artist and believes in concrete realities. At the same time he has a touch of poetry in him, and a fine sense of the analogies running through all Nature and all life. The doubting man is like the sea spume (1:6). The rich man fades away in his goings, even as the beauty of the flower falls and perishes (1:11). The synagogue scene with its distinction between the rich and the poor is set before us with the clear-cut impressiveness of a cameo (2:1-4). The Pecksniffian philanthropist, who seems to think that men can be fed not by bread alone but by the words that proceed magnificently from his mouth, is pilloried here for all time (2:15,16). The untamable tongue that is set on fire of hell is put in the full blaze of its world of iniquity, and the damage it does is shown to be like that of a forest fire (3:1-12). The picture of the wisdom that comes from above with its sevenfold excellences of purity, peaceableness, gentleness, mercy, fruitfulness, impartiality, sincerity, is worthy to hang in the gallery of the world's masterpieces (3:17). The vaunting tradesmen, whose lives are like vanishing vapor, stand there before the eyes of all in Jerusalem (4:13-16). The rich, whose luxuries he describes even while he denounces their cruelties and prophesies their coming day of slaughter, are the rich who walk the streets of his own city (5:1-6). His short sentences go like shots straight to the mark. We feel the impact and the impress of them. There is an energy behind them and a reality in them that makes them live in our thought. His abrupt questions are like the quick interrogations of a cross-examining lawyer (2:4-7,14,16; 3:11,12; 4:1,4,5,12,14). His proverbs have the intensity of the accumulated and compressed wisdom of the ages. They are irreducible minimums. They are memorable sayings, treasured in the speech of the world ever since his day.
4. Duadiplosis: Sometimes James adds sentence to sentence with the repetition of some leading word or phrase (1:1-6,19-24; 3:2-8). It is the painful style of one who is not altogether at home with the language which he has chosen as the vehicle of his thought. It is the method by which a discussion could be continued indefinitely. Nothing but the vividness of the imagery and the intensity of the thought saves James from fatal monotony in the use of this device.
5. Figures of Speech: James has a keen eye for illustrations. He is not blind to the beauties and wonders of Nature. He sees what is happening on every hand, and he is quick to catch any homiletical suggestion it may hold. Does he stand by the seashore? The surge that is driven by the wind and tossed reminds him of the man who is unstable in all his ways, because he has no anchorage of faith, and his convictions are like driftwood on a sea of doubt (1:6). Then he notices that the great ships are turned about by a small rudder, and he thinks how the tongue is a small member, but it accomplishes great things (3:4,5). Does he walk under the sunlight and rejoice in it as the source of so many good and perfect gifts? He sees in it an image of the goodness of God that is never eclipsed and never exhausted, unvarying for evermore (1:17). He uses the natural phenomena of the land in which he lives to make his meaning plain at every turn: the flower of the field that passes away (1:10,11), the forest fire that sweeps the mountain side and like a living torch lights up the whole land (3:5), the sweet and salt springs (3:11), the fig trees and the olive trees and the vines (3:12), the seed-sowing and the fruit-bearing (3:18), the morning mist immediately lost to view (4:14), the early and the latter rain for which the husbandman waiteth patiently (5:7).
There is more of the appreciation of Nature in this one short epistle of Jas than in all the epistles of Paul put together. Human life was more interesting to Paul than natural scenery. However, James is interested in human life just as profoundly as Paul. He is constantly endowing inanimate things with living qualities. He represents sin as a harlot, conceiving and bringing forth death (1:15). The word of truth has a like power and conceives and brings forth those who live to God's praise (1:18). Pleasures are like joyful hosts of enemies in a tournament, who deck themselves bravely and ride forth with singing and laughter, but whose mission is to wage war and to kill (4:1,2). The laborers may be dumb in the presence of the rich because of their dependence and their fear, but their wages, fraudulently withheld, have a tongue, and cry out to high heaven for vengeance (5:4). What is friendship with the world? It is adultery, James says (4:4). The rust of unjust riches testifies against those who have accumulated them, and then turns upon them and eats their flesh like fire (5:3). James observed the man who glanced at himself in the mirror in the morning, and saw that his face was not clean, and who went away and thought no more about it for that whole day, and he found in him an illustration of the one who heard the word and did not do it (1:23,14). The epistle is full of these rhetorical figures, and they prove that James was something of a poet at heart, even as Jesus was. He writes in prose, but there is a marked rhythm in all of his speech. He has an ear for harmony as he has an eye for beauty everywhere.
6. Unlikeness to Paul: The Pauline epistles begin with salutations and close with benedictions. They are filled with autobiographical touches and personal messages. None of these things appear here. The epistle begins and ends with all abruptness. It has an address, but no thanksgiving. There are no personal messages and no indications of any intimate personal relationship between the author and his readers. They are his "beloved brethren." He knows their needs and their sins, but he may never have seen their faces or visited their homes. The epistle is more like a prophet's appeal to a nation than a personal letter.
7. Likeness to Jesus: Both the substance of the teaching and the method of its presentation remind us of the discourses of Jesus. James says less about the Master than any other writer in the New Testament, but his speech is more like that of the Master than the speech of any one of them. There are at least ten parallels to the Sermon on the Mount in this short epistle, and for almost everything that James has to say we can recall some statement of Jesus which might have suggested it. When the parallels fail at any point, we are inclined to suspect that James may be repeating some unrecorded utterance of our Lord. He seems absolutely faithful to his memory of his brother's teaching. He is the servant of Jesus in all his exhortation and persuasion.
Did the Master shock His disciples' faith by the loftiness of the Christian ideal He set before them in His great sermon, "Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48)? James sets the same high standard in the very forefront of his ep.: "Let patience have its perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, lacking in nothing" (Matthew 1:4). Did the Master say, "Ask, and it shall be given you" (Matthew 7:7)? James says, "If any of you lacketh wisdom, let him ask of God ....; and it shall be given him" (Matthew 1:5). Did the Master add a condition to His sweeping promise to prayer and say, "Whosoever .... shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that what he faith cometh to pass; he shall have it" (Mark 11:23)? James hastens to add the same condition, "Let him ask in faith, nothing doubting: for he that doubteth is like the surge of the sea driven by the wind and tossed" (Mark 1:6). Did the Master close the great sermon with His parable of the Wise Man and the Foolish Man, saying, "Every one that heareth these words of mine, and doeth them, shall be likened unto a wise man. And every one that heareth these words of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man" (Matthew 7:24, 26)? James is much concerned about wisdom, and therefore he exhorts his readers, "Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deluding your own selves" (Matthew 1:22). Had the Master declared, "If ye know these things, blessed are ye if ye do them" (John 13:17)? James echoes the thought when he says, "A doer that worketh, this man shall be blessed in his doing" (John 1:25). Did the Master say to the disciples, "Blessed are ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God" (Luke 6:20)? James has the same sympathy with the poor, and he says, "Hearken, my beloved brethren; did not God choose them that are poor as to the world to be rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he promised to them that love him?" (Luke 2:5). Did the Master inveigh against the rich, and say, "Woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation. Woe unto you, ye that are full now! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you, ye that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep" (Luke 6:24-25)? James bursts forth into the same invective and prophesies the same sad reversal of fortune, "Come now, ye rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you" (Luke 5:1). "Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye doubleminded. Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness" (Luke 4:8-9). Had Jesus said, "Judge not, that ye be not judged" (Matthew 7:1)? James repeats the exhortation, "Speak not one against another, brethren. He that .... judgeth his brother .... judgeth the law: .... but who art thou that judgest thy neighbor?" (Matthew 4:11-12). Had Jesus said, "Whosoever shall humble himself shall be exalted" (Matthew 23:12)? We find the very words in James, "Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall exalt you" (Matthew 4:10). Had Jesus said, "I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by the heaven, for it is the throne of God; nor by the earth, for it is the footstool of his feet. .... But let your speech be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: and whatsoever is more than these is of the evil one" (Matthew 5:34-37)? Here in James we come upon the exact parallel: "But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by the heaven, nor by the earth, nor by any other oath; but let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay; that ye fall not under judgment" (Matthew 5:12).
We remember how the Master began the Sermon on the Mount with the declaration that even those who mourned and were persecuted and reviled and reproached were blessed, in spite of all their suffering and trial. Then we notice that James begins his epistle with the same paradoxical putting of the Christian faith, "Count it all joy, my brethren, when ye fall into manifold trials" (1:12, the American Revised Version margin). We remember how Jesus proceeded in His sermon to set forth the spiritual significance and the assured permanence of the law; and we notice that James treats the law with the same respect and puts upon it the same high value. He calls it "the perfect law" (1:25), "the royal law" (2:8), the "law of liberty" (2:12). We remember what Jesus said about forgiving others in order that we ourselves may be forgiven; and we know where James got his authority for saying, "Judgment is without mercy to him that hath showed no mercy" (2:13). We remember all that the Master said about good trees and corrupt trees being known by their fruits, "Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?" (Matthew 7:16-20). Then in the Epistle of James we find a like question, "Can a fig tree, my brethren, yield olives, or a vine figs?" (Matthew 3:12). We remember that the Master said, "Know ye that he is nigh, even at the doors" (Matthew 24:33). We are not surprised to find the statement here in James, "Behold, the judge standeth before the doors" (Matthew 5:9). These reminiscences of the sayings of the Master meet us on every page. It may be that there are many more of them than we are able to identify. Their number is sufficiently large, however, to show us that James is steeped in the truths taught by Jesus, and not only their substance but their phraseology constantly reminds us of Him.
IV. Date of the Epistle. There are those who think that the Epistle of James is the oldest epistle in the New Testament. Among those who favor an early date are Mayor, Plumptre, Alford, Stanley, Renan, Weiss, Zahn, Beyschlag, Neander, Schneckenburger, Thiersch, and Dods.
The reasons assigned for this conclusion are: (1) the general Judaic tone of the ep., which seems to antedate admission of the Gentiles in any alarming numbers into the church; but since the epistle is addressed only to Jews, why should the Gentiles be mentioned in it, whatever its date? and (2) the fact that Paul and Peter are supposed to have quoted from James in their writing; but this matter of quotation is always an uncertain one, and it has been ably argued that the quotation has been the other way about.
Others think that the epistle was written toward the close of James's life. Among these are Kern, Wiesinger, Schmidt, Bruckner, Wordsworth, and Farrar.
These argue (1) that the epistle gives evidence of a considerable lapse of time in the history of the church, sufficient to allow of a declension from the spiritual fervor of Pentecost and the establishment of distinctions among the brethren; but any of the sins mentioned in the epistle in all probability could have been found in the church in any decade of its history. (2) James has a position of established authority, and those to whom he writes are not recent converts but members in long standing; but the position of James may have been established from a very early date, and in an encyclical of this sort we could not expect any indication of shorter or longer membership in the church. Doubtless some of those addressed were recent converts, while others may have been members for many years. (3) There are references to persecutions and trials which fit the later rather than the earlier date; but all that is said on this subject might be suitable in any period of the presidency of James at Jerusalem. (4) There are indications of a long and disappointing delay in the Second Coming of the Lord in the repeated exhortation to patience in waiting for it; but on the other hand James says, "The coming of the Lord is at hand," and "The judge standeth before the doors" (5:7-9). The same passage is cited in proof of a belief that the immediate appearance of the Lord was expected, as in the earliest period of the church, and in proof that there had been a disappointment of this earlier belief and that it had been succeeded by a feeling that there was need of patience in waiting for the coming so long delayed.
It seems clear to us that there are no decisive proofs in favor of any definite date for the epistle. It must have been written before the martyrdom of James in the year 63 AD, and at some time during his presidency over the church at Jerusalem; but there is nothing to warrant us in coming to any more definite conclusion than that Davidson, Hilgenfeld, Baur, Zeller, Hausrath, von Soden, Julicher, Harnack, Bacon and others date the epistle variously in the post-Pauline period, 69-70 to 140-50 AD. The arguments for any of these dates fall far short of proof, rest largely if not wholly upon conjectures and presuppositions, and of course are inconsistent with any belief in the authorship by James.
V. History of the Epistle. Eusebius classed Jas among those whose authenticity was disputed by some. "James is said to be the author of the first of the so-called Catholic Epistles. But it is to be observed that it is disputed; at least, not many of the ancients have mentioned it, as is the case likewise with the epistle that bears the name of Jude, which is also one of the seven so-called Catholic Epistles. Nevertheless, we know that these also, with the rest, have been read publicly in most churches" (Historia Ecclesiastica, II, 23). Eusebius himself, however, quotes James 4:11 as Scripture and James 5:13 as spoken by the holy apostle. Personally he does not seem disposed to question the genuineness of the epistle. There are parallels in phraseology which make it possible that the epistle is quoted in Clement of Rome in the 1st century, and in Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, the Epistle to Diognetus, Irenaeus, and Hermas in the 2nd century. It is omitted in the canonical list of the Muratorian Fragment and was not included in the Old Latin version. Origen seems to be the first writer to quote the epistle explicitly as Scripture and to assert that it was written by James the brother of the Lord. It appears in the Peshitta version and seems to have been generally recognized in the East. Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nazianzus, Ephraem of Edessa, Didymus of Alexandria, received it as canonical. The 3rd Council of Carthage in 397 AD finally settled its status for the Western church, and from that date in both the East and the West its canonicity was unquestioned until the time of the Reformation.
Erasmus and Cajetan revived the old doubts concerning it. Luther thought it contradicted Paul and therefore banished it to the appendix of his Bible. "James," he says, "has aimed to refute those who relied on faith without works, and is too weak for his task in mind, understanding, and words, mutilates the Scriptures, and thus directly contradicts Paul and all Scriptures, seeking to accomplish by enforcing the law what the apostles successfully effect by love. Therefore, I will not place his Epistle in my Bible among the proper leadingbooks" (Werke, XIV, 148). He declared that it was a downright strawy epistle, as compared with such as those to the Romans and to the Galatians, and it had no real evangelical character. This judgment of Luther is a very hasty and regrettable one. The modern church has refused to accept it, and it is generally conceded now that Paul and James are in perfect agreement with each other, though their presentation of the same truth from opposite points of view brings them into apparent contradiction. Paul says, "By grace have ye been saved through faith .... not of works, that no man should glory" (Ephesians 2:8-9). "We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law" (Romans 3:28). James says, "Faith, if it have not works, is dead in itself" (Romans 2:17). "Ye see that by works a man is justified, and not only by faith (Romans 2:24). With these passages before him Luther said, "Many have toiled to reconcile Paul with James .... but to no purpose, for they are contrary, `Faith justifies'; `Faith does not justify'; I will pledge my life that no one can reconcile those propositions; and if he succeeds he may call me a fool" (Colloquia, II, 202).
It would be difficult to prove Luther a fool if Paul and James were using these words, faith, works, and justification, in the same sense, or even if each were writing with full consciousness of what the other had written. They both use Abraham for an example, James of justification by works, and Paul of justification by faith. How can that be possible? The faith meant by James is the faith of a dead orthodoxy, an intellectual assent to the dogmas of the church which does not result in any practical righteousness in life, such a faith as the demons have when they believe in the being of God and simply tremble before Him. The faith meant by Paul is intellectual and moral and spiritual, affects the whole man, and leads him into conscious and vital union and communion with God. It is not the faith of demons; it is the faith that redeems. Again, the works meant by Paul are the works of a dead legalism, the works done under a sense of compulsion or from a feeling of duty, the works done in obedience to a law which is a taskmaster, the works of a slave and not of a son. These dead works, he declares, can never give life. The works meant by James are the works of a believer, the fruit of the faith and love born in every believer's heart and manifest in every believer's life. The possession of faith will insure this evidence in his daily conduct and conversation; and without this evidence the mere profession of faith will not save him. The justification meant by Paul is the initial justification of the Christian life. No doing of meritorious deeds will make a man worthy of salvation. He comes into the kingdom, not on the basis of merit but on the basis of grace. The sinner is converted not by doing anything, but by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. He approaches the threshold of the kingdom and he finds that he has no coin that is current there. He cannot buy his way in by good works; he must accept salvation by faith, as the gift of God's free grace. The justification meant by James is the justification of any after-moment in the Christian life, and the final justification before the judgment throne. Good works are inevitable in the Christian life. There can be no assurance of salvation without them.
Paul is looking at the root; James is looking at the fruit. Paul is talking about the beginning of the Christian life; James is talking about its continuance and consummation. With Paul, the works he renounces precede faith and are dead works. With James, the faith he denounces is apart from works and is a dead faith.
Paul believes in the works of godliness just as much as James. He prays that God may establish the Thessalonians in every good work (2 Thessalonians 2:17). He writes to the Corinthians that "God is able to make all grace abound unto" them; that they, "having always all sufficiency in everything, may abound unto every good work" (2 Corinthians 9:8). He declares to the Ephesians that "we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them" (Ephesians 2:10). He makes a formal statement of his faith in Romans: God "will render to every man according to his works: to them that by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and incorruption, eternal life: but unto them that are factious, and obey not the truth, but obey unrighteousness, shall be wrath and indignation, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that worketh evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Greek; but glory and honor and peace to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek" (Romans 2:6-10). This is the final justification discussed by James, and it is just as clearly a judgment by works with Paul as with him.
On the other hand James believes in saving faith as well as Paul. He begins with the statement that the proving of our faith works patience and brings perfection (1:3,1). He declares that the prayer of faith will bring the coveted wisdom (1:6). He describes the Christian profession as a holding
"the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory" (2:1). He says that the poor as to the world are rich in faith, and therefore heirs to the kingdom (2:5). He quotes the passage from Genesis, "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness" (2:23), and he explicitly asserts that Abraham's "faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect" (2:22). The faith mentioned in all these passages is the faith of the professing Christian; it is not the faith which the sinner exercises in accepting salvation. James and Paul are at one in declaring that faith and works must go hand in hand in the Christian life, and that in the Christian's experience both faith without works is dead and works without faith are dead works. They both believe in faith working through love as that which alone will avail in Christ Jesus (Galatians 5:6). Fundamentally they agree. Superficially they seem to contradict each other. That is because they are talking about different things and using the same terms with different meanings for those terms in mind.
VI. Message of the Epistle to Our Times. 1. To the Pietist: There are those who talk holiness and are hypocrites; those who make profession of perfect love and yet cannot live peaceably with their brethren; those who are full of pious phraseology but fail in practical philanthropy. This epistle was written for them. It may not give them much comfort, but it ought to give them much profit. The mysticism that contents itself with pious frames and phrases and comes short in actual sacrifice and devoted service will find its antidote here. The antinomianism that professes great confidence in free grace, but does not recognize the necessity for corresponding purity of life, needs to ponder the practical wisdom of this epistle. The quietists who are satisfied to sit and sing themselves away to everlasting bliss ought to read this epistle until they catch its bugle note of inspiration to present activity and continuous good deeds. All who are long on theory and short on practice ought to steep themselves in the spirit of James; and since there are such people in every community and in every age, the message of the epistle will never grow old.
2. To the Sociologist: The sociological problems are to the front today. The old prophets were social reformers, and James is most like them in the New Testament. Much that he says is applicable to present-day conditions. He lays down the right principles for practical philanthropy, and the proper relationships between master and man, and between man and man. If the teachings of this epistle were put into practice throughout the church it would mean the revitalization of Christianity. It would prove that the Christian religion was practical and workable, and it would go far to establish the final brotherhood of man in the service of God.
3. To the Student of the Life and Character of Jesus:
The life of our Lord is the most important life in the history of the race. It will always be a subject of the deepest interest and study. Modern research has penetrated every contributory realm for any added light upon the heredity and the environment of Jesus. The people and the land, archaeology and contemporary history, have been cultivated intensively and extensively for any modicum of knowledge they might add to our store of information concerning the Christ. We suggest that there is a field here to which sufficient attention has not yet been given. James was the brother of the Lord. His epistle tells us much about himself. On the supposition that he did not exhort others to be what he would not furnish them an example in being, we read in this epistle his own character writ large. He was like his brother in so many things. As we study the life and character of James we come to know more about the life and character of Jesus.
Jesus and James had the same mother. From her they had a common inheritance. As far as they reproduced their mother's characteristics they were alike. They had the same home training. As far as the father in that home could succeed in putting the impress of his own personality upon the boys, they would be alike. It is noticeable in this connection that Joseph is said in the Gospel to have been "a just man" (Matthew 1:19 the King James Version), and that James came to be known through all the early church as James the Just, and that in his epistle he gives this title to his brother, Jesus, when he says of the unrighteous rich of Jerusalem, "Ye have condemned and killed the just" man (Matthew 5:6 the King James Version). Joseph was just, and James was just, and Jesus was just. The brothers were alike, and they were like the father in this respect. The two brothers seem to think alike and talk alike to a most remarkable degree. They represent the same home surroundings and human environment, the same religious training and inherited characteristics. Surely, then, all that we learn concerning James will help us the better to understand Jesus.
They are alike in their poetical insight and their practical wisdom. They are both fond of figurative speech, and it seems always natural and unforced. The discourses of Jesus are filled with birds and flowers and winds and clouds and all the sights and sounds of rural life in Palestine. The writings of James abound in reference to the field flowers and the meadow grass and the salt fountains and the burning wind and the early and the latter rain. They are alike in mental attitude and in spiritual alertness. They have much in common in the material equipment of their thought. James was well versed in the apocryphal literature. May we not reasonably conclude that Jesus was just as familiar with these books as he? James seems to have acquired a comparative mastery of the Greek language and to have had some acquaintance with the Greek philosophy. Would not Jesus have been as well furnished in these lines as he?
What was the character of James? All tradition testifies to his personal purity and persistent devotion, commanding the reverence and the respect of all who knew him. As we trace the various elements of his character manifesting themselves in his anxieties and exhortations in this epistle, we find rising before us the image of Jesus as well as the portrait of James. He is a single-minded man, steadfast in faith and patient in trials. He is slow to wrath, but very quick to detect any sins of speech and hypocrisy of life. He is full of humility, but ready to champion the cause of the oppressed and the poor. He hates all insincerity and he loves wisdom, and he believes in prayer and practices it in reference to both temporal and spiritual good. He believes in absolute equality in the house of God. He is opposed to anything that will establish any distinctions between brethren in their place of worship. He believes in practical philanthropy. He believes that the right sort of religion will lead a man to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. A pure religion in his estimation will mean a pure man. He believes that we ought to practice all that we preach.
As we study these characteristics and opinions of the younger brother, does not the image of his and our Elder Brother grow ever clearer before our eyes?
LITERATURE.
Works on Introduction: by Zahn, Weiss, Julicher, Salmon, Dods, Bacon, Bennett and Adeney; MacClymont, The New Testament and Its Writers; Farrar, The Messages of the Books, and Early Days of Christianity; Fraser, Lectures on the Bible; Godet, Biblical Studies. Works on the Apostolic Age: McGiffert, Schaff, Hausrath, Weizsacker. Commentaries: Mayor, Hort, Beyschlag, Dale, Huther, Plummer, Plumptre, Stier.
Doremus Almy Hayes
James, Protevangelium of
James, Protevangelium of - See APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS.
Jamin
Jamin - ja'-min (yamin, "right hand"):
(1) In Genesis 46:10; Exodus 6:15; Numbers 26:12; 1 Chronicles 4:24, a "son" (clan) of Simeon.
(2) In 1 Chronicles 2:27, a Judahite, "son" of Ram and grandson of Jerahmeel.
(3) In Nehemiah 8:7, a Levite (?), one of those who "caused the people to understand" the Torah when Ezra enforced it = "Iadinus" in 1 Esdras 9:48.
Jaminites
Jaminites - ja'-min-its (ha-yamini, coll. with article): In Numbers 26:12, descendants of Jamin ((1) above).
Jamlech
Jamlech - jam'-lek (yamlekh, "may he (God) cause to reign"): A "prince" or chief of the tribe of Simeon (1 Chronicles 4:34). If 4:41 refers to the preceding list, he lived in the time of Hezekiah.
Jamnia
Jamnia - jam'-ni-a.
See JABNEEL.
Jamnites
Jamnites - jam'-nits (Iamnitai): The inhabitants (2 Maccabees 12:9) of Jamnia, the ancient Jabneel, a town on the northern border of Judah near the sea. Its port and navy were burned by Judas Maccabeus (loc. cit.).
Janai
Janai - ja'-na-i, ja'-ni (ya`nay, "he answers"; as to whether final "y" is the third radical (letter), or may be taken as equivalent to the Divine name Yah, see HPN , 149-51):A chief of a family descended from Gad (1 Chronicles 5:12, the King James Version "Jaanai").
Jangling
Jangling - jan'-gling (mataiologia, "vain discourse" "babbling"): This word is not found in the American Standard Revised Version; once only in the King James Version (1 Timothy 1:6). The American Standard Revised Version has "vain talking," instead of "vain jangling," and evidently means proud, self-conceited talking against what God has revealed and against God Himself.
Janim
Janim - ja'-nim (yanim; the King James Version Janum): A place in the Hebron uplands named with Eshan and Beth-tappuah (Joshua 15:53); unidentified.
Jannai
Jannai - jan'-a-i (Iannai, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort, The New Testament in Greek; Ianna, Textus Receptus of the New Testament; the King James Version Janna); An ancestor of Jesus in Luke's genealogy, the 5th before Joseph, the husband of Mary (Luke 3:24).
Jannes and Jambres
Jannes and Jambres - jan'-ez, jam'-brez (Iannes kai Iambres, 2 Timothy 3:8):
1. Egyptian Magicians: These are the names of two magicians in ancient Egypt, who withstood Moses before Pharaoh. This is the only place where the names occur in the New Testament, and they are not mentioned in the Old Testament at all. In Exodus 7:11, 22 Egyptian magicians are spoken of, who were called upon by Pharaoh to oppose Moses and Aaron: "Then Pharaoh also called for the wise men and the sorcerers: and they also, the magicians of Egypt, did in like manner with their enchantments." Jannes and Jambres were evidently two of the persons referred to in this passage. It should be observed that the word translated here "magicians" occurs also in Genesis 41:8 in connection with Pharaoh's dreams: Pharaoh "sent and called for all the magicians of Egypt, and all the wise men thereof." the Revised Version margin reads for "magicians" "or sacred scribes." The Hebrew word is charTummim, and means sacred scribes who were skilled in the sacred writing, that is in the hieroglyphics; they were a variety of Egyptian priests. Jannes and Jambres were doubtless members of one or other of the various classes spoken of in the passages in Exodus and Genesis, the wise men, the sorcerers, and the magicians or sacred scribes.
2. Mentioned by Pliny and Others: Jannes and Jambres, one or both, are also mentioned by Pliny (23-79 AD), by Apuleius (circa 130 AD), both of whom speak of Moses and Jannes as famous magicians of antiquity. The Pythagorean philosopher Numenius (2nd century AD) speaks of Jannes and Jambres as Egyptian hierogrammateis, or sacred scribes.
3. Traditions: There are many curious Jewish traditions regarding Jannes and Jambres. These traditions, which are found in the Targum and elsewhere, are full of contradictions and impossibilities and anachronisms. They are to the effect that Jannes and Jambres were sons of Balaam, the soothsayer of Pethor. Notwithstanding this impossibility in the matter of date, they were said to have withstood Moses 40 years previously at the court of Pharaoh, to whom it was also said, they so interpreted a dream of that king, as to foretell the birth of Moses and cause the oppression of the Israelites. They are also said to have become proselytes, and it is added that they left Egypt at the Exodus, among the mixed multitude. They are reported to have instigated Aaron to make the golden calf. The traditions of their death are also given in a varying fashion. They were said to have been drowned in the Red Sea, or to have been put to death after the making of the golden calf, or during the slaughter connected with the name of Phinehas.
4. Origen's Statement: According to Origen (Comm. on Matthew 27:8) there was an apocryphal book--not yet rediscovered--called "The Book of Jannes and Jambres." Origen's statement is that in 2 Timothy 3:8 Paul is quoting from that book.
5. Derivation: In the Targumic literature "Mambres" occurs as a variant reading instead of "Jambres." It is thought that Jambres is derived from an Aramaic root, meaning "to oppose," the participle of which would be Mambres. The meaning of either form is "he who opposes." Jannes is perhaps a corruption of Ioannes or Iohannes (John).
John Rutherfurd
Jannes and Jambres, Book of
Jannes and Jambres, Book of - An apocryphal work condemned by Pope Gelasius.
See preceding article, JANNES AND JAMBRES.
Janoah
Janoah - ja-no'-a (yanoach, "resting-place"):
(1) A place named on the eastern boundary of Ephraim (Joshua 16:6 f; the King James Version "Janohah"). Eusebius, Onomasticon (s.v. "Jano") places it in Akrabattine, 12 Roman miles East of Neapolis (Nablus). This points definitely to Khirbet Yanun. On a hill near by, the Moslems show the Maqam of Neby Nun, the father of Joshua.
(2) A town in the uplands of Naphtali, mentioned as having been captured and depopulated by Tiglathpileser. It is named with Abel-beth-maacah and Kedesh (2 Kings 15:29). It may be identical with Yanuch, a village about 6 miles East of Tyre.
W. Ewing
Janum
Janum - ja'-num (Qere, yanum, Kethibh yanim).
See JANIM.
Japheth (1)
Japheth (1) - ja'-feth (yepheth; yapheth; Iapheth):
1. Etymologies of Japheth: This name, in Genesis 9:27, seems to be explained by the phrase "may God make wide (yapht, the American Standard Revised Version "enlarge") for Japheth," where yapht and Japheth are represented by the same consonants, but with different vowel-points. The root of yapht is pathach, "to make wide." This etymology, however, is not universally accepted, as the word-play is so obvious, and the association of Japheth with Shem ("dark") and Ham ("black") suggests a name on similar lines--either gentilic, or descriptive of race. Japheth has therefore been explained as meaning "fair," from yaphah, the non-Sem and non-Hamitic races known to the Jews being all more or less whiteskinned. The Targum of Onkelos agrees with the English Versions of the Bible, but that of Jonathan has "God shall beautify Japheth," as though from yaphah.
2. His Descendants: The immediate descendants of Japheth were seven in number, and are represented by the nations designated Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Mesech, and Tiras; or, roughly, the Armenians, Lydians, Medes, Greeks, Tibarenians, and Moschians, the last, Tiras, remaining still obscure. The sons of Gomer (Ashkenaz, Riphath and Togarmah) were all settled in the West Asian tract; while the sons of Javan (Elisah, Tarshish, Kittim and Dodanim or Rodanim) occupied the Mediterranean coast and the adjacent islands.
3. His Place among the Sons of Noah: In Genesis 9:27, as in other passages, Japheth occupies the Genesis 3:11-24rd place in the enumeration of the sons of Noah, but he is really regarded as the Genesis 2:11-25nd son, Ham being the youngest. In the genealogical table, however (Genesis 10:1 ff), the descendants of Japheth are given first, and those of Shem last, in order to set forth Semitic affinities at greater length. Though this would seem to indicate that the fair races were the least known to the Jews, it implies that the latter were well disposed toward them, for Japheth was (ultimately) to dwell in the tents of Shem, and therefore to take part in Shem's spiritual privileges.
4. Japheth and Iapetos: It seems unlikely that the Greek giant-hero, Iapetos, father of Prometheus, who was regarded by the Greeks as the father of the human race, has any connection with the Hebrew Japheth. The original of the Hebrew record probably belongs to a date too early to admit borrowing from the Greek, and if the name had been borrowed by the Greeks from the Hebrews, a nearer form might be expected.
See SHEM; HAM; TABLE OF NATIONS.
T. G. Pinches
Japheth (2)
Japheth (2) - ja'-feth (Iapheth): A region mentioned only in Judith 2:25, where no particulars are given which may lead to its identification. Holofernes "came unto the borders of Japheth, which were toward the south, over against Arabia."
Japhia (1)
Japhia (1) - ja-fi'-a, jaf'-i-a (yaphia`, perhaps "tall"; compare Arabic; Iephtha):
(1) King of Lachish, one of the 5 "kings of the Amorites" who allied themselves together in an expedition against Gibeon on account of its treaty with the Israelites (Joshua 10:3-5). After their discomfiture by Joshua in the battle of Beth-horon (Joshua 10:10), "one of the most important in the history of the world" (Stanley), they fled and hid themselves in the cave at Makkedah (Joshua 10:16). As Joshua passed, he was informed of this, but, unwilling to delay his pursuit of the fugitives, he ordered great stones to be rolled unto the mouth of the cave, leaving a guard in charge (Joshua 10:17 f). On the completion of his victory, Joshua returned to Makkedah and commanded the Israelites to bring forth the imprisoned kings, and summoned the chiefs of his army to plant their feet upon their necks. Then he put them to death; and after he had hung their bodies on 5 trees, he ordered the Israelites in the evening to take them down and cast them into the cave (Joshua 10:22-27).
(2) Septuagint Iephies, Iaphie): One of the sons of David who were born to him at Jerusalem (2 Samuel 5:15; 1 Chronicles 3:7; 14:6).
James Crichton
Japhia (2)
Japhia (2) - ja-fi'-a, jaf'-i-a (yaphia`): A town on the southern boundary of Zebulun named with Chisloth-tabor and Daberath (Joshua 19:12). It is represented by the modern Yafa, about 1 1/2 miles Southwest of Nazareth, near the foot of the hills. It was one of the places fortified by Josephus (Vita, 45; BJ, II, xx, 6).
Japhlet
Japhlet - jaf'-let (yaphleT, "he escapes"(?)): In 1 Chronicles 7:32, 33, a "son" of Heber, an Asherite.
Japhleti
Japhleti - jaf'-le-ti, jaf-le'-ti: the King James Version in Joshua 16:3, where Hebrew is ha-yaphleTi, "the Japhletites," the Revised Version (British and American), a clan said to border on the territory of Joseph, but not mentioned elsewhere.
Japho
Japho - ja'-fo: the King James Version and the American Revised Version margin in Joshua 19:46 for JOPPA (which see).
Jar
Jar - jar.
See BARREL.
Jarah
Jarah - ja'-ra (ya`rah, "honey-comb" (?)): A descendant of King Saul (1 Chronicles 9:42); but the Septuagint's Codices Vaticanus and Alexandrinus, have Iada = ya`dah, a name found in Septuagint of 1 Chronicles 8:36, where Massoretic Text has yeho`addah, Jehoaddah. Some Hebrew manuscripts have ya`dah in 1 Chronicles 9:42, and it should probably be accepted as the correct reading there, for ya`dah = Jehoaddah yeho`addah, linguistically; compare Jonathan and Jehonathan, etc.
Jareb
Jareb - ja'-reb, jar'-eb (yarebh, "let him contend"; Septuagint Iareim):
1. Obscurity of the Name: Is mentioned twice in Hos (5:13; 10:6) as an Assyrian king who received tribute from Israel. We do not, however, know of an Assyrian king of that name, or of such a place as is indicated by "the king of Jareb" (5:13 King James Version, margin). Sayce (HCM, 417) thinks Jareb may possibly be the earlier name of Sargon who took Samaria in 722 BC, as the passages in which it appears seem to relate to the last struggles of the Northern Kingdom. This conjecture he bases on the probability that the successor of Shalmaneser IV, following the example of other usurpers of the Assyrian throne before him, assumed the name of Sargon. Those who hold that Hosea's prophecies are probably not later than 734 BC reject this view.
2. Meaning of the Word: If we take the Hebrew text in Hosea 5:13 as it stands (melekh yarebh), Jareb cannot be regarded as the name of a person, owing to the absence of the article before melekh, "king," which is always inserted in such a case. It is probably an epithet or nickname applied to the Assyrian king, as is suggested by the Revised Version margin ("a king that should contend") and the King James Version margin ("the king that should plead"), being derived from the ribh, "to strive." The rendering would then be "King Combat," "King Contentious," indicating Assyria's general hostility to Israel and the futility of applying for help to that quarter against the will of Yahweh. Some suggest that for melekh yarebh we should read malki rabh (i being the old nominative termination), or melekh rabh, "Great King," a title frequently applied to Assyrian monarchs. Others, following the Septuagint, would read melekh ram, "High King."
3. Historical Reference: The historical reference, if it be to any recorded incident, may be to the attempt of Menahem, king of Israel in 738 BC, to gain over the Assyrians by a large subsidy to Pul, who assumed the name of Tiglath-pileser (2 Kings 15:19). In this case, as both Epraim and Judah are mentioned in the protasis, we should have to suppose that Ephraim made application on behalf of both kingdoms. If "Judah" be inserted before "sent" to complete the parallel, then the clause would be interpreted of Ahaz, king of Judah, who offered a heavy bribe to Tiglath-pileser to help him to withstand the combined attack of Rezin of Syria and Pekah of Israel (2 Kings 16:7 f). But perhaps there may be no particular allusions in the two clauses of the apodosis, but only a reference to a general tendency on the part of both kingdoms to seek Assyrian aid.
4. Other Views: Cheyne would make a violent change in the verse. He would substitute "Israel" for "Judah" as warranted by Hosea 12:2, insert "Israel" before "sent," change 'ashshur,"Assyria," into mitstsur, the North Arabian land of Mucri, "references to which underlie many passages in the Old Testament," and for melekh yarebh, he would read melekh `arabhi, "king of Arabia." For other views see ICC .
James Crichton
Jared
Jared - ja'-red (yeredh, "descent"; pausal form, yaredh, in Genesis 5:15; 1 Chronicles 1:2, hence, English Versions of the Bible "Jared" for "Jered"; Iared): In Genesis 5:15-20; 1 Chronicles 1:2; Luke 3:37, son of Mahalaleel and father of Enoch. The King James Version has "Jered" in 1 Chronicles 1:2.
The name is supposed by Budde to denote a degeneration of the human race, the first five generations being righteous, their successors not, except Enoch and Noah. The name has been identified with that of Irad (iradh), Genesis 4:18. See Skinner, Gen, 117, 129, 131.
Jaresiah
Jaresiah - jar-e-si'-a: the King James Version for JAARESHIAH (which see).
Jarha
Jarha - jar'-ha (yarcha`, meaning unknown): An Egyptian slave of Shesham, about Eli's time (compare HPN , 235), who married his master's daughter, and became the founder of a house of the Jerahmeelites (1 Chronicles 2:34 ff).