SOW. An unclean animal, the symbol of impurity, 2 Peter ii. 22.

It was held in great abomination among the Jews, so that their enemies, such as Antiochus Epiphanes, wishing to affront them, introduced swine among them.

Our Lord, in Matt. vii. 6, seems, under the name of swine, to have had a certain description of characters in view. Men devoted to sensuality, were disposed to reject the self-denying precepts of the gospel.

SPITTING. Matt. xxvi. 67, "Then did they spit in his face;" predicted by our Lord himself, which shewed that he laid stress on that part of his ignominious usage, in Luke xviii. 32.

"He shall be spitefully treated, and spitted on ;" predicted long before by the prophet Isaiah, speaking in the person of the Messiah, ch. 1. 6, " My face I hid not from shame and spitting ;" an instance, as Lowth observes, of the utmost contempt and detestation.

It was ordered by the law of Moses, in a certain case (see Deut. xxv. 9), as a severe punishment, carrying with it a lasting disgrace.

Among the Medes it was highly offensive to spit in any one's presence, Herod. i. 99. And so likewise among the Persians, Xenoph. i. p. 18.

Job makes it a complaint in his affliction, ch. xxx. 10,

"They abhor me, they flee far from me;

They forbear not to spit in my face."

And Jehovah said unto Moses, "If her father had but spit in her face, should she not be ashamed seven

days?" Num. xii. 14; on which place Chardin remarks," that spitting before or spitting upon the ground, in speaking of any one's actions, is through the east an expression of extreme detestation."

If spitting in a person's presence was such an indignity, how much more spitting in his face?

It was a mark of thorough contumely. Petronius, Satyric, p. 51, says, "familiæque sordidissimam partem ac me conspui jubet." And a little after he says, "verberibus sputisque extra januam ejectus." And so Seneca de Const. Sap. cap. 1. "A rostris usque ad arcum Fabianum per seditiosæ factionis manus tractus, voces improbas et sputa, et omnes alias insanæ multitudinis contumelias pertulisset." And Dio. J. 4, says, "But Fulvia taking the head, threw it down with bitter words and spitting." And the Christians in the east were wont to spit on the idols of the Gentiles, as a mark of hatred and contempt. So Gregory Abulphar, in his Hist. Dynast. writes, p. 265, “Tiphurius a Christian scribe was hostile to Honainus, and they met at one time in the house of a certain Christian in the city of Bagdad, and there was an image of Christ and his disciples, and a lamp burning before the image. And Honainus said to the master of the house, Why do you waste the oil? not Christ nor his disciples, but an image. And Tiphurius said, If they are not worthy of veneration, spit upon them; and he did spit."

This is

There is a passage in Seneca which shews that spitting was an indignity offered to men condemned to punishment. Thus, "Aristides was led from Athens to punishment, whom whoever he met, he cast down his eyes and groaned; not as if animad

verting on this just man, but as if he found fault with justice itself. Yet there was one person found who spat in his face."

When the ancients happened to meet an insane person, or an epileptic, it was customary to spit at them. See Theophrastus, Characters, cap. 17, Pliny, lib. 28, cap. 4.

STAFF. The staff of bread, on which man leans for support, Lev. xxvi. 26; Ezek. iv. 16, &c. Thus Lucretius,

"Et quoniam non est quasi quod suffulciat artus, Debile fit corpus, languescunt omnia membra,

Brachia palpebræque cadunt, poplitesque procumbunt."

Hosea iv. 12,

66
"My people ask counsel at their stocks,

And their staff declareth to them."

L. 4, v. 948.

On one

This refers to the divination by rods or staves, which was anciently practised in the East. staff was written, God bids; on the other, God forbids. See Pocock; and under Arrow.

STAR. Stars are symbols of persons in eminent station, and very fitly so, from the height of their own position. Thus, the Star out of Jacob, Num. xxiv. 17, is coupled with, or explained by, the Sceptre out of Israel. In Gen. xxxvii. 9, Joseph's brethren are described as eleven stars, their subsequent renown as patriarchs justifying the appellation. In Num. xxiv. 17, just quoted, where the Hebrew and Greek have a star, the Chaldee expounds it, "A king shall arise out of the house of Jacob," which interpreters apply first to David, and afterwards to the Messiah. In allusion to this prophecy, that infamous Jewish

impostor Bar-cocab, or, as the Romans called him, Barchochebas, who appeared in the reign of Adrian, assumed this pompous title, "Son of a Star," as the name implies, as if he were the Star out of Jacob; but this false Messiah was destroyed by the Emperor's general, Julius Severus, with an almost incredible number of his deluded followers.

Stars were the symbols of a Deity," the star of your god Chiun," Amos v. 26. Probably the figure of a star was fixed on the head of the image of a false god. A Greek scholiast on the place says, "Erat simulachrum Moabitarum cum gemma pellucida et eximia in summa fronte ad figuram Luciferi." Chiun was a name for Saturn, as Spencer affirms.

Plutarch, de Isid. et Osir. tells us, the Egyptian priests affirm of their tutelary deities, not only of those that are immortal, but likewise of their deified heroes, "that their souls illuminate the stars in heaven." A star, therefore, was often used in the Egyptian hieroglyphics, as a symbol of their men-gods. This, as well as rays of light, was their common insignia all over the world. Lucan vii. v. 458,

"Fulminibus manes, radiis ornabit et astris."

We are told the same by Suetonius, in his Life of Julius Cæsar: "In deorum numerum (Cæsar) relatus est," &c.; i. e. ❝he was ranked among the gods," not only by the words of a decree, but in the real persuasion of the vulgar. For during the games, which his heir Augustus gave in honour of his memory, a comet blazed for seven days together, rising always about eleven o'clock. It was supposed to be the soul of Cæsar, now received into heaven; and for

this reason a star was added to the crown of his statue."

When Joseph said, Gen. xxxvii. 9, “I have dreamed a dream, and behold the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me," his father, understanding his words in their symbolical and true meaning, rebuked him, and said to him, "Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed bow down ourselves to thee?" But as the heavenly bodies, mentioned by Joseph, could not appear, even in a dream, as making obeisance to him, we may believe that he saw in his dream, not the heavenly bodies, but a visionary representation of his parents and brethren making obeisance to him; and that, in relating this to his father, he chose, from modesty, to express it in symbolical, rather than in plain language. Besides, as there never was any collection of stars called the eleven stars, the application which Jacob made of that appellation to Joseph's eleven brethren, shows clearly that the word star, in common speech, was used to signify the father of a tribe. Macknight, vol. iii. p. 496.

In Daniel viii. 10, the stars seem to denote the princes and nobles of a kingdom, who were thrown down and stamped upon by the power, designated by the "Little Horn." "Stellarum nomine (says Glassius, p. 780) viri illustres et præcipui intelliguntur, qui administratione sua in Ecclesia et Republica aliis præluxerunt."

In Rev. viii. 10, 11, a star is said to fall from heaven, by which, in all probability, some king is to be understood as rebelling against another power. This star is called Wormwood, on account of its bit