this sin the population was decimated by sword and plague. Aaron, when taxed by his brother for his conduct in this matter, attempted to excuse himself by casting the whole blame upon the people, and pleading the necessity of circumstances (Exod. xxxii.).

During his long absence in the mountain, Moses had received instructions regarding the ecclesiastical establishment, the tabernacle [TABERNACLE], and the priesthood [PRIESTS], which he soon afterwards proceeded to execute. Under the new institution Aaron was to be high-priest, and his sons and descendants priests; and the whole tribe to which he belonged, that of Levi, was set apart as the sacerdotal or learned caste [LEVITES. Accordingly, after the tabernacle had been completed, and every preparation made for the commencement of actual service, Aaron and his sons were consecrated by Moses, who anointed them with the holy oil and invested them with the sacred garments. The high-priest applied himself assiduously to the duties of his exalted office, and during the period of nearly forty years that it was filled by him, his name seldom comes under our notice. But his elevation was soon followed by a most afflictive event. His two eldest sons, Nadab and Abihu, were struck dead for daring, seemingly when in a state of partial inebriety, to conduct the service of God in an irregular manner, by offering incense with unlawful fire. On this occasion it was enjoined that the priests should manifest none of the ordinary signs of mourning for the loss of those who were so dear to them. To this heavy stroke Aaron bowed in silence (Lev. x. 1-11).

Aaron would seem to have been liable to some fits of jealousy at the superior influence and authority of his brother; for he joined in, or at least sanctioned the invidious conduct of his sister Miriam [MIRIAM], who, after the wife of Moses had been brought to the camp by Jethro, became apprehensive for her own position, and cast reflections upon Moses, much calculated to damage his influence, on account of his marriage with a foreigner-always an odious thing among the Hebrews. For this, Miriam was struck with temporary leprosy, which brought the high-priest to a sense of his sinful conduct, and he sought and obtained forgiveness (Num. xii.).

Some twenty years after (B.c. 1471), when the camp was in the wilderness of Paran, a formidable conspiracy was organized against the sacerdotal authority exercised by Aaron and his sons, and the civil authority exercised by Moses. This conspiracy was headed by chiefs of influence and station-Korah, of the tribe of Levi, and Dathan and Abiram, of the tribe of Reuben [KoRAH]. But the divine appointment was attested and confirmed by the signal destruction of the conspirators and the next day, when the people assembled tumultuously and murmured loudly at the destruction which had overtaken their leaders and friends, a fierce pestilence broke out among them, and they fell by thousands on the spot. When this was seen, Aaron, at the command of Moses, filled a censer with fire from the altar, and, rushing forward to the point where life had ended and death had not begun, he stood there, and the plague was stayed where he stood. This was in fact another attestation of the Divine appointment; and, for its further confirmation, as regarded

Aaron and his family, the chiefs of the several tribes were required to deposit their staves, and with them was placed that of Aaron for the tribe of Levi. They were all laid up together over night in the tabernacle, and in the morning it was found that, while the other rods remained as they were, that of Aaron had budded, blossomed, and yielded the fruit of almonds. The rod was preserved in the tabernacle, as an authentic evidence of the divine appointment of the Aaronic family to the priesthood-which, indeed, does not appear to have been ever afterwards disputed (Num. xvii. 1).

Aaron was not allowed to enter the Promised Land, on account of the distrust which he, as well as his brother, manifested when the rock was stricken at Meribah (Num. xx. 8-13). His death indeed occurred very soon after that event. For when the host arrived at Mount Hor, in going down the Wady Arabah [ARABAH], in order to double the mountainous territory of Edom, the Divine mandate came that Aaron, accompanied by his brother Moses and by his son Eleazer, should ascend to the top of that mountain in the view of all the people; and that he should there transfer his pontifical robes to Eleazer, and then die. He was 123 years old when his career thus strikingly terminated; and his son and his brother buried him in a cavern of the mountain [HOR, MOUNT]. The Israelites mourned for him thirty days; and on the first day of the month Ab, the Jews still hold a fast in commemoration of his death.

AARONITES, the descendants of Aaron, who served as priests at the sanctuary (Num. iv. 5, seq.; 1 Chron. xii. 27; xxvii. 17).

AB (, father) is found as the first member of several compound Hebrew proper names, the etymology and meaning of which may be explained by a few remarks on the laws of their construction. This is the more necessary, as Leusden, Hiller, and Simonis, the authors of the three most celebrated Onomastica Sacra, as well as the many who blindly follow them, indifferently take the former or latter member of such compounds to be in the relation of genitive to the other, i. e. consider it equally legitimate to say, Abner means father of light, or light of the father. Nevertheless, may be laid down as an incontestable canon-being founded not merely on an accessory law, but on one of the characteristic peculiarities of the Syro-Arabian languages (that is, on the state construct)—that, in all cases in which a compound name consists of two nouns, one of which is to be considered in the relation of genitive to the other, that one must invariably be the latter. Abner, therefore, can only mean father of light.

This error appears to have arisen (besides the want of sure principles of construction) from the inability to appreciate the metaphorical sense in which the Hebrews use the terms father, son, &c. The name Abigail, father of joy, appeared inexplicable as the name of a woman; and therefore those scholars thought it allowable to sacrifice the construction to the necessities of the sense. And yet it is not difficult to conceive the process by which the idea of a natural father became modified into that of author, cause, source (as when it is said, 'has the rain a father? Job

xxxviii. 28); nor that, when once the language had sanctioned the use of father as equivalent to source, the word might be sometimes treated as an abstract, in idea, and be applied without gross incongruity to a woman.

As the Ethiopic, and especially the Arabic languages very frequently use father in the sense of possessor (as father of white, a name for milk), some have been disposed to vindicate the same privilege to Hebrew also. Thus Gesenius seems to have entertained this view, when he rendered Abigail by pater exultationis, i. e. hilaris,' in his Thesaurus. In the German edition of his Manual, however, he has explained it by whose father is joy. Into the question as to the principle involved in the latter of his modes of interpretation, there is no need to enter; the immediate object of this article being solely to define the relation of the two nouns in a compound proper name, when one of them is considered dependent as a genitive on the other.

Very much light yet remains to be thrown on compound Hebrew proper names, by a study of those of the same class in Arabic. The innumerable compound prænomina and cognomina which the Arabs bestow not only on men, but on beasts and inanimate objects, furnish parallels to almost every peculiarity observable in Hebrew; and although no example may be found in which a woman is called father of joy, yet the principle of the metaphorical use of terms of relationship, as the first element in a name, will receive ample illustration, and be brought within the reach of our occidental conceptions. (See an instructive paper on the Prænomina of the Arabs, by Kosegarten, in Ewald's Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, i. 297-317.)-J. N. AB (N; 'Aßßá, Joseph. Antiq. iv. 4; the Macedonian Aŵos) is the Chaldee name of that month which is the fifth of the ecclesiastical and eleventh of the civil year of the Jews. The name was first introduced after the Babylonian captivity, and does not occur in the Old Testament, in which this month is only mentioned by its numeral designation as the fifth. It commenced with the new moon of our August (the reasons for this statement will be given in the article MONTHS), and always had 30 days. This month is pre-eminent in the Jewish calendar as the period of the most signal national calami

ties. The 1st is memorable for the death of Aaron (Num. xxxiii. 38). The 9th is the date assigned by Moses Cotzensis (cited in Wagensel's Sota, p. 736) to the following events: the declaration that no one then adult, except Joshua and Caleb, should enter into the Promised Land (Num. xiv. 30); the destruction of the first Temple by Nebuchadnezzar (to these first two the fast of the fifth month,' in Zech. vii. 5; viii. 19, is supposed to refer; yet the tract Pesachim, cited in Reland's Antiq. Sacr., iv. 10, asserts that the latter was the only fast observed during the Captivity); the destruction of the second Temple by Titus; the devastation of the city Bettar (2); and the slaughter of Ben Cozibah (Bar Cocâb), and of several thousand Jews there; and the ploughing up of the foundations of the Temple by Turnus Rufus the two last of which happened in the time of Hadrian.

With regard to the destruction of the first Temple, although there is no doubt that the Jews commemorate that event by a fast on the 9th of Ab, yet the seventh is the date given for it in 2 Kings xxv. 8 (where, however, the Syriac and Arabic versions read the ninth), and the tenth that assigned in Jer. lii. 12. Josephus, however, in mentioning that the Herodian Temple was burnt on the tenth of Lous, expressly asserts that it was on the same day of the month on which the first Temple was destroyed (Bell. Jud. vi. 4, 5). Buxtorf, in his Synag. Jud. ch. xxx., reconciles the discrepancy between the 9th as the day of commemoration and the 10th as the date of the event, by saying that the conflagration began on the former day. Compare also Wagenseil's Sota, p. 942.

In a calendar ascribed to the celebrated astronomer Rab Ada, who lived in the third century, which Bodenschatz has given in his Kirchliche Verfassung der Juden, ii. 106, the 15th is the day appointed for the festival of the Evopopla, in which the wood for the burnt-offering was stored up in the court of the Temple, to which Nehemiah alludes in x. 34, and xiii. 31. Some place this festival on another day, or even month; or assume, on the authority of the treatise Taanith, that nine particular families brought wood on nine separate days, four of which, however, occur in Ab (Otho, Lexicon Rabbin. p. 380). The election of particular families accords with the statement in Nehemiah. Never theless, Josephus, speaking of this festival, says, èv ý nâσw ělos vλnν проσ¢éрew (Вell. Jud. ii. 17); and the date of the day succeeding it, which he mentions in the next section, fixes its celebration, in his time, on the 14th of the month. It is, however, extremely difficult to distinguish the original from the later forms in any rite of a people so prone to multiply its ceremonial ob

servances as the Jews were.

18th is a fast in memory of the western lamp Lastly, the Megillat Taanith states that the going out in the Temple in the time of Ahaz.

It may be conjectured that this refers to the ex2 Chron. xxix. 7, as a part of Ahaz's attempts to tinction of the lamps' which is mentioned in suppress the Temple service. For an inquiry into what is meant by the western or evening lamp, see the article CANDLESTICK.-J. N.

ABADDON, or APOLLYON (N, destruction; 'Aßaddar in Rev. ix. 11, where it is rendered by the Greek 'ATоλλówv, destroyer). The former is the Hebrew name, and the latter the Greek, for the angel of death, described (Rev. ix. 11) as the king and chief of the Apocalyptic locusts under the fifth trumpet, and as the angel of the abyss or bottomless pit.' This personification is peculiar to the present text. In the Bible, and in every Rabbinical instance that occurs to us, the word 1728 (abaddon) means destruction (Job xxxi. 12), or the place of destruction, i. e. the subterranean world, Hades, the region of the dead (Job xxvi. 6; xxviii. 22; Prov. xv. 11). It is in fact the second of the seven names which the Rabbins apply to that region; and they deduce it particularly from Ps. lxxxviii. 11, Shall thy loving kindness be declared in the grave, or thy faithfulness in (abaddon) destruction?' [HADES.]