J. Hastings.
DEFILEMENT.— See Unclkanness.
DEFY. — When Goliath ' defied ' the armies of Israel, it is probable that the translators of AV understood him to challenge them to combat, though the Heb. (I'm) means to taunt or scorn (so 1 S 17'»- ">■ »• "• «, 2 S 21=' 239, 1 Ch 20'). But when Balaam is summoned to Balak's camp with the words (Nu 23'- »),
' Come, curee me Jacob, And come, defj' Israel,'
it is manifest that 'defy' is used in some other and now obsol. sense. The HeV. (c;;) means to be indignant, then express indignation against one, denounce, curse ; and that is the meaning the parallelism would require (LXX {iriKaTipaaai., Vulg. detestare, Luth. schelten). Now ' defy ' (from late Lat. dis -Jldare, dis - trust) primarily means to renounce allegiance or affiance, to pronounce all bonds of faith and fellowship dissolved (whence war would generally follow, and so the modern sense of the word). Thus Tindale's tr. of 1 Co 12' 'no man speakynge in the sprete of God de- iieth Jesus.' 'This is probably the sense in wliich ' defy ' should be taken in Nu, since it is Tindale's word ; though there is a meaning of the word that is closer to the Greek, viz. ' despise,' ' set at nought,' as Olde (1549), £rasm. Par. Thess. 4, 'I detie ail thinges in comparison of the gospel of Christ'; and a rare use nearer still, viz. 'curse,' as Hiill (1548), Chron. 526, ' The faire damoselles defied that dale [at Agincourt] in the whiche thei had lost their paramors. ' Geneva and Douay have ' detest ' in its old sense of ' denounce. '
J. Hastings. DEGREE. — Late Lat. degradus (de down, gradua a step) gave Fr. rft'yr^, whence Eng. 'degree.' So a 'degree' is simply a step, whether up or down, and esp. one of a flight of steps, or the rung of a ladder. Thus Chaucer, Romaunt of Rose, 486 — ' Into that gardyn, wel y-wrought,
Who-so that me coude have brought,
By laddre, or eiles by depree,
It wolde wel have lyked lue.*
And Shaks. Jul. Ccesar, II. i. 26 —
' But when he once attains the upmost round. He then unto the ladder turns his back, Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degree* By which he did ascend.'
This is the meaning of 'degree' in AV wherever it occurs in the plur. : the ref. being either to the degrees of Ahaz^s dial (2 K 20'"'" '"'*'• ", Is 38"^, see Dial) or to the Songs of Degrees (Ps 120-134 titles, see PsALMS) and the Heb. .ij-j;? mndlAh.
DEGllEES, SO^■GS OF
DELICACY
587
But from signifying a step literally, ' degree ' soon passed to express also a step in rank, whence 1 Ch 15" 'their brethren of the second d.' (c-jfsn, lit. ' the seconds ') ; 17" ' a man of high degree (ciKn ■"i"i'i:r), Ps OS* ' men of high d.' (tJ-N-'i;) ; 62" ' men of low il.' (c-iij-ir), Sir 11' ' wisdom lifteth up the head of him that is of low d.' (rarfii'is : so Lk P-, Ja 1'); 1 Ti 3" ' they that have used the otlice of a deacon will purchase to themselves a good d.' (^a9/i6s, lit. ' step,' RV ' standing ').
In the last pusaffe the meaning is ^uit« exceptiODAl in the Eng. m in the Greek. The Eng. word is WycUf's, who has been tollowed by all the versions except KV. It is simply a literal tr. ot the Vulg. gradut, itself a literal tr. of the Greek. The Gr. word occurs here onlv in NT. In the LXX it is used either as tr. o( iTia'uIdh (2 K 209 i.t«. 10 H>. ii) or o( miphtdn (1 S 5»), the (omier being the 'steps' or 'degrees' of Ahaz's dial, the latter the * threshold ' of Dagon's temple : it is also found once in Apocr. (Sir 6*i) for the ' steps ' of the wise man's door. See further Humphrey's note in loc. (Cainb. Bible), and Hort, EccUtia (1897), p. 202. J. HASTINGS.
DEGREES, SONGS OF.— See Psalms.
DEHAITES (AV Dehavites, Kim, ^iri K-rn, Ezr 4'). — The Dehaites were among the peoples settled in Samaria by Osnappar, i.e. probably tlie AssjT. king Assurbanipal. They joined with their fellow-colonists in sending the letter written by Kehum and Shimshai to king Artaxerxes, to com- plain of the attempt made bv the Jews to rebuild the walls of Jeru.salem (probabW about 447 B.C.). The name has been connected with that of a nomadic Persian tribe, the Adoi, mentioned in Herod, i. 125 (Rawlinson), or with the name of the city Du'-fla, mentioned on Assyrian contract- tablets (Fried. Uelitzsch) ; but according to S'jhrader these identifications are very doubtful. The LXX reads t^auatm (A), but in B the text runs Zouo'ui'axo'oi ot elalv 'HXa^iaioi (for ' the Shushan- chites, the Dehaites, the Elamites ' ; cf . Meyer, Judenthum, 36). H. A. White.
DEHORT.— Only 1 Mac 9» ' they dehorted hiin, saying. We shall never be able ' (i.iro(npi<pw) ; and in the headings of some chapters. ' Dehort ' (fr. Lat. dehortari) is the opposite of ' exhort.' ' " Exhort " continues, but " dehort," a word whose place " dis- suade " does not exactly supply, has escaped us ' * — Trench, Eng. Pa.H and Pres.'' 179. Ussher (1656) in Ann. iv. 24 has 'Exhorting them to observe the law of (iod . . . and dehortin" them the breach of that law.' J. HASTINGS.