Following these in the Dt passage MT has 273 nereb, ‘sword’; but probably we should read 375 (as in margin of AV, RV) = ‘drought,’ either a disease attended with dryness, or else simply drought of the earth. The latter is more prob- able, as it is followed by the words shiddaphén and yérakén, tr. here as in Am 4° and Hag 2!7 by ‘blasting and mildew,’ penal destruction of the fruits of the earth. For 207 as a disease see Zec 11”, It is tr. ‘a sword’ both in AV and RV; but from the effects given in the pas- sage, wasting of the arm and shrivelling of the eye, it is plainly such a condition as the wasting paralysis described below under diseases of the nervous system (but see Nowack, Comm. ad loc.).
Two other words are used to describe wasting diseases. Man chastened by God for his iniquity has his attractiveness consumed (app masa, ‘melt away’) as by a moth (Ps 39" (Heb. 13]. The same condition is named pap (makak, ‘ fester’) in Zec 14%, This disease is threatened against the enemies of Jerusalem, and is to consume their flesh, their eyes, and their tongues. This is the ‘pining away’ to which sinful Israel is condemned (Ly 26°, Ez 24% 331°), and the same term is applied to festering wounds in Ps 38°, where it is associ- ated with burning pain in the loins, weakness, violent action of the heart, etc. Much of the description is plainly figurative of mental and spiritual disquiet; but the imagery might well be taken from an attack of confluent smallpox, with its disfiguring and blinding effects, causing the repulsion even of lovers Til friends. There is little reason to doubt the antiquity of smallpox. Philo in his life of Moses (ed. Turnebus, 622 A.B.) describes the sixth plague of Egypt as beginning with a red eruption whose spots ee swollen and pustular, appearing as if they had been boiled with the sudden heat. The sufferers were worn down with anguish from these inflammations and ulcers. ‘For to one looking upon one of these cases in which the pustules, confluent into a mass, were spread over the body and limbs, it appeared as if they formed a continuous ulcer from tend to foot.’ Mas‘udi (in the Meadows of Gold, ed. Meynard, 111.) states that in A.D. 370 smallpox broke out among the Arabs for the first time, but that the disease had been known among the Jews before that time. (See also Hirsch, Sydenham Soc. Tr. i. 125).
The word πὸ (kalah, ‘to come to an end,’ ‘ to vanish away’) is used in Ps 71° of strength failing in old age, and in Job 19% 33" of flesh becoming emaciated through illness (see Comm. ad loc.).
Pestilence or plague is also used as descriptive of a violent disease, extremely fatal, and sent as a punishment on large masses of people. Pestilence
MEDICINE
is the tr. of Ὅτ deber. ‘ Plague,’ as far as it refers to these epidemics, is the rendering of several words: περ maggéephah, in Nu 1457 16%: 49. 60 258. 9. 18 961 3116, 1Ch 915. 2Ch 21%, Ps 106%-™, Zec 1412; az makkah, in Ly 26, Nu 118, Dt 28; 33 negeph, in Nu 16%: 47, Jos 2917, it is y33 nega’, in Ex 11}, 1S 64, Ps 91° The fear of this deber was used as an argument by Moses to Pharaoh to induce him to let Israel go (Ex 94). With this disease God threatens rebellious Israel repeatedly, Nu 14”, Dt 28"; and there were at least four outlreaks during the wanderings in the wilderness, just as in later years it has appeared among the hordes of Mohammedan pilgrims on their way to Mecca. At Kibroth-hattaavah (Nu 11%) it broke out suddenly while the Israelites were consuming the quails; it is quite conceivable that these birds may have come from some plague-stricken Arabian district and conveyed the infection, as rats, oxen, deer, and others animals have done in later times (see Rocher, Chinese Imp. Cust. Gaz. Med. Rep. 15).
There was a second outbreak after the rebellion of Korah (Nu 16%), stayed by the intercession of Aaron; and a third to punish the discontent con- sequent on the evil report of the spies (Nu 14%), Here it is called maggéphah. The fourth epidemic followed the iniquity of Baal-peor, and poh the infection was communicated by the Moabites (Nu 25%-*18), The judgment which followed David’s sin of numbering the people was of the same nature (2S 24, 1 Ch 21"; Jos. Ant. Vil. xiii. 3). Plague was threatened on account of the sin of Jehoram (2 Ch 214), It is called ‘noisome’ in Ps 918 (133 nia), and characterized as walking in darkness (v.°®), as its attacks often begin at night. It was often threatened by the prophets, especially Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, and Havas and appears to have broken out in Jerusalem during the siege (Jer 21°), and also among the fugitives from Jerusalem to Egypt (Jer 4217). The destruction of the army of Sennacherib was most probably effected by a sudden outburst of this disease (2K 19%), and it is noteworthy that presumably about the same time, or at least shortly after it, Hezekiah was seized with an illness, su posed to be mortal, in the course of which a ‘boil’ developed which may well have been the bubo of the plague (Is 381). The destroying angel is mentioned as Ἱπδιοίσος the plague in 2S 2417, 1 Ch 215-16 and 2 K 19%, 2 Ch 32” (cf. Jos. Ant. X. i. δ).