MEHUMAN (jp72).—One of the seven eunuchs in attendance upon king Ahasuerus (Est 1”, LXX ‘Audv). The name has been explained from the Persian Mehhum-van, ‘belonging to the great Hum’ (cf. Berth.-Ryss.); the former has perhaps been
y
y
assimilated to the Aram. SQ.,0180 =/faithful.
H. A. WHITE. ME-JARKON (j\pv17 °p).—An unknown place in the neighbourhood of Joppa, Jos 19. The text is doubtful, the following Rakkon (}}72) Feng in any case almost certainly due to dittography from the second part of Me-jarkon, while the latter name itself is not beyond suspicion. The LXX reads καὶ ἀπὸ θαλάσσης ᾿Ἱερακὼν ὅριον πλησίον ‘Iérrns, which Dillm. points out implies a reading ‘x 513} }\pxp om, te. ‘and westward, Jarkon the boundary over
against Joppa.’ J. A. SELBIE.
MEKONAH (7}55; BA om., N**™#!f Mayvd).— A town noticed, with Ziklag, as inhabited after the Captivity, Neh 11%. The site has not been identified.
MELATIAH (mpd *J” hath delivered,’ Μαλτίας, but xA om.), a Gibeonite, who, with the men of Gibeon and of Mizpah, repaired a portion of the walls of Jerus. in the days of Nehemiah (Neh 37).
MELCHI (Μελχί TR, but Μελχεί Tisch. Treg. WH).—41. 2. Two ancestors of our Lord bear this name in St Luke’s genealogy (339 *).
MELCHIAS (B MeAxelas, A -xlas).—1. 1 Es 9% =
2. 1 Es 9%=MALCHIJAH, Ezr 10%. 3. 1 Es 94=MALCHIJAH, Neh 83. MELCHIEL(B Μελχειήλ, A Μελχιήλ; Vulg.om.).— The father of Charmis, one of the three governors of Bethulia, Jth 6" (cf. the name 9x°3)p, Malchiel).
MELCHIZEDEK (ρτε ΞΡ, MeAxioedéx).—King of Salem and priest of the Most High God, who, after Abram’s defeat of Chedorlaomer and his Bab. allies, met the patriarch on his return, offered him bread and wine, blessed him, and received tithes from him of the spoil (Gn 147”), Salem is Jeru- salem, which appears already in the Tel el-Amarna tablets (B.C. 1400) as one of the most important cities of Canaan, and is called Uru-salim. An Assyr. lexical tablet (WAJ τι. ii. 393) states that. uru is the equivalent of the Assyr. alu, ‘city’; and in the hieroglyphic inscriptions of the Egyp. kings Ramses 11. and Ramses ΠΙ. (19th and 20th dyn- asties) Jerus. is called simply Shalam or Salem. Several of the Tel el-Amarna tablets are letters written to the Pharaoh by Ebed-tob (or, as read by Hommel, Abdi-khiba), the king of Uru-Salim, who begs for help against his enemies. He tells the Pharaoh that he was not like the other Egyptian governors in Palestine, nor had he received his crown by inheritance from his father or mother ; it had (ee conferred on him by ‘the Mighty King.’* In another letter he speaks of ‘the city of the mountain of Uru-Salim, by name Bit- Ninip,’ becoming disaffected ; and we may perhaps infer from this that the ‘Most High God’ of Jeru- salem was identified with Ninip, the warrior Sun- pod of Babylonia. Ina letter from Pheenicia we
ear of a second Bit-Ninip in the N. of Palestine. ‘The Mighty King’ is distinguished from the ‘great king’ of Egypt ; and in one passage Ebed- tob declares that, although the Pliatea sends no troops, ‘the arm of the Mighty King shall reach the lands of Naharaim and Babylonia.’ Ebed-tob would therefore appear to have been a
riest-king, and thus to offer a striking parallel to
elchizedek. Moreover, Ebed-tob’s words, that he had received his royal dignity neither from his ‘father’ nor from his ‘ mother,’ are a curious com- mentary on He 7*.. As Uru-Salim probably (but see JERUSALEM, vol. ii. p. 584°; ZA, 1891, p. 263; JBL xi. (1892) p. 105) signifies ‘the city of the god Salim,’ the god of peace and safety (Heb. shalom) (though the Babylonians seem to have interpreted the name the ‘city of alliance,’ salim having that meaning in their own language), the action of M. in welcoming the peaceful return of Abram is easily explained. The offering of the esrd or tithe to the priests and temples was along- established Bab. custom, and the formula used by M. in blessing the patriarch is met with in Aram. inscriptions found in Egypt. (See a series of papers on ‘ Melchizedek’ by Sayce, Driver, Hommel, and others in the Hapos. Times, vols. vii. and viii., and ef. art. EL ELYoN).
For NT references see art. HEBREWS, vol. ii. 331 f., and MEDIATION, pp. 313°, 319°.
A. H. SAYCE.
MELEA (Medea TR, but Meded Tisch. Treg. WH).—An ancestor of Jesus, Lk 3°.
MELECH (ad ‘king’; cf. Nabatean 1250, the name of several kings in Ist cent. B.C.—Ist cent. A.D. (Gray, Heb. Proper Names, 116)).—The name of a grandson of Merib-baal (Mephibosheth), 1 Ch 835 iB Μελχήλ, A Μαλώθ) 95 (B Maddy, A Μαλώχ).
* Acc, to Hommel (Expos. Times, viii. 95), the ear ‘eae King’ is in Abdi-khiba’s letter the king of the Hittites, but he considers
it probable that this was an applied reference, the original sense of sarru dannu (‘mighty king’) having been a religione
one, parallel to the prox Sx (‘Most High God") of Gn wt
336 MELITA Siegfried-Stade compare, further, the names Md\yos (Jn 18) and Μάλιχος (Jos. Ant. XIV. v. 2). J. A. SELBIE.
MELITA (Μελίτη; but B*, the Amn. VS, a Greek corrector of the Philoxenian Syr., the Bo- hairic, some good MSS of Vulg., and other authorities read Μελιτήνη, a natural and probably very early error in transcription).— The island upon which St. Paul was shipwrecked (Ac 28’). The ship had drifted thither from Cauda, a small island off the coast of Crete (Ac 3715, The violent wind Euraquilo (which see), the ‘Gregalia’ or ‘Levanter,’ blowing from E.N.E., would have drifted the vessel to the Syrtis (which see) had not its course been changed. St. Luke gives a partial account of the steps taken with this object; but, writing as a landsman, he omits the one essen- tial point, viz. the setting of storm-sails, without which ‘way’ could not have been kept on the ship, and she would have drifted straight on the Syrtis. It has been shown that a ship of the kind in question, close-hauled on the starboard tack, before an vale, would make a course about W. by N. This would bring her to Malta within about the time stated (v.*") to have elapsed. It could not possibly have carried her to the Dal- matian coast. This fact, as well as the fact that the party proceeded from Melita to Rome by Syracuse and Rhegium, is conclusive against the claim of Melita in the Adriatic, in spite of the identification of our Melita with the latter island by Constantine Porphyrogenitus (de Admin. Im- per. 36, apparently the only express allusion to the question in early literature; he gives no reasons). The mention of Adria (which see) proves nothing. Malta was recognized as marking the point where the Tyrrhenian Sea ceases and the Adriatic (in the wider sense) begins (Procop. 1. 372).