800 MESHACH
the ranks of the besiegers. But utterly ἜΝ in ull
this he went to the top of the wall, and, in view of the armies of Judah, Israel, and Edom, propitiated the wrath of Chemosh by offering up as a burnt-offering his firstborn, the heir-apparent to the throne. drew, leaving Mesha master of the situation, though routed, and his land greatly damaged (2 Καὶ 337).
4. Mesha (xy>) was the name of one of the |
limit-points of the territory ascribed to the descend- ants of Joktan in Gn 10° was from xyp as thou goest toward Sephar, the mountain of the East.’ It is plain that it must be sought for in the Arabian peninsula. The earlier views are amply presented by Gesenius (Thesaurus, ᾿ 823), who concludes by finding the location at the ὃ, boundary of Mesene, not far from the mouth of the Tigris river. Pliny, Ptolemy, Arrian, and others mention a seaport Μοῦσα or Moffa, a celebrated place in classic times, which is now in ruins. Pullen, in his surveys in the Admiralty chart of the Red Sea, cites, at 13° 40’ N. lat., 43° 20° E. long., a mountain called Jebel Mousa. Delitzsch (Paradies, p. 242f.) identifies xyo with the Bab.-Assyr. term Mas, which is the name attached to the district of the Syrian-Arabian desert touching the Lower Euphrates on the S.W. (LXX reads, A Μασσηε, E Μανασσή). The terri- tory of the Joktanites is fairly well determined, from the language and monuments of 8. Arabia, to be in the S.W. portion of that peninsula, extending from modern Yemen on the W. to Hadramaut on the E. The latest and perhaps the most authori- tative statements on the location of this hard-to- find locality are made by that successful explorer of Arabia, Eduard Glaser. In vol. ii. of his recent work (Skizze der Geschichte und Geographie Arabiens, Berlin, 1890, PP. 336 ff., 420f., 437) we find his results presented. In W. Central Arabia he found a Maciya near Jebel Samar, which he identifies with the biblical Massa. He even goes further and asserts (p. 420) that the biblical Mash, wo (Gn 10%), Mesha xy (Gn 10%), and Massa xvp (Gn 254) are found in one and the same territory, the difference in spelling being due merely to the different sources or times from which the names reach us. Sephar he locates only in the S. part of Arabia, hence he looks for Mesha at the other limit (Gn 10%) in the north. The most northern Joktanide group (Ophir, Hawilah, Jébab, Uzal, and Diklah) is bounded by a line drawn obliquely from the northern end of the Persian Gulf across Arabia to Medina., Such a line would touch the territory of Djebel Samar (p. 437), and in particular the district of Mass&. .Thus, in a word, Glaser concludes that Jebel Samar and its Westland, already identified with Mas, and inclusive of Massf, also encloses within it the biblical Mesha of Gn 103), TRA M. PRICE.
MESHACH (τ; LXX and Theod. Μιε)ισάχ ; Vulg. Misach).—The name Mishael, by which one of Daniel’s three companions, of the children of Judah, was originally called, was changed by the Bees of the eunuchs into Meshach (Dn 1’ and ch. 3).
Such changes of name were not uncom- mon: they marked the fact that a new state of
life had now begun. In the present instance there is no idea of dishonour or humiliation.
Many conjectures have been put forward with respect to the origin of the word. Fuerst dragged in the Sansk. méshah=‘a ram,’ and afterwards the name of the sun-god of the Chaldeans. Ges. was favourably inclined towards the Pers. miz shauh=‘friend of the king.’ Another suggestion connected it with the Accadian mas, a protecting genius, who stood at the head of the demi-gods, and is described in the old magical books as having
he | De
Thereupon the three armies with- |
‘And their dwelling |
MESHECH
his abode on the top of the mountains, and pro 4s all who seek refuge with him. τὰ,
itzsch’s proposal to consider it identical with Mi-sha-Aku is rightly rejected by Schrader (COZ ii. 126), who points out that the correct form would have been Mannu-ki-Aku. The fact is that no name such as this has been found in the inscrip-
| tions; and when we look at the word itself, it gives
us the impression that it was formed partly by imitation of the first part of Mishael, and partly out of the companion name Shadrach. J. TAYLOR.
MESHECH (7p, Sam. Ἴθι, Moodx).—Son of Japheth, Gn 10?=1 Ch 15, This nation is regularly mentioned in company with Tubal (Ps 120° is the only exception), and in the two names the Moschi and Tibareni ‘are scarcely to be mistaken’ (Lagarde, Ges. Abh. 254). The vocalization of the LXX agrees with that of the Assyrian inscriptions, in which a country called Mushs or Mushki is of frequent occurrence. The passages in those in- scriptions which treat of the inhabitants of tha‘ country are collected by Frd. Delitzsch (Wo lag das Paradies? p. 250), and these, with the other notices of them to be found in ancient writers, are discussed by Lenormant (Les Origines de U Histoire, II. ii. pp. 181-249), An individual named Meshak is known only to Moses of Khorene (Venice, 1865, p. 32), according to whom such a person was left by Aram as governor of the region called Armenia 1., who built there a city called by his own name, but mispronounced Mazhak by the people of the country. The first mention of the nation is in an inscription of Tiglath-pileser I. (6. 1100 B.c. ; WAL i. pl. 9, 60ff., translated wy Lotz, Die Inschriften Tiglath-pilesers, p. 16, and Winckler, KIB i. p. 19), where it is stated that in the first year of that monarch’s reign 20,000 Moschians with their five kings, after having occupied the lands of Alzi and Purukuzzu for 50 years, came down and took ossession of Kummukhu. The last place has