PEDIAS (B Πεδίας, A Παιδείας, AV Pelias), 1 Es
9*, a corruption of BEDEIAH, Ezr 10*.
PEEL, PILL.—The origin of these verbs is parerelly elie, skin, and pilus, hair; but they cannot be traced directly back to these separate sources, because the Old Fr. words peler and piller, from which they come, were confused in spelling before the Eng. words were formed. The confusion was made greater when the (probably) separate Lat. pilare, to plunder, was adopted into French and English, and spelt indifferently ‘pill’ or ‘peel.’ Brachet says that piller, in the sense of ‘rob,’ ‘plunder,’ was introduced into the Fr. language in the 16th cent. along with many other military words. We find its derivative ‘pillage,’ however, in Fabyan, Chron. i. 114.
Peel is the AV spelling in Is 18*7 ‘a nation scattered and peeled,’ ‘a people scattered and
eeled’ (jin Wynn, AVm ‘outspread and polished,’ RV ‘tall and smooth,’ RVm ‘dragged away and peeled’). Here ‘peel’ is probably taken in the sense ae to ‘pill,’ te. pull off the hair, for that is the primary meaning of the Heb. word. But the reference is to the Ethiopians, and as the Heb. verb comes usually to mean to polish (by stripping off superfluous hair), RV and most modern exegetes take the expression in the sense of
ΤΟΝ τὴν ‘bronzed,’ referring to the Ethiopians’ tawny skin. In Ezk 29'* ‘Every head was made bald, and every shoulder was peeled’ (mpm στη), the meaning is more primary, ‘laid > by the chafing of a burden (Amer. RV ‘ worn’).
Pill is the spelling in Gn 30%: ® (of the rods in which Jacob ‘pilled white strakes’), where the meaning is clearly to pull off the skin. RV spells ‘peeled.’ Pill occurs also in To 11% ‘When his eyes began to smart, he rubbed them; and the whiteness pilled away from the corners of his eyes’ (ἐλεπίσθη, ἔν ‘scaled’), and 1 Mac 1™m. for AV text ‘pulled off’ (ἐλέπισε, RV ‘ scaled’).
Shaks. uses ‘peel’ in the sense of stripping off the bark (‘ pill’ of Gn 30° *), as Mer. of Ven. 1. iii. 85, ‘ The skilful shepherd peel’d me certain wands’; and in the sense of plucking off the hair, 1 Henry VJ. 1. iii. 30, ‘ Peel’d priest.’ He uses ‘pill’ only in the sense of rob: Jimon, Iv. i. 12—
*Large-handed robbers your grave masters are, And pill by law.’ J. HASTINGS.
PEEP.—To peep in Is 8 10 (nyc35, Pilp. ptep. of nex; LXX xevodoyeiv, ἀντειπεῖν) is not to chirp (as RV), but to cheep, ie. it expresses not the cheerful contented note of little birds, but the feeble cry of nestlings. It is an imitative word,
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ΓΞ 736 PEKAH
and is used also of a mouse’s cry, as Purchas, Pilgrimage, 357, ‘ Hee procuring such peace in the East (saith Vopiscus) that a rebellious Mouse was not heard to peepe.’ In Sir 2153 ‘ peep’ is used in its mod. sense, ‘A fool will peep in at the door into the house’ (παρακύπτει: cf. Jn 20°, 1 P 113), So Jer 6! Cov. ‘A plage and a greate ee pepeth out from the North.’ J. HAsTINGs.
PEKAH (nao, LXX Φάκεε, Assyr. Pakahu) was the son of Remaliah. The name in full form was
robably 17:79, the same as that of his predecessor. ΠΣ the current OT significations of the verb npp, the name would my either (a) ‘Jehovah hath beheld (lit. opened his he upon) (me)’; see 2 Καὶ 455 19'8, Jer 32", Zec 124, Job 14%, and οὗ, xy mat and Assyr. proper name Bilimurani, ‘Bel hath beheld me’; or (4) far more probably ‘Jehovah hath opened (my eyes)’; cf. Gn 21”, 2K 617: The omission of the Divine name as subject is illustrated in the case of Ahaz (=Ahaziah), Nathan (=Nethaniah, El-Nathan), which stands for }2 77 }n} ; ef. Marduk-apla-iddin(a) and other Assyrian parallels which further ex- emplify the omission of the object in the ab- breviated form of the proper name. See the illus- trations which have been collected in Schrader, COT ii. p. 326, by the present writer.
Pekah, son of Remaliah, was of obscure parent- age, to which Isaiah refers with a touch of satire (7. The story of his brief but important reign is told in the short extract 2 Καὶ 15°". Twenty years are ascribed to him, but chronological con- siderations based on the data of the Assyrian annalistic inscriptions, and the Canon of Rulers, can assign him a reign of only about three years (736-733). Comp. Schrader, COT ii. p- 321 ff., and art. CHRONOLOGY OF THE OT in vol. 1. p. 401 f.
Pekah was captain of Pekahiah’s Gileadite body- guard, and held the important confidential post of Shalish* near the king’s person. This gave him unusual opportunities, when with fifty chosen men he compassed the destruction of king Pekahiah. We are left in entire ignorance as to the circum- stances which led to this violent act (2 K 15”), and the text is, moreovwr, far from certain.t All that we definitely know is that it took place at Samaria, probably in the stronghold of the royal palace.t
It is possible, however, in the light of subsequent as well as preceding events, to frame an adequate theory for the motives of state policy which under- lay Pekah’s conspiracy.
The history of Israel and Judah from the days of the disruption downwards was largely deter- mined by the lines of foreign policy. While Syria was the most formidable foe, and Egypt remained quiescent, the problems of this policy were not complex. Resistance or unwilling submission to Syria was the keynote of Israel’s foreign policy in the reigns of Baasha, Omri, and Ahab. But in the reign of the last-mentioned monarch the formidable power of Aram (Syria) was dwarfed ty the rising might of Assyria awakening from its slumber of centuries (see art. AHAB). In the reign of the Assyrian king Ramman-nirfri I. the power of Syria was broken, never more to recover its former vitality. From this time forth the chief menace to the security of all the Palestinian states was the advancing (though occasionally quiescent) power of Assyria. Now, just as Napoleon 1. in