1. Irrevocable tesiimoni/, Jer 32", Ro 4", 1 Co 9-. — Where the art of writing is limited to the edu- cated few, as is the case still in the East, the difficulty of affixing the signature is got over bj- the use of a seal. In front of every Turkish police- court men sit with paper and ink ready to write out a statement of evidence or form of appeal, and one or two men are usually to be met with who have seals for sale and are expert in cutting monograms for brass seals. When a village is divided into two parties, as in the case of a dispute about a right of waj' through private property, it is customary to present to the local magistrate two papers covered with the seals of those who thus witness for and against the road.
2. Delegated authority. — Thus Pharaoh took off his ring and put it upon Joseph (Gn 41«), and Ahasuerus gave his ring to Haman (Est 3'"). Hence the Kgurative description of Zerubbabel as a signet of the Lord (Hag 2^). Thus in an Oriental cu.stom- house a junior clerk borrows the seal of a bus5' higher official, and an indolently obliging censor leaves in the mission press his seal which gives to books the right of circulation in the empire.
3. Cumplelion. — From its being affixed to the end of a document as a testimony to the truth of what is stated, the act of ai>plying the seal gave a sense of finality to what was thus sealed (Dn
4. /nCTo/rtii/«<y(Jobl4",Eph4«>,Rev5').— Asense of sanctity was coimected with anything sealed.
The veneration felt towards anything guarded by a seal was illi.''i.iated some years ago at Sidon. A coasting vessel had gone on the rocks near that town, and a few days afterwards there was washed ashore a small hag of gold coins, which the c.^pt.^in had received from a British merchant in Beyrout, with instructions to deliver it over to another merchant in Jaffa The l)ag was found on the Sidon bea<-h by a Syrian peasant ; and though such a trcisure, washed up at his fee"t from the sea,' might in itself have licen regarded a-s sent from God to him, he shrunk from breaking tlie seal. He walked the intervening distance of twenty miles io order to deliver the money to it« owner in Beyrout.
Arabic tales abound in accounts of things kept secret and wonders wrought by seals of power, the most celebrated being the wishing seal of king Solomon.
In the Book of Job there occur several beautiful figurative applications of the signet, such as the sealing uti of the stars (9') as of something folded away and laid tmt of sight, the .sealing of instruc- tion ill night visions (33'") like the imprinting of a mould upon clay, and the sealing up of man's
hand (37') as expressing the limitation of human power. See al.so art. Skal, Sealing.
G. M. Mackie.
RINGSTRAKED So the adj. tri'dkod is tr^ in
all its occurrences, Gn 30^^- ''■ "Sis- «• ">• '=. The root verb ii;v is found once, Gn 22' ' Abraham . . . bound Isaac his son,' .so tiiat the primary idea is 'banded' or 'striped.' The adj. is u>ed of striped cattle, goats, or sheep. The LXX tr. Sid\tvKot except in SI"-* \etw6s, and it is followed generally by the Vulg. {albus) and most English versions ' white ' ; but Tind. has ' straked ' in 31*, and then the Bishops' Bible gives ' ringstraked' throughout. The word does not seem to occur in Eng. literature el.sewhere. See Steake. J. Hastings.
RINNAH (rtj-i). — A Judahite, one of the sons of Shimon, 1 Ch i^. The LXX (B A^d, A •Pai-riii-) makes him the .son of Hanan, taking the following [;n"i5 thus (ui6s -tai-ti [^kvav]) instead of making it a proper name, Ben-hanan, as AV and RV.
RIPHATH (ns-i ; A 'Pi0d9, D 'Epii^de).— One of the sons of Gomer, Gn 10'. The parallel pa.ssage, I Ch 1», reads Diphath (n5n, so RV, but AV Riph- ath); but this is certainly an ancient scribal error, easily explicable as due to an interchange of i and t. The LXX (B 'EpH<pde, A 'Pdjia^) and Vulgate (Riphath) support this view.
The ethnographical sense of Riphath is uncer- tain. Perhaps the view of Josephus (Ant. I. vi. 1) that the Riphseans (i.e. Paphlagonians) are meant is still the most plausible. Bochart and Lagarde think of the Bithynian river Rhebas, which falls into the Black Sea, and the district Rlieliantia in the Thracian Bosporus; but, as Pillmann remarks, tills appears to be too far west for the position of Riphath between Ashkenaz (? Phrygia) and To- garmah (? W. Armenia). A widely held opinion, which makes its appearance as early as the Book of Jubilees, identified Riphath with the fabulous Ripha?an mountains, which were supposed to form the northern boundary of the earth.
J. A. SELniE.
RISSAH (np: B Ae^trd, AF'Pttrffd).— A camping place of the children of Israel, noted only in Nu 33-'- -^. It has been proposed to identify it with liasa in the Peutinger Tables, on the road from the Gulf of Akabah to Jerusalem, or with 'P^tra of Jos. Ant. xrv. xiii. 9, xv. 2, BJ I. xiii. 8; but according to some MSS this place is 9p^o^o.
A. T. Chapman.