iavrCv, RV 'looking for'); Ac 10" 'Cornelius waited for them ' (?';;' vpo<TOoKwv aiVroi's, RV ' was waiting for them'); IT'" 'Now while Paul waited for them at Athens' [iKdexop^^vov avroui toO IlaiJ- \ov) ; 2 Th 3' ' the patient waiting for Christ ' (uTTOyuoi'^, RV as AVm 'patience'), (c) The most important use of this phrase is when it refer.'s to the attitude towards God of the patient believer, who is confident that God will j'et show Himself to be the enemy of evildoers and the praise of them that do well ; it is then almost equivalent to beticpe in or worship. Thus 2 K 6** ' Behold, tliis evil is of the Lord ; what (KV 'why') should I wait for the Lord any longer? ' (niy nin:S S-nW-no, LXX tI inroneLvoi Ttf Kvpitfi (ti. ;) ; Ps 37' ' Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him ' ; 39' ' And now. Lord, what wait I for ? my hope is in thee ' ; 65' ' Praise waiteth for thee, O God, in Sion.' See also Driver, Par. Psnl. p. 465.
(2) ' Wait on ' or ' upon ' means : 'a) attend to, as Nu 3'" ' And thou shaft appoint Aaion and his sons, and they shall wait on their priest's office ' ; 8" ; 1 Ch 23'-* ' Their office was to wait on tho sons of Aaron for the service of the house of the I<ord ' ; 2Ch 13'" 'the Levi tea wait upon their business'; Mk 3' ' He spake unto his disciples that a small ship should wait on him ' {irpocrKaprep^ aiVcp) ; Ro 12'. So Adams, 2 Peter, 35, ' Life . . . which is obnoxious to sin, and waited on with misery.' In this sense ' wait at ' is used in 1 Co 9"* ' TLey which wait at the altar' (RV 'wait upon'). (6) The other use is the same as the special biblical sense of ' wait for,' viz. look/or, trust to, nearly worship, as Ps '25' ' Let none that wait on thee be ashamed ; 255. 21 27" 104-''.
The simple verb is used twice of God's long- sufl'ering towards men. Is 30" ' And therefore wul the Lord wait, that lie may be gracious unto you ' ; 1 P 3''" ' the long-suliering of God waited in the days of Noah.' J. HASriN'QS.
WALLS. — All over the East, where wood is not plentiful, walls of houses and even palaces havf
WALLS
WALLS
891
been Imilt from the earliest times of crude or sun- burnt brick. It is only in certain localities, where stone was plentiful, and in later ages, that stone has been used. Strabo (xvii. 2. 3) tells us that the houses in the cities of Ethiopia were formed by interweaving split pieces of palm wood or of crude bricks, and says (xvi. 1. 5) of Seleucia (Assyria, near Babylon) that on account of the scarcity of timber the beams and pillars of the houses were made of palm wood : they wound ropes of twisted reeds round the pillars, painted them over with colour and drew designs on them ; thej' covered the doors with asphalt. All the houses were vaulted on account ot the scarcity of timber. The earliest edbrts of construction in Egypt were made in wood, probably like the dwellings now found in Nubia — palm branches interlaced, plastered over with c^lay and straw, roofs of branches or planks, or faggots of wood. Bricks were an advance upon this. The palaces of Egypt were of verj' slifjht construction, stuccoed walls and planks of acacia. In As.syria stone was so scarce that it was only used as an accessory ; the bodies of the structures were never composed of it : it was mainly coulined to plinths, pave- ments, and the internal linings of walls. In ChaUhea stone wa.s entirely alwent. The moun- tains which run parallel to the left bank of the Tigris were bare of trees, and the palm and poplar alone yielded wood of any length : the one soft and librous, the other brittle and light. Nineveh, IJabylon, Egypt, and Jerusalem all drew their timber from the forest of Lebanon. The em- ploj'ment, however, of this excellent wood must always have been rare and exceptional (Lenor- mant, Histoire Ancienne, ii. 298; Perrot and Chipiez, i. 124 ; Layard, Discoveries, 356).
' In Chaldiva the architect was condemned by tl\e force majeure of circumstances to eni]il<)y little more than crude or burnt brick and bad tmiber ; in A.ssyria he voluntarily condemned himself to the limitations they imposed ' (Perrot and Chipiez, i. 125). The Chalda'ans could employ neither pier or column, nor bearers or lintels of stone ; tliey were thus debarred from constructing spacious galleries and chambers, and ' consequently their towns were artificial mountains, as solid and massive from base to summit as the natural hills' {ih. 133). The few long and narrow apartments contrived within them could be compared only to caves hollowed out in the face of a clilt'. \V hen the arch was discovered it was made frequent use of. A bas-relief recovered by Layard, showing a group of buildings at Kouyunjik erected by Sennacherib in his palace at Nineveh, depicts them as having not only flat roofs, but hemi- spherical cupolas, and tall conical domes : the same forms are still in use all over that country, the flat roofs usually for dwelling-houses, but yet the jjeasants' houses as well as the store-houses have often domed roofs of brick.