The sifted grain was collected in large heaps, and, pending its removal to the granary, the owner, to guard against thieving, slept by the threshing-floor (Ru 3'). In the Gospels there is one reference to sifting (Lk 22^').
(A-) Storage. — In the js'T a gianary is called amd-iiKri (Mt &^ IS**, Lk 12'8- ^). In the OT quite a variety of names occurs (niijcp Ex 1" ; o-npK Dt 28* ; D-prKO Jer 50=* ; 0'i>D Ps 144'' ; niiyk and niij^a Ji ' \"). But thougij the nomenclature is so rich, of the construction and character of those granaries we know nothing. Some of them wei'e probably sheds, and may have resembled the flat- roofed buildings used in Egypt for storing grain. Others may have been dry wells, or cisterns, or caves hewn out of the rock, such as are common in modern times. The grain stored in these raaga- zin^'s \vi]l vpni-iin I'ood for years.
/; ■.■-:./ .; i K'logie, i.
-•M. :,,/'/, / , zarZeil
,/,, - i, '. , , 1. V : /., ' ', . Mi.; Wilkin-
s. I, ; .Xhon^son. ih:' Land aivd, the
/; . ,!,,;. / - /< aiul Customs: ZDPVix.;
I-i:i . 1 , ! 1 I ■: landwinhtchafUichen BiUer
:,„! ; ,' ,1. Alt. Test; Hasting^ DB,
Hugh Duncan. AHAZ.— One of the kings of Judah (c. 735- 721) li.c), named in St. Matthew's genealogy of our Lord (Mt l'-*).
AHIMELECH.— See Abiathak.
AKELDAMA.— The name given in Ac l'» to the field purchased with the price of Judas' treachery.
• In this rase the meaninpr of ' the least nroin " in Am 9' must be ' the lease pebble ' (so Preuschcn, ZA TW. 1895, p. 24). Others (e.g. Driver, Joel and Amos, p. 221 ; Nowack and JIarti in their Comm. ad /oc, ) take the word nn-i (.- . . iu. ' i" ' I Ic ) to stand here for a (jrain of wheat, while u' in • i ' i ivurdisnot
elsewhere so used. On this su] i i n of the
kebliiirah would be similar to tli.u i n- u. ^ i:; jmrbal de- scribed above.
AKELDAMA
ALABASTER
41
'I'lie true reading seems to lie aKeXda/jtdx i^ ! •'f- dxc^5a^dx, J^A 61, etc. : dK€\5ai^dx, T) ; dKe\da/J.dK^ E) rather than the TK dK^Xda/id ; and the linal aspirate is here of itniiortiuue, as will be seen.
The two accounts of the death of Judas (Mt 27^'- and Ac 1""-) are hard to reconcile (see Jur>.\s, and art. in Expnsiloi- for .June 1904, by the present writer) ; but it is snlfioient to note here that liny are clearly independent of each other. The salient features of the Mattlia'an tradition are— (a) Juilas stricken with remorse returned the money paid to liim .OS the price of his treachery ; (6) he lianged himself in despair, nothing being said as to the scene of his suicide ; (c) the priests bought Mitli the money a field known as 'the Potter's Field,' which (d) thenceforth was called dypbs ai'/xaros, the allusion being to the blood of Christ, shed through the treachery of Judas ; (c) the field was devoted to the purpose of a cemetery for foreigners. In Acts, on the other hand, («) nothing is said of a refunding of the money by Judas ; (6) his death was not self indicted, nor was it caused by hanging ; it is described as due to a fall and a consequent nipture of the abdomen ; (c) the held was bought by Judas himself, and not by the priests ; (rf) no- thing is said of its former use as a ' potter's field,' nor (e) of the purpose for which it was used after the death of Judas ; (/) the blood which gave its name to the field was that of Judas, by which it was dehled, for {g) the field Akeldama is identified with the jjlace of his death, a fact of which there is no mention in Matthew.
The only point common to the two accounts is that the name by which the field was known in the next generation after Jvidas' death was an Aramaic word which was variously rendered dypbs aifmros and x^pioi' ai'/taros by Mt. and Luke. Lk. gives a transliteration of this Aramaic name ; he says it was dKe\5a/mx, that is, he understands it as equivalent to nci Spq, " Field of Blood.' And d^eX- Safidx is, no doubt, a possible tran.sliteration of these Hebrew words, for we have other instances of final N being represented by the Greek x, as, e.g., in the equation ^i.pdx = XTP. But we .should not expect a final x, although it mi"ht be defended, if the last part of the Aramaic title were kot ; the presence of x suggests v.itlier that the Aramaic title ended with the letl evs -ct, Ndw it is remark- able that TlO'!=Koi/xa£r('f" II I III I I I'.. /rijpioK ' ceme- tery' would' be the f . i ,,1 ,ii !it of -^ai hp,n.
And Klostermann (P, 1. 1 1, '//<;.?<<;, p! 6 flV)
has suggested that tlii.^ «ao loally the name by wliich tlie field was known to the native Jews, and that we have here a corroboration of St. Matthew's tradition 'to bury strangers in' (Mt 27'). This conjecture is confirmed Dy the fact, which has been pointed out above, that' the si;;nili- cance of the name ' Field of Blood' was dilleruntly understood by Mt. and Luke. When «u have two rival explanations offered of a place-name, it is probable that the name itself is a corruption of some other, akin in sound, but not in sense.