AMEN. — The lack of a common language has always been a barrier to the mutual knowledge and intercourse of the great nations of mankind, all the more that the days when the educated men of all European nations were wont to converse in Latin have long since passed away. To a certain extent the gulf has been bridged for men of science by a newly-invented vocabulary of their own, and a general use of Latin and Greek names for all the objects of their study. In the world of religion it still remains a great obstacle to all attempts to realize a truly catholic and universal Church. The Latin of the Roman Catholic missal, which seems so unintelligible to the mass of the worshippers that a sign language (of ritual) is largely the medium by which they follow the services when not ab- sorbed in the reading of devotional manuals in their own mother tongue, is but a caricature of such a general medium of interpretative forms of worship. It is, therefore, a matter of great interest to study the use of those few words of ancient origin which have taken root in the religious lan- guage of so many great Christian nations, and have come to convey, in all the services where they are used, the same or a similar meaning. Of these, perliaps the most familiar are the words 'Amen' and ' Hallelujah.' Thei^e old Heb. phrases were taken, of course, from the Bible, where, save in the case of Luther's edition and the LXX version of tlie earlier books of the OT, no af tempt has been made to replace them by foreign equivalents. They have a deep interest for Christians, not
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merely as a reminder of their essential unity and their ancient history, and as a recollection of the debt which we owe to a race so often despised, but as a reminiscence of the very words which came from our Lord's own mouth, in the days when He was sowing the seed of which we are reaping the fruits.
A brief examination of the history of the word ' Amen ' will be sufficient to prove the meaning which it had, tlie way in which it acquired this meaning, and the certainty that it was one of the very words which fell from the Master and had for Him a message of rare and unusual signifi- cance. The original use of the word (derived from a Heb. root jon, meaning ' steadfast,' and a verb, ' to prop,' akin to Heb. nc^f, ' truth,' Assyr. temenu, 'foundation,' and Eth. amena, 'trust' [Arab, ami- nun— '^ secure ']) was intended to express certainty. In the mouth of Benaiah (1 K V^) and Jeremiah (Jer 28^) it appears as first word in the sentence, as a strong form of assent to a previous statement. It was not till after the Exile that it assumed its far commoner place as the answer, or almost the re- frain in chorus, to the words of a previous speaker, and as such took its natural position at the close of the five divisions of the Psalms. It is uncertain how far this formed part of the people's response in the ritual of the Temple, but it is certain that it acquired a fixed place in the services of the syna- gogues, where it still forms a common response of the congregation. This was sometimes altered later, in opposition to the Christian practice, and ' God Faithful King ' was used instead. The ob- ject of this use of ' Amen ' was, in Massie's words, 'to adopt as one's own what has just been said' (HDR i. 80), and it thus finds a fitting place in the mouth of the people to whom Nehemiah promul- gated his laws (Neh 5''). To express emphasis, in accordance with Hebrew practice the word was often doubled, as in the solemn oath of Nu 5"^ (cf. Neh 8^). This was further modified by the inser- tion of * and ' in the first three divisions of the Psalter. ' Amen ' later became the last word of the first speaker, either as simple subscription — as such it stands appended to three of the Psalms (41, 72, 89), and in many NT Epistles, after both doxologies (15 times) and benedictions (6 times in RV) — or as the last word of a prayer (RV only in Prayer of JSIanasses ; but 2 others in Vulgate, viz. Neh 13^1, To 13'^). In two old MSS of Tobit (end), as in some later MSS of the NT, it appears by itself without a doxology. The later Jews were accustomed to use ' Amen ' frequently in their homes {e.g. after grace before meals, etc.), and laid down precise rules for the ways of enunciating and pronouncing it. These are found in the Talmudic tr&ci B^rdkhoth ('Blessings'), and are intended to guard against irreverence, haste, etc. So great was the superstition which attached to it that many of the later Rabbis treated it almost as a fetish, able to win blessings not only in this life but in the next ; and one commentator, Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, went so far as to declare that by its hearty pronunciation in chorus the godless in Israel who lay in the penal fires of Gehenna might one day hope for the opening of their prison gates and a free entrance into the abode of the blessed, though Hogg suggests that this sentiment was extracted from a pun on Is 26^ {Elijahu Zutta, xx. ; Shab. 1196; Siddtir B. Amrani, 136; cf. Yalk. ii. 296 on Is 26-).