1. A large body of water or collection of waters (Ac 21">- '■">■ •"' l^'i 2S^ Ko ()-', -2 Co 11-'', Hell '-, Ja P, Jude", Rev 7'"^ 8'- '■' 10--=» 12'= i:?' 16-' 18"- '■'• ■-' 208. 13 211 . cf_ Ac 27^ 7rfXa70s ; Ja 3', ecdXios).— In the first of these passages, the sailors with Paul on his memorable voyage to Rome, pretending that additional anchors from the prow of the vessel would help to steady the ship, and that they must go ott'in a boat to carry them out to cables' lengtli rather than drop them over the prow, ' lowered the boat into the sea' (Ac 27^). But he saw through their scheme and warned the centurion. Latier they cast the cargo of wheat into the sea (v.™) ; and again they loosened the cables of the anchors and let them fall otl' into the sea (v.'"). Tlieii, chancing on a sand l:>ank between two seas, in the narrow channel leading into St. Paul's Bay, be- tween the little island of Salmonetta and the mainland of Melita, they ran the vessel aground (v.'"). Going on shore, the barbarians, seeing a viper clinging to Paul's hand, regarded him as a murderer, wliom, though be had escaped from the sea, the goddess Justice would not suH'er to live (28^).
Paul was thrice shipwrecked. He also sull'ered other ' perils in the sea' (2 Co 11-'') ; but he does not pause to specify them. In writing to the Romans be again alludes to the 'sea.' Quoting Is 10", he says that though Israel be as numerous ' as the sand of the sea,' yet it is not the unbelieving many but the faithful few who are the object of God's care. Onlj' the remnant shall be .saved (Ro 9^). A similar reference is found in He IV-, in which the writer emiihasized how faith on Abraham's part brought life out of death, giving him posterit}' '.as the sand which is upon the sea shore innumerable.' On the oth(!r liand, another writer describes the doubter as ' like the .svirge of the sea' (lotKfv atXi/Smj-i OaXdau-q^, Ja 1°), driven by the wind and tossed. The instability of a billow changing ra])idly from moment to moment furnishes a wonderfully apt symbol of the mind that cannot steady itself in belief. Jude uses a similar figure when he describes the ungodly and libertines as ' wild waves of the sea ' {Kv/xara kypia, daXaaar]^, v.'"), foaming out their own lawlessness and shame (cf. Is 57=").
John likewise, in the Apocalypse, often uses the term in its natural sense. Thus, no hurt is to
befall the earth or the sea until the servants of liod are sealed in their foreheads ; no |)liysical convulsions are to take place until the .saints of (iod are secured (Rev 7''). On the other hand, judgment is imminent. Pausing in the process of unndling judgment and consolation, the Seer be- holds a strong angel standing like a colossus astride the earth and sea, holding in his hand an open book (10-' "•"l. He hears woes pronounced upon the earth and sea (12'-). A monster dragon conies up out of the sea, as the father of cruelty and blas- phemy (13'; ef. Dn 7'-"^'). When the second angel sountis, one third of the creatures which are in the sea <lie (8'- ") ; when the same angel pours out his bowl into the sea, it becomes lilood and every living thing dies (W). At the fall of Babylon {i.K. Rome) mariners on every band take up a lamenta- tion because of her commercial loss to the world of trade (18"- "■ '-') ; while in the linal issue of events, after the millennium and after Satan has been loosed to deceive the nations, ' the number of whom is as the sand of the sea,' and after he is cast into the lake of lire and brimstone, and the dead are suinmoned to judgment, then, we read, 'the sea gave up the dead which were in it' — in its great maw — to be judged every man according to his works (20'-"). But when heaven is described and the abode of the blessed is portrayed, and a new heaven and a new earth are created, the Seer is careful to say, 'and the sea is no more' (21'). This passage is a mo.st instructive witness to the estimate of the sea among the ancient Hebrews. They had a universal horror of it. To them it was a sj'iumym of turbulence, estrangement, hostility, fickleness, isolation, and separation. It was the home of storms and tempests and vague terrors. As a great monster enemy it devoured men ; yea, the .sea was the prolilic mother of monsters. Naturally the sea, therefore, could have no place in an ideal universe. According to Plutarch, the ancient Egyptians regarded the sea as no part of nature, but an alien element full of destruction and disease. The priests of Isis are said to have shunned it as impure and unsocial for swallowing up the sacred Nile. One favourite tradition made the sea disappear in the linal conllagration of the world. But John ignores this view, and regards the sea rather as no longer exisUmt. God's dread opponent, the dragon, he practically says, shall dis- ajipear from the abode of the redeemed ; and the powers hostile to God, whether men or demons, shall be luougbt to naught.