Beef. See Ox ; Food.
BeeTi'ada (Heb. Bcelyada', r"i^?"3, whom Baal knows; Sept. 'EXtaSs v. r. BaWiada), one of David's sons, born in Jerusalem (1 Chron. xiv, 7). B.C. post 1045. In the parallel lists (1 Sam. v, 16; 1 Chron. iii. 8 i he is called by the equivalent name Eliada, El being, perhaps, originally in the name rather than Baal. See Baal-.
Beel'sarus (RnXaapoc), one of the chief Israel- ites ("guides") that returned from Babylon with Ze- rubbabel (1 Esdr. v, 8) ; evidently the Bilshan (q. v.) of the genuine texts (Ezra ii, 2; Nell, vii, 7).
Beelteth'mus(B« Xrtfyioc v.r. BssXtsuujO, Vulg. Balthemus \ given as the name of an officar of Arta- xerxes residing in Palestine (1 Esdr. it, 16, 25); evi- dently a corruption of U"'J ??3i lord of judgment, A. V. " chancellor;" the title of Rehum, the name imme- diately before it (Ezra iv, 8).
BeeT'zebub (Btt\^tj3oi\, Beelzebdx) is the name assigned (Matt, x, 25; xii, 24; Mark iii, 24; Luke xi, 15 sq.) to the prince of the daemons. It is remarkable that, amid all the daemonology of the Tal- mud and rabbinical writers, this name should be ex- clusively confined to the New Testament. There is no doubt that the reading Beelzebul is the one which baa the support of almost every critical authority; and the Beelzebub of the Peskito (if indeed it is not a corrup- tion, as Michaelis thinks, Suppl. p. 205), and of the Vulgate, and of some modern versions, has probably been accommodated to the name of the Philistine god Baal-zeihi; (q. v.). Some of those who consider the latter to have been a reverential title for that god be- lieve that Beelzebul is a wilful corruption of it, in order to make it contemptible. It is a fact that the .lens are very fond of turning words into ridicule by such changes of letters as will convert them into words qf contemptible signification (e.g. Sychar, Beth-aven). Of this usage Lightfoot gives many instances (Ilor. Hebr. ad Matth. xii, 24). Beelzebul, then, is con- sidered to in -.in bat bS2, i. q. dung-god. Some con- nect the term with 5^7, habitation, thus making Beelzebul oiKoounrornc.' (Matt, x, 25), the lord of ,'/. whether as the "prince of the power of
t1"' :,i' prince of the lower
world (Paulus, quoted by Olshausen, Comment, in M '"■ ' ibiting human bodies (Schleus-
'"''■ ' • •■ ■ « -'■ or a occupj ing a mansion in the sev- enth heaven, Like Saturn in Oriental mythology (Mo* *G0). Hug supposes that the fly, under which Baalzebub was represented, was the Scarabaw piUulariui, or dunghill beetle, in which case Baalzebub and Beelzebul might be u8ed indifferently.— Kitto, s.
V ; Smith, s. v. See BAALIM ; I'm .
Be'Lr (Heb. /:< /. 1N3, a aelT), a local proper
name, denoting, whether by itself or in composition, Beer-, the presence of an artificial well of water. See Well. It was thus distinguished from the frequent pretix En- (q. v.), which designated a natural spring. There were two places known by this name simply. See the compounds in their alphabetical order.
1. (With the art., "lX3il; Sept. u (ppiap.) A place in the desert, on the confines of Moab, where the Hebrew princes, by the direction of Moses, dug a well with their staves, being the forty-fourth station of the He- brews in their wanderings from Egypt to Canaan (Num. xxi, 16-18). It seems to have been situated in the south part of the plain Ard Ramadan, not very far north-east of Dibon. See Exode. The "wilder- ness" ('"Q'TO), which is named as their next starting- point in the last clause of vcr. 18, may be that before spoken of in 13, or it maj- be a copyist's mistake for TX2"2. So the Sept., who read icai enro tpp'iaroQ — "and from the well," i. e. " from Beer." Probably the same place is called more fully Beer-elim in Isa. xv, 8. (See Ortlob, Defonte baculisfosso, Lpz. 1718.)
According to the tradition of the Targumists — a tra- dition in part adopted by the apostle Paul (1 Cor. x, -]), this was one of the appearances, the last before the entrance into the Holy Land, of the water which had " followed" the people, from its first arrival at Kephi- dim, through their wanderings. The water, so the tradition appears to have run, was granted for the sake of Miriam, her merit being that, at the peril of her life, she had watched the ark in which lay the infant Moses. It followed the march over mountains and into valleys, encircling the entire camp, and "furnish- ing water to every man at his own tent door. This it did till her death (Num. xx, 1), at which time it dis- appeared for a season, apparently rendering a special act necessary on each future occasion for its evocation. The striking of the rock at Kadesh (Num. xx, 1(1) was the first of these ; the digging of the well at Beer by the staves of the princes, the second. Miriam's well at last found a home in a gulf or recess in the sea of Galilee, where at certain seasons its water flowed, and was resorted to for healing purposes (Targums of Onkc- los and Pseudo-Jon., Num. xx, 1 ; xxi, 18, and also the quotations in Lightfoot on John v, 4). — Smith, s. v.