■1. David says, "I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord" (Psa. cxvi, 13). The phrase appears to be taken from the custom of the Jews in their thank-offerings, in which a feast was made of the remainder of their sacrifices, when, among other rites, the master of the feast took a cup of wine in his hand, and solemnly blessed God for it, and for
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the mercies which were then .acknowledged, and give it to all the guests, every one of whom drank in his turn. See Cup. To this custom it is supposed our Lord alludes in the institution of the cup, which is also called "the cup of blessing" (1 Cor. x, 1C). See Pass- over. At the family feasts also, and especially that of the Passover, both wine and bread were in this sol- emn and religious manner distributed, and God was blessed, and his mercies acknowledged. They blessed God for their present refreshment, for their deliver- ance out of Egypt, for the covenant of circumcision, and for the law given by Moses ; they prayed that God would be merciful to his people Israel, that he would send the prophet Elijah, and that he would ren- der them worthy of the kingdom of the Messiah. In the Mosaic law, the manner of blessing was appointed by the lifting up of hands, and we see that our Lord lifted up his hands and blessed his disciples. See Benedictiox.
Blessing, Valley of. See Beraciiah.
Blind (1W, icver', tvQXoc). The frequent occur- rence of blindness in the East has always excited the astonishment of travellers. Yolney says that out of a hundred persons in Cairo he has met twenty quite blind, ten wanting one eye, and twenty others having their eyes red, purulent, or blemished (Travels in Egypt, i, 224). This is principally owing to the Egyptian ophthalmia, which is endemic in that country and on the coast of Syria. Small-pox is another great cause of blindness in the East (Volney, /. c). Still other causes are the quantities of dust and sand pulverized by the sun's intense heat; the perpetual glare of light; the contrast of the heat with the cold sea-air on the coast, where blindness is specially prevalent; the dews at night while people sleep on the roofs ; old age, etc. ; and perhaps, more than all, the Mohammedan fatalism, which leads to a neglect of the proper remedies in time. Ludd, the ancient Lydda, and Ramleh, enjoy a fearful notoriety for the number of blind persons they contain. The common saying is that in Ludd every man is either blind or has but one eye. Jaffa is said to con- tain 500 blind out of a population of 5000 at most. There is an asylum for the blind in Cairo (which at present contains 300), and their conduct is often tur- bulent and fanatic (Lane, Mod. Eg. i, 30, 292).
In the New Testament blind mendicants are fre- quently mentioned (Matt, ix, 27 ; xii, 22; xx, 30; xxi, 24; John v, 3), and "opening the eyes of the blind" is mentioned in prophecy as a peculiar attribute of the Messiah (Isa. xxix, 18, etc.). The Jews were special- ly charged to treat the blind with compassion and care (Lev. xix, 4 ; Dent, xxvii, 18). The blindness of Bar- Jesus (Acts xiii, 0) was miraculously produced, and of its nature we know nothing. Some have attempt- ed (on the ground of Luke's profession as a physician) to attach a technical meaning to «ya<'c all<l vkotoq (.Tahn, Bibl. Arch. § 201), viz. a spot or "thin tunicle over the cornea," which vanishes naturally after a time ; for which the same term, (t\\vc, is made use of by Hippocrates (UpoppnriKuv, ii, 215, ed. Kiihn), who says that a%\vic will disappear provided no wound has been inflicted. Before such an inference can be drawn, wo must be sure that the writers of the New Testament were not only acquainted with the writings of Hippocrates, but were also accustomed to a strict medical terminology. In the same way analogies are quoted for the use. of saliva (Matt, viii, 23, etc.) and offish-gall in the case of the \tvKiofia of Tobias; but, whatever ma}' be thought of the latter instance, it is very obvious that in the former the saliva was no more instrumental in the cure than the touch alone would have been (Trench, On the Miracles at Matt, ix, 27). The haziness implied by the expression a\\rc may re- fer to the sensation of the blind person, or to the ap- pearance of the eye, and in both cases the haziness may have been referrible to any of the other trans-
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parent media as well as to the cornea. Examples of blindness from old age occur in Gen. xxvii, 1; 1 Kings xiv, 4 ; 1 Sam. iv, 15. The Syrian army that came to apprehend Elisha was suddenly smitten witli blindness in a miraculous manner (2 Kings vi, 18), and so also was Paul (Acts ix, 9). Blindness is sometimes threat- ened in the Old Testament as a punishment (q. v.) for disobedience (l)eut. xxviii, 28; Lev. xxvi, 1G; Zeph. i, 17). Blindness wilfully inflicted for political or other purposes was common in the East, and is alluded to in Scripture (1 Sam. xi, 2; Jer. xxii, 12). That calamities are always the offspring of crime is a preju- dice which the depraved nature of man is but too prone to indulge in, and the Jews in the time of our Lord were greatly under the power of this prejudice. A modern traveller says, "The Hindoos and Ceylon- cse very commonly attribute their misfortunes to the transgressions of a former state of existence, and I re- member being rather struck with the seriousness of a cripple, who attributed his condition to the unknown faults of his former life." On seeing a man who had been born blind, the disciples of our Lord fell into the ramc mistake, and asked him, " Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" (John ix, 2). Jesus immediately solved the difficulty by miraculous- ly giving him the use of his sight. See Eye.