not hurt you ; but if you have polluted yourself by com- ing near to another man, and gone astray from your hus- band, may you be accursed of the Lord, and become an example for all his people; may your thigh rot, and your beUy swell till it burst; may these cursed waters enter into your belly, and, being swelled therewith, may your thighs putrefy.' After this, the priest filled a pitcher out of the brazen vessel near the altar of burnt- offerings, cast some dust of the pavement into it, min- gled something with it as bitter as wormwood, and then read the curses, and received her answer of Amen. An- other priest in the mean time tore off her clothes as low as her bosom, made her head bare, untied the tresses of her hair, fastened her clothes (which were thus torn) with a girdle under her breast, and then presented her with the tenth part of an ephah, or about three pints of barley-meal. The other priest then gave her the icaters of jealousy or bitterness to drink, and, as soon as the woman had swallowed them, he gave her the meal, in a vessel like a frying-pan, into her hand. This was stir- red before the Lord, and part of it thrown into the fire of the altar. If the wife was innocent, she returned with her husband, and the waters, so far from injuring her, increased her health, and made her more fruitful; but if she was guilty, she grew pale immediately, her eyes swelled, and, lest she should pollute the Temple, she was instantly carried out with these symptoms upon her, and died immediately, with all the ignominious cir- cumstances related in the curses."
This ordeal appears to have contained the essence of an oath varied for the purpose of peculiar solemnity, so that a woman would naturally hesitate to take such an oath, understood to be an appeal to heaven of the most solemn kind, and also to be accompanied, in case of per- jury, by most painful and fatal effects. The drinking appears to have been a symbolical action. When " the priest Avrote the curses in a book," and washed those curses into the -water which was to be drmik, the water was understood to be impregnated as it were, or to be tinctured with the curse, the acrimony of which it re- ceived ; so that now it was metaphorically bitter, con- taining the curse in it. The drinking of this curse, though conditionally effective or non-effective, could not but have a great effect on the woman's mind, and an an- swerable effect on the husband's jealousj', which it was designed to cure and to dissipate. We read of no in- stance in which the trial took place ; and, if the admin- istration of the ordeal were really infrequent, we may regard that as an evidence of its practical utility, for it would seem that the trial and its result were so dreadful that the guilty rather confessed their crime, as they were earnestly exhorted to do, than go through it. The rab- bins say that a woman who confessed in such circum- stances was not put to death, but only divorced without dowrv. It has been well remarked that this species of ordeal could not injure the innocent at all, or pr.nish the guilty except by a miracle, whereas in the ordeals by fire, etc., in the Dark Ages, the innocent could scarcely escape except by a miracle. See Adli.terv.
Jeanes, Henry, an English divine, was born at Al- lensay, county of Somerset, in IGll, and was educated at Oxford University. He held first the rectory of Beercrocomb and Cai)land, and, after Walter Raleigh's expulsion, the rectory of Chedzoy. He died in 1GG2. Jeanes wrote several theological treatises: (1) Absti- nence from Eril : — (2) Indiffei-ence of Human Actions: — (3) Orif/inal Righteousness ; besides several polemical tracts in a controversy which he waged against Dr. Hammond, Jeremy Taylor, (Joodwin, etc. An answer to IMilton's Iconoclasts, entitled The Image Unbrolcen, was generally believed to be written by Jeanes, but Watt ascribes the work to Josepli Jane (see Allibone, Diet, of Authors, p. 957).— Hook, Eccles. Biogr.x'i, 280.
Je'ariin (Heb. Yedrim', ti'^''}V'^, forests; Sept. 'la- pf i/i), the name of a mountain on the border of Judah, between jNIount Seir and Beth-sliemesh (Josh, xv, 10) ;
JEATERAI
(94
JEBUSI
stated to be the site of Chesalon (q. v.). Kesla stands, seven miles due west of Jerusalem, " on a high pouit on the north slope of the lofty ridge between wady Ghurab and wady Ismail. The Litter of these is the south- western continuation of wady Beit-Hanina, and the for- mer runs parallel to and nortliward of it, and they are separated by this ridge, which is probably Mount Jea- rim" (Robinson, Xetv Besectrches, p. 154). Forests, in our sense of the word, there are none ; but we have the testimonv of the latest traveUer that "such thorough woods, both for loneliness and obscurity, he had not seen since he left Germany" (Tobler, Wanderum/, 1857, p. 178)._Smith. Perhaps the hiU behind Kuryet el-Enab may be Mount Seir ; from it the border " passed over (wady Ghurab) to the shoulder CIPD-'PS ISS'I) of Mount Jearim .... and then u-ent down to Beth-she- mesh." It may be that a considerable district of the mountains in this locality was called Jearim, for Baalah is called Kirjath-Je«rj«t (" the town of Jearim") ; and if so, then we can see the reason why the explanatory phrase is added, "^Mount Jearim, u-hich is Chesalon" to limit the more general appellative to the narrow ridge between the two wadys (see Kcil on Joshua, ad loc; Porter, Handbook for S. and Pal. p. 285).— Kitto. See