Mish'raite (Heb. MishraV, "''J^'O'Q, gentile, used collectively, from some noun Mishra', SldTD, perhaps slippery ; Sept. 'Hfiacrapativ v. r. 'Rfiaaapaifi, Vulg. Maserei, Auth.Vers. " Jlishraites"), an inhabitant of a place called Mishra, alluded to only in 1 Chron. ii, 53, as founded by the descendants of Caleb, and associated with the Ithrites and others, who were in some way connected with Kirjath-jearim ; probably therefore a village in the vicinity of this last town.
Misology (from /.niTHv, to hate, and Xoyog, reasoii) is a term emijloyed to designate the hatred of reason — the most unreasonable kind of hatred that can possibly be thought of. But as reason is the point of demarca- tion between man and brute, the misologist generally claims to be opposed only to the false application of the reasoning powers. See Reason.
Misotheia {hkt'hi}, to hate, and ^eoi;, God) is ha- tred of God and everj- thing divine — hatred of truth, wisdom, virtue, and reason. In classic Greek we only find fiiiyu^iOQ, hating the gods, godless (.Esch. Ag. 1090). Sometimes the word is changed to ^lojxiaric, a person hating the gods, and to BiofiiarjTog, a person hated by the gods. The misotheist is akin to the misologist. See Misology.
Mispe'reth (Heb. id. V^'^^'O'q, enumerating; Sept. Maa(7(f>apd3i v. r. Ma<y(papaj), one who returned from Babylon with Zerubbabel (Neh. vii, 7) ; elsewhere called MizPAR (Ezra ii, 2).
Misrachi, Eiia, ben-Abraham (called also Elia Parnas), a noted rabbi, flourished at Constantinople to- wards the close of the 15th century. Misrachi was versed not only in rabbinic lore, but also in astronomy and mathematics. He maintained a lively controversy with his contemporary, Mose Kapsoli, a teacher and judge in the old Romanesque congregation of Jews at Constantinople about 1500, on the question whether the children of Karaites ought to be admitted into the rabbinical schools. Kapsoli denounced the practice as illegal. Misrachi argued not only that it was lawful, but highly expedient, as a means of bringing them to conform to rabbinism. Misrachi labored much in the cause of Jewish education. He died about 1525. Be- sides his Chidiishim (Qid^'iri), a collection of novellas on the Sepher Mizvoth Gadol of Jloses de Coucy, and a super-commentary on Rashi's Pentateuch ("TllT^ari 'o or rrninn hv "Tl-lTp n^h^ b); he wrote also a trea- tise on arithmetic, "lEO^n rrsb^; also "Span o which was translated into Latin bv O. Schreckfuchs and S. Jlimster (Basle, 15"16). See Furst, Bihl. Jud. ii, 381 ; id. Gesch. d. Kurderthums, ii, 304; De Rossi, Dizi- onario (Germ, transl. by Humberger), p. 201 ; Ether- idge, Introd. to Hehr. Liierat. p. -161 sq. ; Cassel, Leit fa- den fur jud. Gesch. ii. Literat. (Berlin, 1872), p. 91 ; Gratz, Gesch. d. Jiiden, viii, 292, 297 ; Jost, Gesch. d. Ju- deii. u. s. Sekten, iii, 127; Lindo's Conciliator of R. Ma- nasseh ben-Israel (Lond. 1842), p. xxviii, (B. P,)
Mis'rephoth-ma'im (Heb. Misrephoth'-Ma'yim, S1''5 nSTi'O, burnings of water ; according to Kim- chi, with allusion to warm baths ; but, as Gesenius thinks, from lime-kilns or smelting-furnaces situated near the water; Sept. Macpscpw^ Matv, Vulg. aqum Musere- photk), a place between Zidon and the valley of Miz- peh, whither Joshua piu-sued the allied Canaanites after the defeat of Jabin (Josh, xi, 8) ; from which passage, as well as from the only other where the place is men- tioned (Josh, xiii, 6), it appears to have been a valley (containing springs or a running stream; see linger, De thermis Sidonis, Lips. 1803), situated in the moun- tainous region, near the northern border of Canaan, op- posite Mount Lebanon ; probably therefore in the mid- dle portion of the valley of the Leontes— a position that may have given occasion for the name (i. q. glass-houses by the water side, see Keil, Comment, ad loc.) by fur- nishing facilities for the manufacture of glass (a sub- stance said to have been first invented in this region) from the sand washed down by the stream. Dr. Thom- son {Land and Book, i, 469) still adheres to a location given by him and Schulz {Bibliotheca Sacra, 1855, p. 826) at a collection of springs called .4 in-Mesherfi, with ruins adjacent on the shore near Ras en-Nakura, at the foot of Jebel Mushakka, on the northern border of the plain of Akka (Van de Velde, Memoir, p. 335) ; but the locality is entirely too far south of Sidon.
Misrepresentation, the act of wilfully represent- ing a thing dtlicrwisc than it is. We ought to be care- ful not to misrepresent the actions of others; and we should, with equal solicitude, avoid any misrepresenta- tions of their words. Verbal misrepresentations may be productive of the greatest injury, and are indicative of radical malevolence. Words, in themselves, and taken in their insulated state, are capable of diverse mean- ings ; and he who reports any impressions without no- ticing what went before, or what followed after, may easily pervert the most harmless into the most criminal expressions ; or cause the foulest inferences to be drawn from the most innocent discourse. What confusion and inquietude in society, what suspensions of confidence, what interruptions of good neighborhood, what bitter- ness and animosit}', are occasioned by verbal misrepre- sentations ! How often has the fondest love been thus blighted, and the warmest friendship turned cold ! The perverse construction, the imperfect repetition, or the mutilated statement of what others have said, is one of the common expedients which the artful and treacher- ous know so well how to employ to serve their own sin- ister ends, to promote their own interested views, and to produce endless feuds, inextinguishable jealousies, and irreconcilable animosities. As the v.-ords of men may thus be misrepresented to serve the most mischiev- ous purposes, it earnestly behooves us, on all occasions, when we repeat the discourse of others, to adhere as closely as possible to the words, and never wilfuUy to deviate from the sense. We ought to beware of stat- ing that to have been designed as a positive declaration which was intended only as a casual supposition; we are not to represent that as a literal affirmation which was meant only as an incidental illustration, or as a figu- rative ornament ; for it is possible in this way to render an exact copy of the words, and yet a malicious perver- sion of the sense. But when we report what others have said, and particularly when the interest of the in- dividual is in the least degree concerned in the fidelity of the representation, we are not only to repeat the ex- pressions that ^vere used, but the sense in which they were at the time designed to bear, and which was evi- dent either from the context of the discourse or from the manner of the speaker. See Truth.