But the world is destroyed only to rise again in a more glorious condition. In the reconstruction and re- generation of the world the victory of good over evil is complete. After liagnarok the divine powers are gath- ered in that Supreme Being, that unknown God, who was faintly seen from the beginning, but whom no one ventured to name ; and the evil being, who so long has cursed the earth, sinks, together with death, into the unfathomable abyss, never to rise again.
7. For a complete presentation of the religion of the ancient Norsemen, see Anderson, Norse Mythology, or the Religion of our Forefathers (Chicago, 1875); Key- ser. Religion of the Northmen; Thorpe, Northern My- thology (Lond. 1852, 3 vols. 8vo); Muller, Chijjsfrom a German Workshop (see Index in vol. ii) ; .4 mer. Ch. Rev. April, 1872, art. viii. See also the articles Mytholo- gy; Teutonic Mythology". (R. B. A.)
North is the rendering which the A. V. gives in Job xxxvii, 9, for the Hebrew mezarirn', D'^ltp; prop- erly, as the margin reads, scattering winds, i. e. winds which scatter the clouds, and bring clear, cold weather. (The Sept. has aKpuiriipia, the Vulg. arcturus.) But Aben-Ezra and !Michaelis understand Mezarirn to mean a constellation, and the same as Mazzaroth (q. v.).
The Hebrews considered the cardinal points of the heavens in reference to a man whose face was turned towards the east, the north was consequently on his left hand (Gen. xiii, 14; Josh, xv, 10; Judg. xxi, 19; Jer. i, 13) ; hence " the left hand" designates the north (Gen. xiv, 15; Job xxiii, 9). They also regarded what lay to the north as higher, and what lay to the south as lower; hence they who travelled from south to north were said to "go up" (Gen. xlv, 25; Hos. viii, 9; Acts xviii, 3; xix, 1), while they who went from north to south were said to "go down" (Gen. xii, 10; xxvi, 2; xxxviil, 1 ; 1 Sam. xxx, 15, IG; xxv, 1; xxvi, 2).
Elsewhere the word north in our version stands for the Hebrew tsaphnn', "lEU, which is used in several senses : 1. It denotes a particular quarter of the heavens; thus, "Fair weather cometh out of the north" (Job xxxvii, 22); literally, "gold cometh," which our ver- sion, with the best critical authorities, understands fig- uratively, as meaning the golden splendor (of the firma- ment, i. e. " fair weather") (comp. Zech. iv, 12, " gold- colored oil"). The Sept. gives " the cloud having the lustre of gold," which perhaps corresponds with the XpvuujiruQ at2r!]p, the gilded asther, or sky, of an old Greek tragedian, quoted by Grotius. The same Hebrew word is used poetically for the whole heaven in the following passage : " He stretcheth out the north (liter- ally the concealed, dark place) (like I'Tro 'O'xpov, in Homer, Odys. iii, 335 ; Trpug Zi'>i>ov, Pindar, Nenue. iv, 112) over the empty place" (Job xxvi, 7; Sept. tir' ovi)ii>). Hence the meaning probably is that the north wind clears the sky of clouds; which agrees with the fact in Palestine, to which Solomon thus alludes, " The north wind driveth away rain" (Prov. xxv, 23). Homer styles it ai^pip/tvirtiQ, "producing clear weather" {II. XV, 171; Od. V, 296). Josephus calls it ni^puoraTog, "that wind which most produces clear weather" (.4?;^ XV, 9, 6) ; and Hesychius, tTriCe^ioc, or " auspicious ;" and see the remarkable rendering of the Sept. in Prov. xxvii, 16. The word occurs also in the same sense in the following passages : " The wind turneth about to the north" (Eccles. i, 6); "A whirlwind out of the north" (Ezek, i, 4). 2. It means a ([uarter of the earth ( Psa. cvii, 3; Isa. xliii, G; Ezek. xx, 47; xxxii, 30; comp.
Luke xiii, 29). 3. It occurs in the sense of a northern aspect or direction, etc.; thus, "looking north" (1 Kings vii, 25; 1 Chron. ix, 24; Numb, xxxiv, 7); on "the north side" (Psa. xlviii, 2 ; Ezek. viii, 14 ; xl, 44 ; comp. Kev. xxi, 13). 4. It is used as the conventional name for certain countries, irrespectively of their true geo- graphical situation, viz. Babylonia, Chaktea, Assyria, and Media, which are constantly represented as being to the north of Judaia, though some of them lay rather to the east of Palestine. Thus Assyria is called the north (Zcph. ii, 13), and Babylonia (Jer. i, 14; xlvi, 6, 10, 20, 24; Ezek. xxvi, 7; Judith xvi, 4). The origin of this use of the word is supposed to be found in the fact that the kings of most of these countries, avoiding the deserts, used to invade Judrea chiefly on the north side, by way of Damascus and Syria. Thus also the kings of the north that were " near" may mean the kings of Syria, and " those that are afar off" the Hyr- canians and Bactrians, etc., who are reckoned bj' Xeno- phon among the peoples that were subjected or op- pressed by the king of Babylon, and perhaps others be- sides of the neighboring nations that were compelled to submit to the Babylonian yoke (Jer. xxv, 2G). By " the princes of the north" (Ezek. xxxii, 30) some un- derstand the Tyrians and their allies (xxvi, 16), joined here with the Zidonians, their neighbors. " The fam- ilies of the north" (Jer. i, 15) are inferior kings, w'ho were allies or tributaries to the Babylonian emjHre (comp. xxxiv, 1; 1, 41 ; Ii, 27). "The families of the north" (Jer. xxv, 9) may mean a still inferior class of people, or nations dependent on Babylon. But the "king of the north" is the king of Syria; opposed to the king of the south, i.e. Egj'pt (Dan. xi, G-15, 40). 5. The Hebrew word is applied to the north wind. In Prov. xxvii, 16, the impossibility of concealing the qualities of a contentious wife is compared to an at- tempt to bind the north wind. The invocation of Sol- omon (Cant, iv, IG), "Awake, oh north, and come, thou south, blow upon my garden that the spices may flow out," and \\'hich has occasioned much perplexity to il- lustrators, seems well explained by Eosenmliller, as simply alluding to the effect of winds from opposite quarters in dispersing the fragrance of aromatic shrubs (ver. 13, 14) far and wide in all directions. A fine de- scription of the effects of the north wind, in winter, occurs in Ecclus. xliii, 20, which truly agrees with the " horrifer Boreas" of Ovid (Met. i, G5), and in which reference is made to the coincident effects of the north wind and of fire (v, 21 ; comp. v, 3, 4), like the "BoreiB penetrabile frigus adurit" of Virgil {Georg. i, 93) ; or Milton's description,