Ononis spinosa.
12. NAATsfTS Cj^!!!!?^) occurs only in two passages of Isaiah, in both of whicii it is translated " thorn" in the A.V. Tbus (vii, 18, 19), '"Jehovah shall hiss for the tiy that is in the uttermost ])art of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria; and they shall come, and shall rest all of them in the desolate valleys, and in the holes of the rocks, and upon all the thorns" {naatsutsim ; Sejit. paydc\ \u\g.fivte- tmn). By some this has been translated cirvices ; but that it is a plant of some kind is evident from Iv, 13: " Instead of the ihoi-n (naatfti/s ; Sept. (jroil^li ; Vulg. saliunca) shall come up the fir-tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle-tree." Some have un- derstood it generally as thorn, shrub, thorny shrub, small tree, or thicket. Others have attempted to define it specifically, rendering it bramble, white-thorn, etc. ((.'e]- sius, /Jiiroh. ii, 19(1); but nothing certain has been de- termined respecting it. Celsius endeavors to trace it to the same origin as the Aral)ic naaz, wliich he states to be the name of a plant of which the bark is employed in tanning leather. The meaning of the term, he con- tinues, in Chaldee, is iiifir/trc, dijujere, '• to stick into" or "fix," and it is therefore supposed to refer to a prickly or thorny plant, li. ben-^lelech says that commenta-
tors explain nnatsuts by the Arabic word sidr, which is the name of a well-known thorny hush of Eastern countries, a species of Zizyphus. This. Sprengel says, is the Z. vulyaiis, found in many parts t)f Palestine, as well as in many of the uncultivated tracts of other Eastern countries. Others suppose the species to be the vulak of the Arabs, which is the Zizyphus lotus, and considered to be the lotus of the ancients. But from the context it would appear that tlie jtlant, if a zizyphus. must liave been a less highly esteemed variety or species. But in a wild state these are very abundant, bushy, iirickly, and of little value. Belon says, "Les haves, pour la plus part, sont de tamarisques, cenoplia (i. e. zizyphi species) et rhamnes." In Freytag's A rabic Lexicon the above Arabic word naaz is said to be the name of a thorny tree, common in the Ilejaz, the bark of which is used in tanning hides, and from whose wood a denti- frice is prepared. Tliis might be a species of acacia, of which many species are well known to be abundant in the dry and barren parts of Syria, Arabia, and Egypt.
13. Sakab (~^0) occurs (in the plur.) only once (Ezek. ii, 6) as a synonym of sall/m, and is thought by many (the rabbins Cast ell, Furst, etc.) to denote a thorny plant (A.V. "brier"), as cognate with sir; but Celsius (IJierob. ii, 222) contends that it simply means rebels (from the Chald. 3"|ip, to resist).
14. Sek (Tjr". literally a ihorn-hedf/e, so called from the interlacing of the briers) occurs only once (in the plur.) as a sj'nonym of tsin for a prickly object in gen- eral (Numb, xxxiii, 55; Sept. oKoXoTrtc; Vulg. (:•/(/^'^,• A. V. " pricks"). It occurs in the feminine plur. form sukkoth (ns^') in Job xli, 7, where it is translated " barbed irons." Its resemblance to the Arabic shok, thorn, sufficiently indicates the probability of its mean- ing something of the same kind.
15. Skneh (n:p) occurs in the well-known passage of Exod. iii, 2, where the angel of the Lord appeared unto Moses in a flaming fire out of the midst of a "bush" (seneh), and tlie bush was not consumed. It occurs also in ver. 3 and 4, and in Deut. xxxiii, 16, but with refer- ence to the same event. The Sept. translates seneh by l3aToc, which usually signifies the ruhus, or bramble; so in the New Test. jSnrof is emiiloyed when referring to the above miracle of the burning bush. Bdrof is like- wise used to denote the seneh by Josephus, Philo, Cle- mens, Eusebius, and otliers (see Celsius, Hierob. ii, 58). The monks of the monastery of St. Catherine on Jlount Sinai have a species of rubus planted in their garden near their Chapel of the Burning Bush; but this can- not be considered as any proof of its identity with the seneh from the little attention which they have usual- ly |)aid to correctness in such points. Bove says of it, "C'est une espece de Eubus, qui est voisin de notre E. fruticosus." The species of rubus (our blackberry) are not common either in Syria or Arabia. Jiubus sunctus, the holy bramble, is found in Palestine, and is mention- ed by Dr. Bussell as existing in the neighborhood of Alejipo, and Hasselquist found a rubus among the ruins of Scanderetta, and another in the neighborliood of Seide. It is also found among the ruins of Petra (?) (Calcott). Celsius and others quote Hebrew authors as stating that IMount Sinai obtained its name from the abundance of these bushes (seneh), "D'lctus est mons Sinai de nomine ejus." But no species of rubus seems to have been discovered in a wild state on this moun- tain. This was observed by Pococke. He found, how- ever, on IMount lloreb several hawthorn bushes, and says that the holy bush was more likely to have been a hawthorn than a bramble, and that tliis must have been the spot where the phenomenon was observed, being a sequestered place and affording excellent pasture, where- as near the Chapel of llie Holy Bush not a single herb grows. Shaw states that the O.ryacantha A rahica grows in many places on St. ('atherine's ISIountain. Bove says, on ascending Mount Sinai: "J'ai trouve entre les ro-