be able to give food ami clothing to the i r.
' at Paris Iii'.--'. L803. Besides whal has been
mentioned, In- wrote several historical Memoires, which
in thi academy of which In- was a member,
. Dom /'■•ii u i i Paris. 1804,
i l :. Vouv. Biog. Gem rale, s. v.
Poison i- i In- rendering in tin- A. V. of the Bibleof t\\" Id brew ami two < Ireek terms, but they are so gen- eral as to throw link- light upon the knowledge and practice of poisons among the Hebrews.
I. ~'i~, chemdh, from the runt signifying "in be hot," is used of tin- heal produced by \\im- (Hos. \ii. .rn. ami tin- Imi passion ni' anger (Deut xxix, 27, etc.), a- »i 11 as i.r the burning venom of poisonous serpents (Deut xxxii. 21. :;:i: Psa.lviii,4; cxl,3). In all casts it denotes animal poison, and nol vegetable or mineral. The only allusion to its applical ion is in Job vi,. 4, where reference set ms to be made to the custom of anointing arrows with the venom of a snake, a practice the origin of which i- of very remote antiquity (comp. Homer, Od. i,261,262; Ovid, Trist. iii, 10, 64; Fast, v, 397, etc. ; riiny.xviii.li. The Soanes, a Caucasian rare men-
ti -'I by Strabo (xi, 199), were especially skilled in
tin- an. Pliny (vi, 34 i mentions a tribe of Arab pirates who infested the Red Sea, and were armed with poi- soned arrows like the Malays of the coast of Borneo. For tliis purpose the berries of the yew-tree (Pliny, xvi, 20) were employed. The Gauls (Pliny, xxvii,76) used a poisonous herb, limeum, supposed by some to be and the s,-\ thians dipped their arrow-points in vipers' venom mixed with human blood. I re so deadly that a Blight scratch inflicted by
Pliny, xi. 1 15). The practice was so common rogtKov, originally a poison in
li i I, •■ i- applied to poi i row. In Palestine and the countries ad- makes, as well as insects, trpion and the Bcolopendra; bul no such obtained among the .lews. Poisonous plants
tin r countries, and we have
i miracle wrou
hi. I' by the accidenl imi~ "' • prepared
' the prophets. This fruit or
nth: and when those who were
"' I '" partake ..I" it were r. pi lied bj it- nau
h( t commanded a handful ol meal to
1 ' he pot, and thus rendert d it- < Ms
iii for humai I an.
_-- Deut, Kxxii,82),rd*A,ifapoison at all, denotes a vegetable poison primarily, and is only
twi Di nt xxxii. 33: Job xx. 16) used of the venom
nt In ntlnr passages where it occurs it is translated "gall" in the A. V., except in Hos. x, 4, wlnre it i- rendered ••hemlock." In the margin of Dent. xxix. 18 our translators, feeling the uncertainty nt the word, gave a- an alternative urosh, or. apoison- /ul herb." Beyond the facl that, whether poisonous or nni.it was a plant of bitter taste, nothing can In- infer- red. That bitterness was its prevailing characteristic is evident from its being associated with wormwood | Dent. xxix. 18 [17]; Lam. iii. 1!': Amos vi. 12), and from the allusions to "water of rosh" in Jcr.viii, 11: ix, ].". : xxiii, 15. It was not a juice or liquid (Psa. lxix, 21 22 : comp. Mark xv. 23), but probably a hitter I., rry, in which case the expression in Dent, xxxii, 32, "grapes of rosh" may he taken literally. It grew in tin- fields (Hos. x, 4), was hitter to the taste (Jer. xxiii, 15; Psa. lxix, 22 : comp. Lam. iii, 5), and bore clusters, perhaps something like the belladonna (Dent, xxxii, 32. 1'i here the words Dl*l "ZIV might also be ren- dered poison grapes, carrying out the figure of the vine, without special allusion to the poison plant ). Any spe- cial rendering which would suit all the passages i- un- certain, since all the old translators have but general expressions (Sept \n\//. Vu\g.fel, or else some word meaning bitter; yet in the passage from IIos. /. c. dypworic, Ven. MS. rt&v/taXof), and there is no kin- dred wnrd found in the other dialects to compare. Oed- mann 'viv, 83 sq.) referred the word to the poisonous colocynth (Cucumis colocynthi, Linn.), which grows al- most everywhere in Arabia and Palestine; a plant with a creeping stem, bright green leaves, and hears a fruit with a strangely bitter juice (Fabri Evagat. ii. 117 sq.). Bul this fruit is not a berry, But an apple, of the size of
the closed hand: nor does the colocynth shoot up among the grain. Michaelis {Fragm. etc. p. 145) would understand the hyoscydmus or the darn* h Lolium i, mill, ntuni). (But see < tedmann, >// .-■»/'. p. 85.) This meaning suits the passage in Hoseawell (Rosenmiiller, Altertk. iv, i, 118), bul not that in Deut xxxii, 32 ; nor does the lolium produce so active a poison that it could he mentioned by way of eminence in these pas- sages. Indeed, many moderns disbelieve its poisonous properties entirely. Celsius (Hierobot. ii. Iti sq.) ex- plains rosh of the acuta or hemlock, bul is opposed by Michaelis and Oedmann tm sup. p. 84). t resenius ( The- saur. p. 1281 ). on the ground that the word in Hebrew also signifies " head," rejects the hemlock, colocynth, and darnel of Other writers, and proposes the "poppy" instead (comp. Livy, i. 54, Papaverum capita, Papaver somniferum), from the ••heads" in which ils seeds are contained, and from which the < trientals have extracted opium from a remote antiquity. This was known to t ho ancients to he poisonous, when taken in excess (Pliny, xx. 76). Bul it may he doubted whether tin- poppy