AARONTIES (a'ron-ites), (Heb. same as Aaron).
Levites of the family of Aaron ; the priests who particularly served the sanctuary (Num. iv :5, sq.).
To the number of 3.70o fighting men, with Jehoiada, the father of Benaiah, at their head, they joined David at Hebron (1 Chron. xii :27). Later on in their history we find their chief was Zadok (t Chron.xxvii:17). (See AARON; PRIEST;LEVITES). AB (ab), father).
1. Is found as the first member of several com pound Hebrew proper names—such as Abner, fa ther of light; Abiezer, father of help, etc. By a process which it is not difficult to conceive, the idea of a natural father became modified into that of author, cause, source (as when it is said, 'has the rain a father?' Job xxxviii:28). So that, in course of time, the original meaning was so far modified that the word was sometimes applied to a woman, as in Abigail, father of (I Sam. xxv:t 4).
2. The Chaldee name of that month, which is the fifth of the ecclesiastical and eleventh of the civil year of the Jews. It commenced with the new moon of our August the reasons for this state ment will be given in the article MoNTIts), and always had thirty days. This month is pre-emi nent in the Jewish calendar as the period of the most signal national calamities. The ist is memo rable for the death of Aaron (Num. xxxiii :38). The gth is the date assigned to the following events: The declaration that no one then adult, except Joshua and Caleb, should enter into the Promised Land (Num. xiv:3o) ; the destruction
of the first Temple by Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings, xxv :8, comp. Jcr. lii :12) ; (to these first two 'the fast of the fifth month,' in Zech. vii :5 ; xiii :19; Jer. i:3 is supposed to refer) ; the destruction of the second Temple by Titus; the devastation of the city Bettar, and the slaughter of Ben Cozibah (Bar Cocab), and of several thousand Jews there; and the ploughing up of the foundations of the Temple by Turnus Rufus—the two last of which happened in the time of Hadrian.
The 9th of the month is observed by the Jews as a fast, in commemoration of the destruction of the first Temple; the 13th is the day appointed for the festival of the wood-offering, in which the wood for the burnt-offering was stored up in the court of the Temple; to which Nehemiah alludes in x:34. and xiii:3t. Lastly, the t8th is a fast in the memory of the western lamp going out in the Temple in the time of Ahaz (2 Chron. xxix :7, where the extinction of the lamps is mentioned as a part of Ahaz's attempts to suppress the Temple service). For an inquiry into what is meant by the wester[ or evening lamp see CANDLESTICK.