ABATTACHIM (a-barta-kim), (Itch. ab-at-tah-kheene).
This word occurs only in Numbers xi :5, where the murmuring Israelites say, 'Wc remember the fish which we did eat freely in Egypt, the cucum bers and the abattachim,' etc. The last word has always been rendered *ME.Lorqs.' The probable correctness of this translation may be inferred from melons having been known to the nations of antiquity ; and it may be proved to be so by com paring the original term with the name of the melon in a cognate language such as the Arabic. (See MELONS.) ABBA (ab'ba), (Heb. ab-bah'), is the Hebrew word awb, father, under a form peculiar to the Chaldee idiom.
The Aramaic dialects do not possess the definite article in the form in which it is found in Hebrew. They compensate for it by adding a syllable to the end of the simple noun, and thereby produce a dis tinct form, called by grammarians the emphatic, or definitive, which is equivalent (but with much less strictness in its use, especially in Syriac) to a noun with the article in Hebrew. This emphatic form is also commonly used to express the vocative case of our language—the context alone determining when it is to be taken in that sense (just as the noun with the article is some times similarly used in Hebrew). Hence this form is appropriately employed in all the passages in which it occurs in the New Testament (Mark xiv :36; Rom. viii :15 ; Gal. iv :6), in all of which
it is an invocation. Why Abba is, in all these passages, immediately rendered by 6 trarhp, in stead of rcirep may perhaps be in part accounted for on the supposition that, although the Hellenic (as well as the classical) Greek allows the use of the nominative with the article for the vocative, the writers of the New Testament preferred the former, because the article more adequately repre sented the force of the emphatic form. Probably to guard against the appearance of too great a familiarity, the writers of the New Testament, instead of using the Greek word rbra, papa, retained the foreign form Abba to give greater emphasis and dignity. St. Paul says, 'Ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father' (Rom. yin :15). In some of the Eastern churches, as the Syriac, Coptic and Ethio pic, the title was given in an improper sense to their bishops.
ABDA (alb'da), (Heb. ab-daw', servant, slave, worshiper of God).
1. Father of Adoniram, who was an officer of the tribute under Solomon (t Kings iv :6).
2. Son of Shammua (Neh. xi :17), called Oba diah in i Chron. ix :16 (B. C. after 444).