ADRIATIC SEA se), (Gr. 'tibias, ad-ree'as, Acts xxvii:27). This name is now con fined to the gulf lying between Italy on one side, and the coasts of Dalmatia and Albania on the other. But in St. Paul's time it extended to all that part of the Mediterranean between Crete and Sicily. Thus Ptolemy (iii:16) says that Sicily was bounded on the east by the Adriatic, and that Crete was bounded by the Adriatic on the west; and Strabo (ii, p. 185; vii, p. 488) says that the Ionian gulf was a part of what was in his time called the Adriatic Sea. This fact is of impor tance, as relieving us from the necessity of finding the island of NIelita on which Paul was ship wrecked in the present Adriatic gulf; and con sequently removing the chief difficulty in the way of the identification of that island with the pres ent Malta.
ADRIEL (5'dri-e1), (Heb. 5$":12, ad-ree-ale', the flock of God), the person to whom Saul gave in marriage his daughter Merab, who had been originally promised to David (I Sam. xviii:to).
Five sons sprang from this union, who were taken to make up the number of Saul's descendants, whose lives, on the principle of blood-revenge, were required by the Gibeonites to avenge the cruelties which Saul had exercised towards their race. (See GIBEONITES.) In 2 Sam. xxi:8, the name of occurs as the mother of these sons of Adriel; but as it is known that Merab, and not Michal, was the wife of Adriel, and that Michal never had any children (2 Sam. vi:23), there only remains the alternative of supposing either that Michal's name has been substituted for Merab's by some ancient copyist, or that the word which properly means bare (which Michal bare unto Adriel), should be rendered brought up or educated (which Michal brought ufi for Adriel).