BABYLONISH GARMENT (13Kb'y-IO'nish gaement), ad-areh'rith shin-cwr', cloak of Shinar or Babylon).
The garmcnt which Achan stole at the destruc tion of Jericho (Josh. vii:21) is described by Josephus as "a royal mantle all woven with gold." But no accurate description is possible. Babylon was famous for the products of the loom.
"Josephus (Ant. V :I, io) gives rein to his imagi nation, and describes it as 'a royal garment woven entirely of gold,' or 'all woven with gold.' There is no doubt that a dress of this description would be 'goodly' in the extreme. The probability is that it was a garment of embroidered stuff, such as Babylon was famed for (cf. Pliny, viii :74; and Martial, Ep. viii :28) ; and the statement in the Bereshith Rabba (sec. 85, fol. 75, 2) that it was a robe of purple (an opinion which R. Chanina bar R. Isaac also shared ; cf. Kimchi on Josh. vii :21) is just as likely to be correct as any other." (T. G. Pinches, Hastings' Bib. Diet.).
BACA (ba'ka), baw-kaw', weeping), occurs the first in Ps. lxxxiv:6, 'Who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well; the rain also filletit the pools;' the second in 2 Sam. %.:23, 24, and in t Chron. 15, 'And let it be, when thou Nearest the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees, that thou shalt bestir thy self.' Neither the mulberry nor the pear-tree, con sidered to be the baca of the Scriptures, satis fies translators and commentators, because they do not possess any characteristics particularly suitable to the above passages. With regard to the mulberry, RosemnbIler justly observes that this interpretation is countenanced neither by the ancient translators nor by the occurrence of any similar term in the cognate languages. We should expect, however, some notice in Scripture of a tree which must have been common, and always esteemed for its fruit. Rosentnfiller prefers pear trees in the preceding passages, as being the old est rendering of the words. But the correctness of this translation is not confirmed by any of the cognate dialects; nor is the pear-tree more appropriate than the mulberry.
The tree alluded to in Scripture, whatever it is, must be common in Palestine, must grow in the neighborhood of water, have its leaves easily moved, and have a name in some of the cognate languages similar to the Hebrew Baca. The only one with which we are acquainted answering to these conditions is that called bak by the Arabs. or, rather, shajrat-al-bak—that is, the Ay or gnat tree.
As it seems to us sufficiently clear that the bak tree is a kind of poplar, and as the Arabic 'bak' is very similar to the Hebrew 'Baca,' so it is prob able that one of the kinds of poplar may be in tended in the above passages of Scripture. And it must be noted that the poplar is as appropriate as any tree can be for the elucidation of the passages in which baca occurs. For the poplar is well known to delight in moist situations, and Bishop Horne, in his Comm. on Psalm lxxxiv, has in ferred that in the valley of Baca the Israelites, on their way to Jerusalem, were refreshed by plenty of water. It is not less appropriate in the passages in 2 Samuel and t Chronicles, as no tree is more remarkable than the poplar for the ease with which its leaves are rustled by the slightest movement of the air ; an effect which might be caused in a still night even by the movement of a body of men on the ground. when attacked in flank or when unprepared. That poplars arc com mon in Palestine may be proved from Kitto's Palestine, p. t4 : 'Of poplars we only know, with certainty, that the black poplar, the aspen, and the Lombardy poplar grow in Palestine. The aspen, wf.ose long leaf-stalks cause the leaves to tremble with every breath of wind, unites with the will w and the oak to overshadow the water courses of the Lower Lebanon, and with the oleander and the acacia to adorn the ravines of southern Palestine; we do not know that the Lombardy poplar has been noticed but by Lord Lindsay, who describes it as growing with the walnut-tree and weeping-willow under the deep torrents of the Upper Lebanon.'