FLUX,-BLOODY (Gr. Sucevrepla, doos-en- ter ee'ah, dysentery, Acts xxviii:8). This was a com plaint which is often epidemic in the East. This was probably the disease of Jehoram (2 Chron. xxi:15,19).
FLY (fli), (Heb. zeb-oob).
(1) The word occurs Exod. Viii I2I, 22, 24, 29, 31; Ps. lxxviii :45, and cv :3r ; all which passages relate to the plague of flies inflicted upon Pharaoh and his people. In the Septuagint it is uniformly rendered Kvv6kwia, or the dog-fly.
(2) Philo, in his Life of Moses 0:23, p. 4ot, ed. Mangey), expressly describes it as a biting. insidious creature, which cOmes like a dart, with great noise, and rushing with great impetuosity on the skin, sticks to it most tenaciously. All the ancient translators understood by the original word, a mixture of noxious creatures. More modern writers, reasoning on other senses of the Hebrew word, and which are very numerous, have proposed several different insects. Thus, one of the meanings of the word is 'to darken,' and Mouffet observes that the name cynomyia agrees with no kind of flies, better than with those black, large, compressed flies, which boldly beset cattle, and suck out blood from beneath, and occasion great pain. He observes that they have
no proboscis, but, instead of it, have double sets of teeth, like wasps, which they infix deeply in the skin, and adds that they greatly infest the cars of dogs (Theat. Insect. ex1). Others have proposed the blatta Orientalis or /Egyptia of Linnwus, as answering considerably to the char acteristics of voracity, intrusion into houses, etc., etc. (Forskal, Descrilz. Animal., Prxf., p. 22). The miracle involved in the plague of flies con sisted, partly at least, in the creature being brought against the Egyptians in so great an abundance during winter. The particular species is, however, at present undetermined.
FOAL (fol), (Heb. 17, ah'yeer, Gen. xlix:t t; P, bane, son, Zech. ix:9; Gr. vt6s, son, Matt. xxi:5), an ass's colt. (Sec Ass.) FOAM (fom), (Hcb. keh' 1.4; something broken, a splinter). The original word is rendered "foam" in Hos. x:7, "As for Samaria, her king is cut off as the foam upon the water." It means a broken branch, a dry twig, or splinter.