PAINT (pant), (Heb. 1112, pook, dye), (Jer. xxii: 14), a mixture of antimony, zinc and oil for making a black ring around the eyelids.
The Jews seem to have looked upon the custom as unbecoming a woman of high reputation (2 Kings ix:3o; Jer. iv :3o; Ezek. xxiii :4o). (See EvE.) Painting as a decoration was much practiced. In the houses the walls and beams were colored (Jer. xxii :14) ; also idols, either in the form of sculptures or in the form of drawings on the walls of temples, were colored (Wisd. xiii :14; Ezek. xxiii :14). But pictures, in the modern sense of the word, as products of free art, were unknown to the ancient Jews. and would perhaps have been regarded as violations of the second command ment. The drawings upon mummy cases were, however, doubtless familiar to them.
PAKYOTH (Heb. 71M, pak-koo mu.).
It is related in 2 Kings iv :38-4o, that Elisha having come again to Gilgal, when there was a famine in the land, and many sons of the prophets were assembled there, he ordered his servant to prepare for them a dish of vegetables: 'One went out into the field to gather herbs (oroth), and found a wild vine, and gathered thereof wild gourds (pokyoth sadeh) his lap full, and came and shred them into the pot of pottage, for they knew them not.' 'So they poured out for the men to eat ; but as they were eating of the pot tage, they cried out, 0 thou man of God, there is death in the pot ; and they could not eat thereof.' From this it appears that the servant mistook the fruit of one plant, pokyoth, for something else, called oroth, and that the former was vine-like, that is, with long, weak. slender stems, and that the fruit had some remarkable taste, by which the mistake was discovered whenever the pottage was tasted. Though a few other plants have been indicated, the pokyoth has almost universally been supposed to be one of the family of the gourd or cucumber-like plants, several of which are con spicuous for their bitterness, and a few poisonous, while others, it is well known, are edible. The name is supposed to be derived from poka, 'to crush,' or 'to burst ;' and this is the characteristic of the species called the wild cucumber by the an cients.
The bitterness which was probably perceived on eating of the pottage, and which disappeared on the addition of meal, is found in many of the cucutnber tribe, and conspicuously in the species which have been usually selected as the pakyoth, that is, the Colocynth (Cuctonis Colocynthis). In the Arabic version, hunzal (which is the Colocynth) is used as the synonym for pakyoth in 2 Kings iv :39. The Globe cucumber derives its specific name (Cuczonis prophetarum) from the notion that it afforded the gourd which "the sons of the prophets" shred by mistake into their pottage, and which made them declare, when they came to taste it, that there was "death in the pot." This plant is smaller in every part than the common melon, and has a nauseous odor, while its fruit is to the full as bitter as the Coloquintida. The fruit has a rather singular appearance, from the manner in which its surface is armed with prickles, which are, however, soft and harmless (Pictorial Palestine; Physical Geo°. p. cclxxxix). But this plant, though it is nauseous and bitter as the Colocynth, yet the fruit not being bigger than a cherry, does not appear likely to have been that which was shred into the pot. Celsius, however, was of opinion that the Cuctonis agrcstis of the Ancients, and which was found by Belon in descending from Mount Sinai, was the plant. This, he says, is the Okra asini of the Hebrews, the Chate al henzar of the Arabs, and the Cuctonis asininus of the druggists of his day. This plant is now called Montordica clatcrium, or Squirting Cucumber, and is a well known drastic purgative, violent enough in its action to be considered even a poison. Its fruit is ovate, obtuse, and scabrous. But it is not easy to say whether this or the Colocynth is most likely to have been the plant mistaken for oroth; but the fruit of this species might certainly be mistaken for young gherkins. Both are bitter and poisonous. (See CUCUMBER ; GOURD ; POTTAGE.) J. F. R.
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