ABIATHAR father of abundance ; Sept. 'APui0ap), the tenth high-priest of the Jews, and fourth in descent from Eli. When his father, the high-priest Ahimelech was slain with the priests at Nob, for suspected partiality to the fugitive David, Abiathar escaped the massacre ; and bearing with him the most essential part of the priestly raiment [PRIEST], repaired to the son of Jesse, who was then in the cave of Adullam (r Sam. xxii. 20-23 ; xxiii. 6). He was well received by David, and became the priest of the party during its exile and wanderings. As such he sought and received for David responses from God. When David became king of Judah he appointed Abiathar high-priest. Meanwhile Zadok had been appointed high-priest by Saul, and con tinued to act as such while Abiathar was high priest in Judah. The appointment of Zadok was not only unexceptionable in itself, but was in accor dance with the divine sentence of deposition which had been passed, through Samuel, upon the house of Eli (t Sam. ii. 30-36). When, therefore, David acquired the kingdom of Israel, he had no just ground on which Zadok could be removed, and Abiathar set in his place ; and the attempt to do so would probably have been offensive to his new subjects, who had been accustomed to the ministra tion of Zadok, and whose good feeling he was anxious to cultivate. The king got over this difficulty by allowing both appointments to stand ; and until the end of David's reign Zadok and Abiathar were joint high-priests. How the details of duty were settled, under this somewhat anomal ous arrangement, we are not informed. As a high-priest Abiathar must have been perfectly aware of the divine intention that Solomon should be the successor of David ; he was therefore the least excusable, in some respects, of all those who were parties in the attempt to frustrate that inten tion by raising Adonijah to the throne. So his conduct seems to have been viewed by Solomon, who, in deposing him from the high-priesthood, and directing him to withdraw into private life, plainly told him that only his sacerdotal character, and his former services to David, preserved him from capital punishment. This deposition of Abiathar completed the doom longbefore denounced upon the house of Eli, who was of the line of Ithamar, the youngest son of Aaron. Zadok, who remained the high-priest, was of the elder line of Elcazer. Solomon was probably not sorry to have occasion to remove the anomaly of two high-priests of different lines, and to see the undivided pontificate in the senior house of Eleazar (I Kings i. 7, 19 ; ii. 26, 27).—J. K.
There are two difficulties connected with the notices of this individual in Scripture, to which it may be proper briefly to advert.
r. Whilst usually it is Abiathar the son of Ahimelech' who is mentioned along with Zadok as high-priest, in three passages (2 Sam. viii. 17 ; Chron. xviii. 16; xxiv. 6), it is Ahimelech the son of Abiathar, and in two (1 Chron. xxiv. 3, 3 t) it is simply Ahimelech who is so named. To relieve the difficulty thus occasioned, it has been suggested that both father and son had both names, and that sometimes the one and sometimes the other is used. But this is a supposition which rests on no authority, and which is not supported by Jewish usage in respect of naming, it being very unusual among them for father and son to bear the same name. Modem interpreters have recourse for the
most part to the supposition of an inadvertent transposition of the two names by some transcriber, which was afterwards perpetuated (Thenius on 2 Sam. viii. 17). But though this might be allowed in the case of one passage, it to a high degree improbable that it should occur in fora, and that in a fifth the name Ahimelech by itself should occur when we should have expected Abiathar (1 Chron. xxiv. 3). In this latter case transposition is wholly excluded. As the existing text stands, we seem shut up to the conclusion that in the time of Ithamar the succession of high-priests was Ahimelech, Abiathar, Ahimelech; the grandson bearing the name of his grandfather, which was usual. We must also suppose that the second Ahimelech was priest along with Zadok during his father's lifetime. How this came to pass, or what became of this second Ahimelech we are not told. There is a great difficulty here, but it is better to endure this than resort to the supposition of a series of blunders without parallel in the annals of copying.
2. In Mark ii. 26, our Lord says that it was in the days of Abiathar the high-priest,' that David partook of the shew-bread, whilst in 1 Sam. xxi. 3, it is intimated that this occurred during the pontificate of his father Ahimelech. Here, again, it has been supposed that there is a transposition of the two names ; but is this likely ? Is it likely that our Lord would confound the two men ? or if He discriminated them, and said Ahimelech,' is it likely that Mark would confound them, and report Him as saying Abiathar'? Recourse has been had here also to the supposition of both father and son having had both names ; and also to the supposition that the son was at the time the vicarius of the father. All this is gratuitous and improbable. Not more felicitous is the attempt to evade the difficulty by translating brf, in the presence of,' or 'concerning' (i.e., in the part of Scripture concerning), for even admitting these translations, neither of them in the least alleviates the discrepancy, since Abiathar's name is not once mentioned in the narrative in Samuel. Middleton (Cr. Art. p. 188, 19o) translates 'in the days of Abiathar, who was afterwards high-priest ;' but though Abiathar might be called high-priest by prolepsis, what writer, meaning to give a chrono logical determination, would express himself thus ? (See Alford's note on the passage.) What is to forbid our supposing that our Lord here sup/Vies a fact which the historian has not recorded, but which Jewish tradition had preserved, viz., that it was to Abiathar David came as his friend, through whose influence he hoped to succeed in his request to Ahimelech ; just as David, Ps. cv. 18, Stephen, Acts vii. 2, 16, 23-36, and Paul, 2 Tim. iii. 8, supply parts omitted by the historian ? (Lange, Bibel-werk, on Mark ii. 26.) The subsequent intimacy of David and Abiathar may have derived some of its strength from earlier relations between them.—W. L. A.
ABIB. [NisArt.]