BEC HAIM ( [The name of a tree which • has not been satisfactorily identified. It occurs only in the plural, the sing. being tCZ] 2 Sam. v. 23, 24, and i Chron. xiv. 14, 15, And let it be, when thou hearest the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees, that thou shalt bestir Neither the mulberry nor the pear-tree, considered to be the bechaim of the Scriptures, satisfies trans lators and commentators, because they do not possess any characters particularly suitable to the above passages. With regard to the mulberry, Rosenmiiller 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 [SvcAm1NE]. Rosenmiiller prefers pear-trees in the preceding passages, as being the oldest render ing 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. [Celsius (Hierobot. i. 335) sug gests the Arabic t.<,,J baka, a tree from which exudes a gum in drops ; hence the name from the verb to weep ; but this tree is unknown.] The tree alluded to in Scripture, whatever it is, must be common in Palestine, must grow in the neighbourhood 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 fly or gnat tree. It seems to be so called from its seeds, when loosened from their capsular covering, floating about like gnats, in consequence of being covered with light silk-like hairs, as is the case with those of the willow. In Richardson's Arabic Dictionary
the bak-tree is considered to be the elm, but to us it appears to be the poplar. The willow and the poplar are well known to have the same kind of seed, whence they are included by botanists in the group of Salicinere.
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 pro bable 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 bechaim occurs, as no tree is more remarkable than the poplar for the ease with which its leaves are rustled by the slightest movement or 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 un prepared. That poplars are common in Palestine may be proved from Ditto's Palestine, p. 114: Of poplars we only know, with certainty, that the black poplar, the aspen, and the Lombardy poplar grow in Palestine. The aspen, whose long Ieaf-stalks cause the leaf to tremble with every breath of wind, unites with the willow and the oak to overshadow the watercourses 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.'—J. F. R.