2. Closely allied in meaning, though uncon nected in origin, with is the oft-recurring This word is never Englished heaven, but ' heights,' or 'high place,' or high places.' There can, however, be no doubt of its celestial significa tion (and that in the grandest degree) in such pas sages as Ps. lxviii. 18 [Hebr. 19]; xciii. 4 ; cii. 19 [or in the Hebr. Bib. 20, where it"-ip aran is :7 • equal to the n!ot.Vp of the parallel clause] ; simi larly, Job xxxi. 2 ; IS. iVii. 15 ; Jer. xxv. .3o. Dr. Kalisch, Genesis, lntrod. p. 2r, says, It was a common belief among all ancient nations that at the summit of the shadow of the earth, or on the top of the highest mountain of the earth, which reaches with its crest into heaven . . the gods have their palace or hall of assembly,' and he instances the Babylonian Albordsh, the chief abode of Onnuzd, among the heights of the Caucasus ; and the Hindoo Meru ; and the Chinese Ifidkrizr (or Kaen-lun); and the Greek Olympus (and Atlas) ; and the Arabian Caf ; and the Parsee Tireh. He, how ever, while strongly and indeed most properly censuring the identification of Mount lifers, with Mount Illoriah (which had hastily been conjectured from the accidental resemblance of the names'), deems it improbable that the Israelites should have entertained, like other ancient nations, the notion of local height for the abode of Him whose 'glory the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot con tain ;' and this he supposes on the ground that such a notion rests essentially on polytheistic ideas.' Surely the learned commentator is premature in both these statements. (r.) No such improbability, in fact, unhappily, can be predicated of the Israel ites, who in ancient times (notwithstanding the divine prohibitions) exhibited a constant tendency to the ritual of their 'Tina, or high places.' Gesenius makes a correcter statement, when he says [Hebr. Lex. by Robinson, p. 138], 'The He brews, like most other ancient nations supposed that sacred rites performed on high elates were particularly acceptable to the Deity. ence they were accustomed to offer sacrifices upon mountains and hills, both to idols and to God Himself, I Sam. ix. 12, sq. ; Chron. xiii. 29, sq. ; Kings iii. 4 ; 2 Kings xii. 2, 3 ; IS. ixV. 7 ; and also to build there chafe's, fanes, tabernacles, ninF Kings xiii. 32 ; 2 Kings xvii. 29 ; with their priests and other ministers of the sacred rites, nit4n Kings xii. 32 ; 2 Kings xvii. 32. And so tenacious of this ancient custom were not only the ten tribes, but also all the Jews, that, even after the building of Solomon's temple, in spite of the express law of Dent. xii., they continued to erect such chapels on the mountains around Jerusalem.' (2.) Neither from the character of Jehovah, as the God of Israel, can the improbability be maintained, as if it were of the essence of polyththm only to localise Deity on mountain heights. The High and Lofty One that inhabiteth eternity whose name is Holy, in the proclamation which He is pleased to make of His own style, does not limit His abode to celestial sublimities ; in one of the finest passages of even Isaiah's poetry, God claims as one of the stations of His glory the shrine of a contrite and humble spirit' (Is. lvii. is). IIis loftiest attributes, therefore, are not compromised, nor is the ampli tude of His omnipresence compressed, by an earthly residence. Accordingly, the same Jehovah who `walketh on the high places, ninn, of the earth' (Amos iv. 13) ; who treadeth on the fastnesses, rlito, of the sea.' ( Job ix. 8) ; and ` who ascendeth above the heights, reion, of the clouds,' was pleased to consecrate Zion as His dwelling-place (Ps. hcxxvii. 2), and His rest (Ps. cxxxii. 13, 14). Hence we find the same word, lotTD, which is often descrip tive of the sublimest heaven, used of Zion, which Ezekiel calls the mountain of the height of Israel,' ninn (xvii. 23 ; xx. 40; 200dv.
3. This word, which literally meaning a whed, admirably expresses rotatory movement, is actually rendered heaven' in A. V. of Ps. lxxvii. 18. ` The voice of thy thunder was in the heaven,' [LXX. iv TO Tpox43; Vulg. In rota.] Lu ther's version agrees with A. V. in Himsned; and Dathe renders per orbent, which is ambiguous, being as expressive, to say the least, of the globe of the earth as of the circle of heaven. The Tar gum (in Walton, vol. iii.) on the passage, gives to.13. (in rota), which is as indeterminate as the original, as the Syriac seems also to be. De Wette
(and after him Justus Olshausen, Die Ps. erklart, 1. c.) renders the phrase, inz Mrbelwinde, in the whirlwind.' Maurer, who disapproves of this rendering, explains the phrase rotans se, or rotaba tur, rotated. But amidst the uncertainty of the versions, we are disposed to think that it was not without good reason that our translators, in depart ing from the previous version (see Psalter, in /at., which has, 'the voice of thy thunder was heard round about), deliberately rendered the passage in the heaven, as if the were the correlative of zpi, both being poetic words, and both together equalled the heaven and the earth. In James iii. 6, the remarkable phrase, Toy Tpoxbv Tfis yeoio-ecos, the course, circuit, or wheel of nature, is akin to our The Syriac renders the Tpox6v by the same word, which occurs in the Psalm as the equivalent of namely 1.44from the Hebrew, 'ejecta secunda radicali ;' Schaaf's _lex. Syr. ; and of the same indefiniteness of signification). That the general sense heaven' best expresses the force of Ps. lxxvii. 18, is rendered probable, moreover, by the description which Josephus gives (Antiq. 16. 3) of the destruction of Pharaoh's host in the Red Sea, the subject of that part of the Psalm, ` Showers of rain descended from heaven, dor' obpao.30, with dreadful thunders and lightning, and flashes of fire ; thunderbolts were darted upon them, nor were there any indications of God's wrath upon men wanting on that dark and dismal night.' 4. As the words we have reviewed indicate the height and rotation of the heavens, so the two we have yet to examine exhibit another characteristic of equal prominence, the breadth and expanse of the celestial regions. These are p1:17 (generally used in the plural) and $nn. They occur together in Job xxxvii. i8 ; ` Hast thou with Him spread out (117.1n) the sky or expanse of heaven ?'—(179, wh:ere 9 is the sign of the objective). We mu'st examine them sepamtely. The root or.q is explained by Gesenins to gruld to powa'er, and then to expand by rubbing or beating. Meier (Hebr. Wurzel w. b., ,• p. 446) compares it with the Arabic " to make fine, to attenuate (whence the noun cy, •., a thin cloud). With him agrees Ftirst (Nebr. w. b., ii. 433). The Hebrew subst. is therefore well adapted to designate the skyey region of heaven with its cloud-dust, whether fine or dense. Ac cordingly, the meaning of the word in its various passages curiously oscillates between sky and cloud. When Moses, in Deut. xxxiii. 26, lauds Jehovah's riding in His excellence on the sky ;' and when in z Sam. xxii. rz, and repeated in Ps. xviii. 02), David speaks of the thick clouds of the skzes ;' when Job, xxxvii. 18, asks, Hast thou with Him spread out the sky r when the Psalmist, Ps. lxxvii. 17 (18), speaks of the skies sending out a sound,' and the propbet, Is. xlv. 8, figumtively, of their ` pour ing down righteousness ; when finally Jeremiah, li. 9, by a frequently occurring simile [comp. Apoc. xviii. 5, lucoXoialurav ath-fis al aikapriaL dxim apavoil, describes the judgment of Babylon as lifted up even to the skies,' in every instance our word D7t..) in the flural* is employed. The same word in the same form is translated 'thuds' in Job xxxv. 5 ; xxxvi. 28 ; XXXVii. 21 ; xxxviii. 37 ; in Ps. xxxvi. 5 (6) ; lvii. to (it) ; lxviii. 34 (35) [margin, heavensl ; 23 ; in Prov. 2o ; viii. 28. The prevalent sense of this word, WC thus see, is a meteorological one, and falls under our first head of ccelum nubiferum : its connection with the other two heads is much slighter. It bears probably an astronomical sense in Ps. lxxxix. 37 (38), where ` the faithful witness in heaven' seems to be in apposition to the sun and the moon (Bellarmine, /oc.) ; although some suppose the expression to mean the rainbow, the witness' of God's covenant with Noah ; Gen. ix. 13, sty., .(see Olhausen, in /oc.) This is perhaps the only instance of its falling under the class ccelum astriferum ; nor have we a much more frequent reference to the higher sense of the ccelum angeli ferum, Ps. lxxxix. 6 containing the only explicit allusion to this sense ; unless, with Gesenius, 7hes. s v., we refer Ps. lxviii. 35 also to it. More pro bably. in Deut. xxxiii. 26 (where it is parallel with inm), and in the highly poetical passages of Is. • - xlv. 8 and Jer. 9, our word tD4p17C., may be best regarded as designating the empyreal heavens.