LIVER CIZZ) occurs in Exod. xxix. 13, 22 ; Lev. iii. 4, I°, 15; iv. 9 ; vii. 4 ; viii. 16, 25 ; ix. to, 19 ; Prov. vii. 23 ; LaM. ii. I I ; Ezek. x xi. 21. The Hebrew word is generally derived from 117, to be heavy, in reference to the weight of the liver as the heaviest of all the viscera, just as in English the lungs are called the lights,' from their compara tive lightness. Gesenius, however, adduces the Arabic meaning, probably, 'the most pre cious,' which, indeed, suits the notions of the ancient Orientals, who esteemed the liver to be the most valuable of all the viscera, because they thought it most concerned in the formation of the' blood, and held that in the blood is the life.' Ill all the instances where the word occurs in the Pen tateuch, it forms part of the phrase min+r, -12n, or -122r1 or -122rrin, translated in the A. V. the caul that is above the liver,' but which Gesenius, reasoning from the root, under stands to be the great lobe of the liver itself, rather than the caul over it ; which latter he terms omentum minus hepaticogastricum, and which, he observes, is inconsiderable in size, and has but little fat. Jahn thinks the smaller lobe to be meant. The phrase is also rendered in the Sept. rOp Xofidp roD ijraros, or ray erl roD etc., the lobe or lower pendant of the liver,' the Chief object of attention in the art of hepatoscopy, or divination by the liver among the ancients. (Jerome gives re/Lae/um je eon's, the net of the liver,' and arvina, the suet,' and acieps, the fat ;' see Bocbart, Hkroz. 40-) It appears from the same passages that it was burnt upon the altar, and not eaten. as sacrificial food (Jahn, Biblisches Archdol., sec. 378, n. 7). The liver was supposed by the ancient Jews, Greeks, and Romans, to be the seat of the passions, pride, love, etc. Thus, Gen. xlix. 6, with their assem bly let not 4117 (literally, my liver') be united ;' Sept. ra. ijrara ; see also Heb. of Ps. xvi. 9 ; lvii. 9 ; cviii. 2 ; and Anacreon, Ode iii. fin. ; Theocri tus, idyll. xi. 16 ; Horace, Cann. i. 13. 4 ; 25. 15 ; iv. 1. 12 ; and the Notes of the Delphin edition : comp. also Persius, Sat. v. 129 ; Juvenal, Sat. vi. 647. Wounds in the liver were supposed to be mortal ; thus the expressions in Prov. vii. 23, a dart through his liver,' and Lam. ii. t, my liver is poured out upon the earth,' are each of them a periphrasis for death itself. So also fEschylus uses the words Ocryciyet upds irap to describe a heart wound (Agamemnon, 432). The passage in Eze kiel contains an interesting, reference to the most ancient of all modes of divination, by the inspection of the viscera of animals and even of mankind sacrificially slaughtered for the purpose. It is there said that the king of Babylon, among other modes of divination referred to in the same verse, looked upon the liver.' The Cambridge manuscript of the Sept. gives *Tart o-Kortuacrecu ; other copies use the precise technical term 'ipraroaKorhoacreat. The liver was always considered the most important organ in the ancient art of Extispicium, or divina tion by the entrails. Philostratus felicitously de scribes it as the prophesying tripod of all divina tion ' (Life of Apollonius, viii. 7. 5). The rules by
which the Greeks and Romans judged of it are amply detailed in Adam's Roman Antiquities, p. 261, etc., Lond. 1834 ; and in Potter's Archccologia Gnaw, i. 316, Lond. 1775. It is an interesting inquiry how this regard to it originated. Vitru vius suggests a plausible theory of the first rise of hepatoscoty. He says the ancients inspected the livers of those animals which frequented the places where they wished to settle ; and if they found the liver, to which they chiefly ascribed the process of sanguification, was injured, they concluded that the water and nourishment collected in such localities were unwholesome (i. 4). But divination is coeval and co-extensive with a belief in the divinity. We accept the argument of the Stoics, 'sun/ Di : ergo est Divinatio.' We know that as early as the days of Cain and Abel there were certain means of com munication between God and man, and that those means were connected with the sacrifice of animals; and we prefer to consider those means as the source of divination in later ages, conceiving that when the real tokens of the divine interest with which the primitive families of man were favoured ceased, in consequence of the multiplying of human transgres sions, their descendants endeavoured to obtain counsel and information by the same external ob servances. We believe that thus only will the minute resemblances be accounted for, which we discover between the different methods of divina tion, utterly untraceable to reason, but which have prevailed from unknown antiquity among the most distant regions. Cicero ascribes divina tion by this and other means to what he calls the heroic ages,' by which term we know he means a period antecedent to all historical docu ments (De Divinatione). Prometheus, in the play of that title (474, etc.), lays claim to having taught mankind the different kinds of divination, and that of cxtispicy among the rest ; and Prome theus, according to Servius (ad Virg. Ecl. vi. 42), instructed the Assyrians ; and we know from sacred record that Assyria was one of the countries first peopled. It is further important to remark that the first recorded instance of divination is that of the teraphim of Laban, a native of Padan aram, a district bordering on that country (i Sam. xix. 13, 16), but by which teraphim both the Sept. and Josephus understood flaw V the Eze-r of goats' (Antiq. vi. 11. 4); nor does Whiston, perhaps, in his note on that passage, unreasonably complain that, since the modem Jews have lost the signification of the wonl and since this rendering of the Sept., as well as the opinion of Josephus, are here so much more clear and probable, it is unaccountable that our commentators should so much hesitate as to its true interpretation' (Whiston's Yosephus, p. 169, note, Edin. 1828 ; Bochart, 41, De Caprarunt ltronzinibus ; Entydopredia Illetropolitana, art. Di vination ;' Rosenmiiller's Scholia on the several passages referred to; Perizonius, ad ./Elian. ii. 31; Peucer, De Pnrciptis Divinationnnt Generthus, etc., Witteberg r560). [DivtrzATioN.]—J. F. D.