MAHLON (j'6fiD ; MaaXuiv ; Mahalon) is men tioned in Ruth iv. Jo as the husband of Ruth. His name occurs in three other places, with that of his brother Chilion (Ruth i. 2, 5, and iv. 9). From the first of these passages, which formally treats of his family, it would seem that he was the elder son of Elimelech and Naomi. These parents were persons of wealth and distinction (Tarp.
pear from their close relation to Boaz, the head of the tribe of Judah (comp. Ruth ii. I). Driven by famine from Bethlehem, their home, the family migrated to the neighbouring country of Moab ; here the two sons married native wives. The Targum and some of the Rabbinical writers men tion this as a sin, as if contrary to Dent. xxiii. 3. This law however, according to the Talmud, applies to the males only of the prohibited nations ; and accordingly other writers, such as Aben Ezra, sup pose that the two daughters of Moab became proselytes, and so saved their husbands from a violation of the law (Cahen, in loc.) Rashi, not content with supposing Mahlon and Chilion to have been men of rank and influence (proof of which he finds in their designation, 'Epkraihites,'* Ruth i. 2), makes their wives to have been princesses. Mahlon is supposed to have received Ruth from the hands of no less a person than Eglon, king of Moab, her father. This rests on no historical foundation, but is rather against the general view which we derive from the book of Ruth. Accord
ing to this view Mahlon and his brother, after ten years of wedded life in Moab, died childless, his father having died apparently soon after his re moval to Moab ; and the family thus bereft of its male members seems to have been greatly reduced (see i. 21). By the subsequent marriage of the vir tuous Ruth with the wealthy Boaz, the fortunes of Mahlon's family were abundantly retrieved. Boaz, on taking the young widow to be his wife, avowed it as one of his objects to raise up the name of the dead [Mahlon] upon his inheritance, that the name of the dead be not cut off from among his brethren, and from the gate of his place' (Ruth iv. to). [KINSMAN.]—P. H.
MAHOL (51ri? ; Sept. Max ; Alex. MaooX), the father of Heman, Chalcol, and Darda, famous for their wisdom, in which only Solomon excelled them (1 Kings v. it [iv. 31 A. V.]). In t Chron. 6, persons of the same name are called the sons of Zerah ; but there seems some confusion here, arising probably from the epithet attached to Ethan, in i Kings v. being confounded with MT, the son of Judah. It is probable that the persons with whom Solomon is compared by the historian lived near his own time. It has been conjectured that for should be read the native, and that the epithet is applied to Ethan to distinguish him from the sons of the stranger Mahol (Thenius, in loc.)—W. L. A.