WITCHCRAFT (It:.5M, pl. 1:PCZ.'.iM) occurs in 2 Kings ix. 22 ; IS. xlvii. 9, 12 ; 12 ; Nah.
4 ; Sept. OapAcaKeta, cacipmatta; Vulg. veneficium, malefic/um. In the Apocrypha witchcraft," sor cery ;' cpappaxela ; zientficium, Wisd. xii. 4 ; xviii. 13 ; and in the N. T. Gal. v. 20 ; Rev. ix. 21 ; ;Still. 23. As a verb ;W)D, 'he used witchcraft,' occurs in 2 Chron. xxxiii. 6 ; 4
This word also answers in the Sept. to wctnri, magicians' (Exod. ix. 1), Oapimicol, maltfici. The received text of Rev. xxi. 8 reads cbappaKelis; but the Alexandrian, and sixteen later MSS., with several printed editions, have 15apuaKbr, a reading embraced by Wetstein, and by Griesbach received into the text. ,PapuaKetis occurs in the same sense as Oapualcbs, in Lucian (Dial. Deor. xiii. ; Joseph. Pita, sec. 31). The word sbapp.aKela is used of Circe by Aristophanes (Plut. 3o2), and in the same sense of enchantment, etc., by Polybius (vi. 13. 4 ; xl. 3. 7). It corresponds in the Sept. to P4Dr6, enchantments' (Exod. vii. z 1, 22). The verb cbapaaKetico is employed in the sense of using enchantments by IIerodotus (vii. 114), where, after saying that when Xerxes came to the river Strymon, the magi saciificed vvilite horses to it, Ile adds : ckapuarceboarres ?s .rdv roraabv, Kai 11,XXa rroXX•i wpbs roOrotert,—' and having used these en chantments and many others to the river,' etc. The precise idea, if any, now associated with the word witch'—but, however, devoutly entertained by nearly the whole nation in the time of our trans lators—is that of a female, who, by the agency of Satan, or rather, of a familiar spirit or gnome appointed by Satan to attend on her, performs operations beyond the powers of humanity, in con sequence of her compact with Satan, written in her own blood, by which she resigns herself to him for ever. The belief in the existence of such per sons cannot be traced higher than the middle ages, and was probably denved from the wild and gloomy mytholo,,cry of the northern nations, amongst whom the Fatal Sisters, and other impersonations of destructive agency in a female form, were pro minent articles of the popular creed. A very dif
ferent idea was conveyed by the Hebrew word, which probably denotes a sorceress or magician, who pretended to discover, and even to direct the effects ascribed to the operation of the elements, conjunctions of the stars, the influence of lucky and unlucky days, the power of invisible spirits, and of the inferior deities (Graves's Lectures on the Pentateuch, pp. to9, Ho, Dublin t829). Sir Walter Scott well observes, that the sorcery or witchcraft of the O. T. resolves itself into a traffick ing with idols and asking counsel of false deities, or, in other words, into idolatry' (Letters on Demon olo,u ancl Witchcraft, London 1830, Let. 2). Ac cordingly, sorcery is in Scripture uniformly associ ated with idolatry (Deut. xviii. 9-14 ; 2 Kings ix. 22 ; Chron. xxxiii. 5, 6, etc. ; Gal. v. 20 ; Rev. xxi. 8). The modem idea of witchcraft, as involv ing the assistance of Satan, is inconststent with Scripture, where, as in the instance of Job, Satan is represented as powerless till God gave him a limited commission ; and when Satan desired to sift Peter as wheat,' no reference is made to the intervention of a vvitch. Nor do the actual refer ences to magic in Scripture involve its reality. The mischiefs resulting from the pretension, under the theocracy, to an art which involved idolatry, justi fied the statute which denounced it with death ; though instead of the unexampled phrase thou shalt not snffer to live,' Michaelis conjec tures ronn 16, ' shall not be' (Exod. xxii. 18), which also better suits the parallel,." There shall not be found among you, etc., a witch' (Deut. xviii. to). Indeed, as we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one' (1 Cor. viii. 4), we must believe all pretensions to traffic with the one, or a.sk counsel of the other, to be equally vain. Upon the same principle of suppressing idolatry, however, the prophets of Baal also were destroyed, and not be cause Baal had any real existence, or because they could avail anything by their invocations. It is highly probable that the more intelligent portion of the Jewish community, especially in later times, understood the emptiness of pretensions to magic (see Is. xliv. 25 ; xlvii. 11-15 ; Jer. xiv. 14 ; Jonah ii. 8). Plato evidently considered the mischief of magic to consist in the tendency of the pretension to it, and not in the reality (De Leg. lib. 1). Divination of all kinds had fallen into contempt in the time of Cicero : Duhium non est quin disciplina et ars augurum evanuerit jam et vetustate et neggcentia' (De Legibus, ii. 13). Josephus de clares that he laughed at the very idea of witch craft (Vita, sec. 31). For the very early writers who maintained that the wonders of the magicians were not supernatural, see Universal Hist. (vol.