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The way in which a great man was to pafs was fometimes fwept, fometimes strewed with flowers, fometimes watered, and might, poffibly, fometimes be moistened with waters of an odoriferous kind; but was it ever moistened with melted butter? The feet were fometimes anointed with oil, in which odoriferous fubftances had been infused', but was butter ever applied to them?

May we not rather fuppofe there is a reference, in these words of Job, to the treading fkins of cream under their feet, when they had very large quantities which they wanted to churn?

When a fmall quantity of grapes are to be fqueezed, it may be done commodiously enough by the hand: after this manner Pharaoh's butler fuppofed he fqueezed out new wine into the royal cup, Gen. xl. 11. This indeed was only a vifionary scene, but it is to be fuppofed to be a natural one. So when there was a quantity of cream, fuch as a poor Arab may be fuppofed to be poffeffed of, it was put into a fkin, fufpended in his tent, and the whole procefs conducted by the females belonging to it; but when the number of a man's milch-cattle was large, it became requifite to put the cream into a number of skins, on which he might tread, and by that means produce a large quantity of butter. This feems to me no improbable account, • Luke 7. 37, 38, 46,

and

and by no means an unnatural explanation of the phrafe, I washed my steps with butter.

Greece is indeed confiderably distant from the land of Uz; and the age in which Job lived far removed from our times: but as a fkin, which Dr. Chandler faw ufed in Greece, is ftill the churning-veffel ufed by the Arabs of the Holy-Land, as well as of Barbary, and confequently, as the customs of the Arabs fo little vary, the use of a skin for churning, though used in our times too, is to be understood to be very ancient; and the fame reasons that might induce the more opulent Greeks to tread their cream, rather than to confine themselves to the motion the Arabs generally use, might make the richer inhabitants of the more Eastern countries do the like, and confequently Job, who abounded in cattle.

The expreffion, it must be allowed, is highly figurative, but not more so than what may be fuppofed to fuit Oriental poetry.

The word washing, when used poetically, certainly is not confined to the cleansing the feet by fome purifying fluid, for the dipping the feet in human blood fhed in war, which, according to the Mofaic law, was a most defiling thing, is in a Jewish poetic writer ftyled, notwithstanding, a washing the feet, Pf. lviii. 10. The plunging the feet then into cream, or butter, may, without question, be equally called washing the feet in butter, and walking in it washing the steps.

But it may be faid, there is a wide difference

ference in the two cafes: in walking round and round upon a number of skins filled with cream, which, after a time, in part becomes butter, the feet comes not into contact with either, whereas the Pfalmift fpeaks of dipping the naked foot into the blood of the

flain.

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In answer to this, not to fay that it is by no means certain, that David thought particularly of the foot being bare, when dipped in the blood of the wicked; and that, on the contrary, the feet and legs of warriors of that ancient time were covered, fometimes with defenfative armour of brafs': Jonah, in a prayer, or divine hymn, faith, "The waters compaffed me about even to the foul: the "depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapt about my head." head." Now the weeds of the fea came not into contact with his head, when in the belly of the fish. Job then might as well, in the glowing language of Eastern poetry, be faid to wash his feet in butter, as Jonah fay, that the weeds were wrapped about his head: though no contact in either cafe.

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Before I finish this article, I beg leave to touch on another paffage of this ancient poem, which the management that obtains in these countries may ferve to illuftrate: "He fhall "not fee the rivers," fays Zophar," the "floods, the brooks of honey and butter.”

* ■ Sam. 17. 6.

• Job 20. 17.

We,

We, in these cooler countries, have no great notion of butter being defcribed as fo extremely liquid; it appears among us in a more folid form. But as the plentiful flowing of honey, when preffed from the comb, may be compared, in ftrong language, to a little river, as it runs into the veffels in which it is to be kept; fo, as they manage matters, butter is equally fluid, and may be described after the fame way: fo Dr. Shaw, after giving an account of making butter in a fkin, fays, "A great quantity of butter is "made in feveral places of thefe kingdoms'; "which, after it is boiled with falt, (in order to precipitate the hairs and other naftineffes "occafioned in the churning,) they put into jars, and preferve it for ufe. Fresh butter "foon grows four and rancid ".". Other authors give a like account.

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Streams of butter then, poured, when clarified, into jars in which it is preferved, might as naturally be compared to rivers, as ftreams of honey flowing, upon preffure, into other jars, in which that other great article of Eastern diet was wont to be kept, for after-useThe wicked man fhall not fee the rivulets, much lefs the rivers, lefs ftill the torrents of honey and butter which the upright man may hope to enjoy for fuch feems to be the gradation, and it is fo expreffed in the interlineary Latin tranflation of Pagnin, revifed by Montanus.

• Thofe of Barbary.

2 P. 169.

Unluckily

Unluckily the beauty of the climax is loft in our translation. Inftead of continuing to rife, it finks in the close-ending with brooks, after having mentioned rivers and torrents. The Vulgate uses only two of the words, rivulets and torrents, and by thus ranging them doth not deftroy the energy of the gradation, though it makes it lefs complete.

OBSERVATION LI.

Dr. Chandler tells us', that fome dried figs, which he purchafed, (in his travels in the Leffer Afia,) were ftrung like beads, and that he found them extremely good as well as cheap: is it not probable then, that thofe collections of figs, which the Scriptures mention, were ftrings of this dried fruit, rather than cakes or lumps, as our tranflators render the original word?

Dried figs, when clofely packed, will certainly adhere together, and may be called cakes or lumps of figs, as is vifible to every one that has vifited our English fhops where they are fold; and from thence our tranflators feem to have derived their ideas. But it doth not follow from thence, that they appear in the like form in the countries where they are

. P.

215. 2 A marginal note of the Bishops' Bible is, "Or poundes. So many figges as cleave togea"ther like a cake, are called a cake.

VOL. III.

N

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