HORN

By horns the Hebrews sometimes understood an eminence, or angle, a corner, or a rising. By horns of the altar of burnt offerings, many understand the angles of that altar; but there were also horns, or eminences, at the corners of that altar, Exod. xxvii, 2; xxx, 2. Horn also signifies glory, brightne , rays. God’s “brightne was as the light, he had horns coming out of his hand,” Hab. iii, 4; that is, refulgent beams i uing from the hollow of it. As the ancients frequently used horns to hold liquors, ve els containing oil and perfumes are often called horns, whether made of horn or not. “Fill thine horn with oil,” says the Lord to Samuel, “and anoint David,” 1 Sam. xvi, 1. Zadok took a horn of oil out of the tabernacle, and anointed Solomon, 1 Kings i, 39. Job called one of his daughters Kerenhappuch, horn of antimony, or horn to put antimony ( stibium ) in, which the women of the east still use at this day, Job xliii, 14. The principal defence and strength of horned beasts consist in their horns; and hence the Scripture mentions the horn as a symbol of strength. The Lord exalted the horn of David, the horn of his people; he breaketh the horn of the ungodly; he cutteth off the horn of Moab; he cutteth off the horn of Israel; he promiseth to make the horn of Israel to bud forth; to reëstablish the honour of it, and restore its former vigour. Moses compares Joseph to a young bull, and says that he has horns like those of a unicorn. Kingdoms and great powers are often in Scripture described by the symbol of horns. In Daniel vii, viii, horns represent the power of the Persians, of the Greeks, of Syria, of Egypt, or of Pagan and Papal Rome. The prophet represents three animals as having many horns, one of which grew from the other. This emblem is a natural one, since in the east are rams which have many horns. HORNET, הצרעה , Exod. xxiii, 28; Deut. vii, 20; Joshua xxiv, 12. The hornet, in natural history, belongs to the species crabo , of the genus vespa or wasp. It is a most voracious insect, and is exceedingly strong for its size, which is generally an inch in length, and sometimes more. In each of the instances where this creature is mentioned in Scripture, it is as sent among the enemies of the Israeli tes, to drive them out of the land. Some explain the word metaphorically, as “I will send my terror as the hornet,” . But Bochart contends that it is to be taken in its proper literal meaning, and has accumulated examples of several other people having been chased from their habitations by insects of different kinds. Ælian records that the Phase lites, who dwelt about the mountains of Solyma, were driven out of their country by wasps. As these people were Phenic i ans or Can a a nites, it is probable that the event to which he refers is the same as took place in the days of Joshua. How distre ing and destructive a multitude of these fierce and severely stinging insects might be, any person may conjecture. No armour, no weapons could avail against them. A few you sands of them would be sufficient to overthrow the best disciplined army and put it into confusion and rout. From Joshua xxiv, 12, we find that two kings of the Amorites were actually driven out of the land by these hornets, so that the Israeli tes were not obliged to use either sword or bow in the conquest. One of these, according to the Jewish commentaries of R. Nachman, was the nation of the Girgashites, who retired into Africa, fearing the power of God. And Procopius, in his history of the Vandals, mentions an ancient inscription in Mauri tan i a Ting it an a, stating, that the inhabitants had fled thither from the face of Joshua, the son of Nun. This account accords with Scripture, in which, though the Girgashites are included in the general list of the seven devoted nations either to be driven out or destroyed by the Israeli tes, Gen. xv, 20, 21; Deut. vii, 1; Josh. iii, 10; xxiv, 11; yet they are omitted in the list of those to be utterly destroyed, Deut. xx, 17; and among whom, in neglect of the divine decree, the Israeli tes lived and intermarried, Judges iii, 1–6. That the name of the Girgashites, however, was not extirpated, we may collect from the Gergesenes, in our Saviour’s time, inhabiting the same country, Matt. viii, 28. Other tribes of the Hivites, Can a a nites, and Hittites, were also expelled by the hornet gradually; not in one year, lest the land should become desolate, and the wild beasts multiply to the prejudice of the Israeli tes, Exod. xxiii, 28–30. The “arms of Jove,” to which Virgil refers, ( Æneid viii, 355–358,) in describing the flight of Saturn from the east, were the hornets sent by the God of Israel, Iahoh, or by contraction Io, to which also his description of the Asilus exactly corresponds:-- A Biblical and Theological Dictionary, by Richard Watson Plurimus--volitans, (cui nomen Asilo Romanum est ; οἶστρον, Graii vertere vocantes,) Asper, acerb a sonans, quo tot a exterrita sylvis Diffugiunt armenta . Georg. iii, 145. “About the Alburnian groves, with holly green, Of winged insects mighty swarms are seen; This flying plague, to mark its quality, Œstros the Grecians call; ASYLUS , we: A fierce loud buzzing breeze; their stings draw blood, And drive the cattle gadding through the wood. Seized with unusual pains, they loudly cry.” Dryden. Dr. Hales is of opinion, that the Latin asilus and Greek οιστρον, were probably only different pronunciations of the same oriental term, הצרעה , hatsiraah , as this fly is called by Moses and Joshua. The vindictive power that presided over this dreadful scourge was worshipped at Ekron, in Palestine, through fear, the reigning motive of Pagan superstition, under the title of Baal-zebub , “master or lord of the hornet,” whence Beelzebub , in the New Testament, “the prince of demons,” Matt. xii, 24. Isaiah, denouncing a wo against Aby in i a, describes it as “the land of the winged cymbal,” ( tsaltsal canaphim ,) Isaiah xviii, 1; by the same analogy that tsaltsal signifies “a locust,” Deut. xxviii, 42; a streperâ voce sic dict am . [So called from its streperous sound.] Bruce, in his Travels in Aby in i a, has given an accurate description of this tremendous fly, which in Arabic is called zimb , and by the Aby in i ans tsaltsal-ya , “the cymbal of the Lord,” from its sonorous buzzing. And in his Appendix he has given a drawing of it, magnified, for distinctne ’ sake, something above twice the natural size: after which he observes, “He has no sting, though he seems to me to be rather of the bee kind; but his motion is more rapid and sudden than that of the bee, ( volitans ,) and resembles that of the gad-fly in England. There is something particular in the sound or buzzing of this insect; it is a jarring noise, together with a humming, ( acerb a sonans ,) which induces me to believe it proceeds, in part at least, from a vibration made with the three hairs at his snout.” Bruce does not cite or refer to Virgil’s description, though his account furnishes the most critical and exact explanation of it. Such undesigned coincidences are most satisfactory and convincing; they show that the poet and the naturalist both copied from nature. And the terror impre ed by this insect on all the cattle, quo tot a exterrita sylvis diffugiunt , [affrighted at which the entire herds flee to the thickets,] according to Virgil, is thus illustrated by Bruce: “As soon as this plague appears, and their buzzing is heard, all the cattle forsake their food, and run wildly about the plain till they die, worn out with fatigue, fright, and hunger. No remedy remains but to leave the black earth, where they breed, and hasten down to the sands of Atbara; and there they remain while the periodical rains last, this cruel enemy ( asper ) never daring to pursue them farther. The camel, emphatically called by the Arabs the ship of the desert, though his size is immense as is his strength, and his body covered with a thick skin, defended with strong hair, still is not able to sustain the violent punctures the fly makes with his pointed proboscis. He must lose no time in removing to the sands of Atbara; for when once attacked by this fly, his body, head, and legs, break out into large bo es, which swell, break, and putrefy, to the certain destruction of the creature. I have found some of these tubercles upon almost every elephant and rhinoceros that I have seen, and attribute them to this cause. All the inhabitants of the sea coast are obliged to put themselves in motion, and remove to the next sand, in the beginning of the rainy season, to prevent all their stock of cattle from being destroyed. Nor is there any alternative, or means of avoiding this, though a hostile band was in the way, capable of spoiling them of half their substance, as was actually the case when we were at Sennaar. Of such consequence is the weakest instrument in the hand of Providence.” See Flies and Beelzebub .