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Ammon, Ammonites – Anathema
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Ammon, Ammonites
A people inhabiting the territory between the tribe of Gad and the Arabian desert, from the Israelitish conquest of Palestine to the 4th cent. B.C., and perhaps till the 1st cent. a.d.
In the Ammonites are said to have descended from a certain Ben-Ammi, but in the Assyrian inscriptions Shalmaneser in., and Sennacherib call them Beth-Ammon, placing the determinative for ‘man’ before Ammon. Except in . which is late, the people are never called ‘Ammon’ in the Hebrew OT, but the ‘children of Ammon,’ or ‘Ammonites.’
The really important feature of the story of is that it reveals a consciousness that the Israelites regarded the Ammonites as their kindred. The proper names of individual Ammonites, so far as they are known to us, confirm this view. Probably, therefore, the Ammonites formed a part of that wave of Aramaean migration which brought the Hebrews into Palestine. Perhaps, like the Hebrews, they adopted the language of the people in whose land they settled, thus later speaking a Canaanite dialect. The genealogy which traces their descent from Lot probably signifies that ■ they settled in the land of Lot, or Lotan, called by the Egyptians Ruten, which lay to the east of the Dead Sea and the Jordan.
In the Ammonites are said to have displaced the Z^mzummim, a semi-mythical people, of whom we ""Eilow nothing. represents Ammon as having conquered all the land between the Jabbok and the Arnon, and a king of Ammon is said to have reproved Israel for taking it from them. The statement is late, and of doubtful authority. Israel found the Amorites in this territory at the time of the conquest, and we have no good reason to suppose that the Ammonites ever possessed it. Their habitat was in the north-eastern portion of this region, around the sources of the Jabbok. Rabbah (modern ‘Amman) was its capital and centre.
At the time of the conquest the Gadite Israelites did not disturb the Ammonites (. ). or attempt to conquer their territory. During the period of the Judges the Ammonites assisted Eglon of Moab in his invasion of Israel (), and attempted to conquer Gilead, but were driven back by Jephthah the judge (ll’-s- s"-" ). Later, Nahash, their king, oppressed the town of Jabesh in Gilead, and it was the victory which delivered this city from the Ammonites that made Saul Israel’s king (1 S l l). Saul and Nahash thus became enemies. Consequently, later, Nahash befriended David, apparently to. weaken the growing power of Israel. When David succeeded Saul in power, Hanun, the son of Nahash, provoked him to war, with the result that Rabbah, the Ammonite capital, was stormed and taken, the Ammonites were reduced to vassalage, and terrible vengeance was wreaked upon them (2 S 10-12). Afterwards, during Absalom’s rebellion, a son of Nahash rendered David assistance at Mahanaim (). Zelek, an Ammonite, was among David’s heroes (). These friendly relations continued through the reign of Solomon, who took as one of his wives the Ammonite princess Naamah, who became the mother of Rehoboam, the next king ( , ). After the reign of Solomon the Ammonites appear to have gained their independence.
In the reign of Ahab, Ba’sa, son of Rehob, the Ammonite, was a member of the confederacy which opposed the progress of Shalmaneser into the West (cf. KA T’ 42). According to . the Ammonites joined with Moab and Edom in invading Judah in the reign of Jehoshaphat. Before the reign of Jeroboam 11. the Ammonites had made another attempt to get possession of Gilead, and their barbarities in warfare excited the indignation of the prophet Amos (Am ). Chronicles represents them as beaten a little later by Jotham of Judah, and as paying tribute to Uzziah ( ). When next we hear of the Ammonites, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon is employing them to harass the refractory Judsean king Jehoiakim (2 ). Perhaps it was at this period that the Ammonites occupied the territory of Gad ( ff.). Later, the domination of the Babylonian compelled Ammon and Israel to become friends, for Ammon conspired with King Zedekiah against Nebuchadnezzar (). and during the sieges of Jerusalem many Judeeans had migrated to Ammon (). The Babylonian king regarded both Ammon and Judah as rebels, for Ezekiel represents him as casting lots to see whether he should first attack Rabbah or Jerusalem (: cf. , ).
Perhaps there was a settlement of Ammonites in Israelitish territory, for ff. recognizes the danger of mixture with Ammonites, while seems to indicate that there was in post-exilic times a village in Benjamin Called ‘the village of the Ammonites.’
After the destruction of Jerusalem, Baalis, king of Ammon, sent a man to assassinate Gedaliah, whom Nebuchadnezzar had made governor of Judah (). Again, 140 years later, the Ammonites did everything in their power to prevent the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem by Nehemiah (, , ). Nehemiah and Ezra fomented this enmity by making illegal the marriages of Ammonitish women with Israelitish peasantry who had remained in Judah ().
Between the time of Nehemiah and Alexander the Great the country east of the Jordan was overrun by the NabatEsans. Perhaps the Ammonites lost their identity at this time: for, though their name appears later, many scholars think it is used of these Arabs. Thus in 1 Maccabees 5:6 ff. Judas Maccabsus is said to have defeated the Ammonites; reckons them among Israel’s enemies; while Justin Martyr (^Dial. Tryph. 19) says the Ammonites were numerous in his day. As Josephus (Ant. i. xi. 5) uses the same language of the Moabites and Ammonites, though elsewhere (xiv. i. 4) he seems to call them Arabians, it is possible that the Ammonites had lost their identity at the time of the Nabatsean invasion. Their capital, Rabbah, was rebuilt in the Greek style by Ptolemy Philadelphus of Egypt in the 3rd cent. b.c. and named Philadelphia. Its ruins amid the modern town of ‘Amman are impressive. The god of the Ammonites is called in the OT Milcom, a variation of Mdek,’ king.’ When the Jews, just before the Exile, to avert national disaster, performed child-sacrifice to Jawheh as Melek or ‘king,’ the prophets stamped this ritual as of foreign or Ammonite origin on account of the similarity of the name, though perhaps it was introduced from Phoenicia (cf. G. F Moore in Encyc. Bibl. iil. 3188 tl.). The Ammonites appear to have been a ruthless, semi-sayage people. Such a rite may have been practised by them too; it so, it is all that we know o£ their civilization.
George A. Barton.
Amnon
1. Eldest son of David by Ahinoam the Jezreelitess. He dishonoured his half-sister Tamar, and was, on that account, slain by her brother Absalom ( f.). 2. Son of Shimon ().
AJffiOK. — A priestly family in the time of Zerubbabel and of Joiakim (, ).
Amomum
RVm. See Spict.
Asios
1. Son and successor of Manasseh king of Judah. He reigned two years or parts of years. Our Biblical books know only that he carried on the religious practices of his father. to death by a palace conspiracy, but the assassins were punished by the populace, who placed Josiah on the throne ( ff.). It has been suggested that his name is that of the Egyptian sun-god (see next art.). 2. A governor of Samaria (). 3, gee Ami. H. P. Smith.
Amon
(Gr. Axrimon, Egyp. AmUn). An Egyptian divinity, who, primarily worshipped as the god of fertility, and later as Amen-ra-setn-nteru (‘Amon, the sun-god, the king of the gods’), was the local deity of Thebes. With the subjugation of the petty princes of lower Egypt by Aahmes i. of Thebes (c. b.c. 1700), he became the Egyptian national god. His supremacy, recognized for 1100 years by all Egyptian rulers with the exception of Amenophis iv. (c. B.C. 1450), came to an end with Esarhaddon’s invasion of Egypt (b.c. 670 ; cf. f.) and the destruction of Thebes by Ashurbanipal (c. b.c. 662; cf. ). After these events he was relegated to the ranks of the local gods. See
No, NO-AMON. N. KOENIG.
Amorites
An ancient people whose presence can be traced in Palestine and Syria and also in Babylonia. From it appears that their language differed only dialectically from Canaanite, which was Hebrew. This view is confirmed by many proper names from the monuments. They were accordingly of the same race as the Ganaanites. Contract tablets of the time of Hammurabi (b.c. 2250) show that Amorites were in Babylonia at that time (cf . Meissner, Altbab. Privairechi, No. 42). At this period their country was designated by the ideogram MAR-TU. It has long been known that this ideogram stood for Palestine and Syria. At that time, then, the Amorites were already in the West.
Becauseof theidentityoftheirpropernamea, it is believed that the Amorites were identical in race with that Semitic wave of immigration into Babylonia which produced the first dynasty of Babylon, the dynasty of Hammurabi (cf . Paton, Syria and Palestine, 25-29). Paton holds that an Amoritic wave of migration overran Babylonia and the Mediterranean coast about B.C. 2500, but Johns (Expos., April, 1906, p. 341) holds it probable, also on the basis of proper names, that the Amorites were in both Babylonia and the West before the time of Sargon, b.c. 3800.
About B.C. 1400 we learn from the el-Amarna tablets that the great valley between the Lebanon and Anti- Lebanon ranges, which was afterwards called Coele- Syria, was inhabited by Amorites, whose prince was Aziru (cf. KIB, v. Nos. 42, 44, and SO). At some time they seem to have overrun Palestine also, for in the E document they are regarded as the pre-Israelitish inhabitants of the mountain-land of Palestine, whom the Hebrews conquered (cf. , , ). This was also the view of the prophet Amos (, ). and, in part, of Ezekiel (). The J document, on the other hand, regards the Ganaanites (wh. see) as the original inhabitants of the country. As the J document originated in the southern kingdom and the E document in the northern, some have inferred that the Amorites were especially strong in Northern Palestine; but even the J document (, ) recognizes that the Amorites were strong in the Valley of Aijalon. In ‘Amorites’ is probably a corruption of ‘Edomites.’ (So G. F. Moore in SB O T.) Both J () and E () represent the trans-Jordanic kingdom of king Sihon, the capital of which was at Heshbon, and which extended from the Amon to the Jabbok, as Amoritic, and several later Biblical writers reflect this view. This kingdom was overcome by the Israelites when they invaded Canaan. After the Israelitish conquest the Amorites disappear from our view.
George A. Barton.
Amos
1. The man.— Araos, theearliest of theprophets whose writings have come down to us, and the initiator of one of the greatest movements in spiritual history, was a herdsman, or small sheep-farmer, in Tekoa, a small town lying on the uplands some six miles south of Bethlehem. He combined two occupations. The sheep he reared produced a particularly fine kind of wool, the sale of which doubtless took him from one market to another. But he was also a ‘pincher of sycomores.’ The fruit of this tree was hastened in its ripening process by being bruised or pinched: and as the sycomore does not grow at so great a height as Tekoa, this subsidiary occupation would bring Amos into touch with other political and religious circles. The simple life of the uplands, the isolation from the dissipation of a wealthier civilization, the aloofness from all priestly or prophetic guilds, had doubtless much to do with the directness of his vision and speech, and with the spiritual independence which found in him so noble an utterance. While he was thus a native of the kingdom of Judah, his prophetic activity awoke in the kingdom of Israel. Of this awakening he gives a most vivid picture in the account of his interview with Amaziah, the priest of Bethel {7’°-"). He had gone to Bethel to some great religious feast, which was also a business market. The direct call from God to testify against the unrighteousness of., both kingdoms had probably come to him not long before; and amidst the throng at Bethel he proclaimed his vision of Jehovah standing with a plumb-line to measure the deflection of Israel, and prepared to punish the iniquity of the house of Jeroboam 11. The northern kingdom had no pleasant memories of another prophet who had declared the judgment of God upon sin ( ff.) and Amaziah, the priest, thinking that Amos was one of a prophetic and ofScial guild, contemptuously bade him begone to Judah, where he could prophesy for hire. (). The answer came flashing back. Amos disclaimed all connexion with the hireling prophets whose ‘word’ was dictated by the immediate political and personal interest. He was something better and more honest — no prophet, neither a prophet’s son, but a herdsman and a dresser of sycomores, called by God to prophesy to Israel. Herein Ues much of his distinctiveness. The earher prophetic impulse which had been embodied in the prophetic guilds had become / professional and insincere. Amos brought prophecy / back again into the line of direct inspiration.
2. The time in which he lived. — may not be part of the original prophecy, but there is no reason to doubt its essential accuracy. Amos was prophesying in those years in which Uzziah and Jeroboam 11. were reigning contemporaneously, b.c. 775-750. This date - is of great importance, because few prophetic writings are so interpenetrated by the historical situation as those of Amos. For nearly 100 years prior to his time Israel had suffered severely from the attacks of Syria. She had lost the whole of her territory east of Jordan ( f.) she had been made hke ‘dust in threshing’ (). But now Syria had more than enough to do to defend herself from the southward pressure of Assyria; and the result was that Israel once more began to be prosperous and to regain her lost territories. Under Jeroboam 11. this prosperity reached its climax. The people revelled in it, giving no thought to any further danger. Even Assyria was not feared, because she was busy with the settlement of internal affairs, rebellion and pestilence. Amos, however, knew that the relaxation of pressure could be but temporary. He saw that the Assyrian would eventually push past Damascus down into Palestine, and bring in the day of account; and although he nowhere names Assyria as the agent of God’s anger, the references are unmistakable(5" , ).
It is this careless prosperity with its accompanying unrighteousness and forgetfulness of God that is never out of the prophet’s thoughts. The book is short, but the picture of a time of moral anarchy is complete. The outward religious observances are kept up, and the temples are thronged with worshippers ( ) tithes and voluntary offerings are duly paid (, ). But religion has divorced itself from morality, the stated worship of God from reverence for the character of God (). The rich have their winter houses and their summer houses (), houses built of hewn stone (). and panelled with ivory (). They drink wine by the bowlful (). and the fines unjustly extorted from the defenceless are spent in the purchase of wine for the so-called religious feast (). Lazy, pampered women, ‘kine of Bashan,’ are foremost in this unholy oppression (). There is no such thing as justice; the very semblance of it is the oppression of the weak by the strong. The righteous are sold for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes () ; the houses of the great are stored with the spoils of robbery () bribery and corruption, the besetting sins of the East, are rampant (S’^). Commerce shares in the prevailing evil; weights are falsified and food is adulterated (). Immorality is open and shameless (). Small wonder that the prophet declares as the word of the Lord, ‘I hate, I despise your feasts, and I will take no delight in your solemn assemblies’ (S’‘‘). While the observances of religion are maintained, the soul of religion has fled. Those who are responsible for the evil condition of things’ are not grieved for the a£Qiction of Joseph’ ().
3. Contents of the book. — The book is framed upon a definite plan, which is clearer in the opening section than in those which follow.
(i) treats of the judgment upon the nations tor their sins. Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Moab, Judah, and Israel are all passed under review. The assumption is that each people is subject to the dominion of Jehovah. Punishment will be visited upon each for the violation of some broad and universally recognized principle of humanity.
(ii) Chs. 3. 4. S, three threatening discourses, each introduced by ‘Hear ye this word.’
(iii) 7-91°, a series of five visions, interrupted in by the account of Amaziah’s attempt to intimidate Amos. The visions are (a) the devouring locusts () ; (6) the consuming fire () (c) the plumb-line () (,d) the basket of summer fruit () (e) the smitten sanctuary, and destruction of the worshippers ().
ia in striking contrast to the tone of the rest of the book. Instead of threatenings there are now promises. The line of David will be restored to its former splendour; the waste cities shall be built up; the settled agricultural life shall be resumed, ,’rhis Epilogue is generally acknowledged to be a late addition to the prophecy. It contains no moral feature, no repentance, no new righteousness. It tells only of a people satisfied with vineyards and gardens. ‘These are legitimate hopes; but they are hopes of a generationof other conditions and of other deserts than the generation of Amos’ (G. A. Smith, Twelve Prophets, i. 195).
4. Theology of Amos. — In his rehgious outlook Amos had many successors, but he had no forerunner. His originality is complete.
(i) His view of JeJimah. — Hitherto Jehovah had been thought of as a Deity whose power over His own people was absolute, but who ceased to have influence when removed from certain geographical surroundings (). The existence of other gods had not been questioned I
28 even by the most pious of the Israelites; they denied only that these other gods had any claim over the fife of the people of Jehovah. But Amos will not hear of the existence of other gods. Jehovah is the God of the whole earth. His supreme claim is righteousness, and where that is not conceded He will punish. He rules over Syria and Caphtor, Moab and Ammon, just as truly as over Israel or Judah (1. 2. ). Nature too is under His rule. Every natural calamity and scourge are traced to the direct exercise of His will. Amos therefore lays down a great philosophy of history. God is all-righteous. All events and all peoples are in His hands. Political and natural catastrophes have religious significance ().
(ii) The relationship of Jehovah to Israel. — Amos, in common with his countrymen, considered the relation of Jehovah to Israel to be a special one. But while they had regarded it as an indissoluble relationship of privilege, a bond that could not be broken provided the stated sacrifices were maintained, Amos declared not only that it could be broken, but that the very existence of such a bond would lay Israel under heavier moral responsibilities than if she had been one of the Gentile nations (). As her opportunities had been greater, so too would her punishment for wasting them be proportionately severe. Jehovah’s first demands were morality and justice and kindliness, and any sacrificial system that removed the emphasis from these things and placed it on the observance of ritual was an abomination ().
(iii) The inevitable judgment. — It is his certainty of the moral character of God that makes Amos so sure of the coming catastrophe. For the first time in Hebrew literature he uses the expression ‘the day of the Lord’ — a phrase that may already have been current in a more genial and privileged sense to indicate the day that will utterly destroy the nations ( , , ). With this broad view of history, a view from which the idea of special privilege is excluded, he sees in the northern power the instrument of iehovah’s anger ( ) a power that even in its self-aggrandisement is working out Jehovah’s purpose.
5. Style. — It was the custom for many a century to accept the verdict of Jerome, that the prophet was rustic and unskilled in speech. That, however, is anything but the case. The arrangement of the book is clear; the Hebrew is pure; and the knowledge of the outside world is remarkable. The survey of the nations with which the prophecy opens is full of precise detail. Amos knows, too, that the Aramaeans migrated from Kir, and the Philistines from Caphtor () he has heard of the swellings of the Nile ( gs), and regards the fact with a curious dread. He has been a close observer of the social conditions in Israel. Much of his imagery is drawn from nature:— earthquakes and the eclipse of the sun, the cedars and the oaks, the roaring of the lion, the snaring of birds, the bite of the viper; once only does he draw a comparison from shepherd life (.3").
6. Religious significance.— Amos’ true significance in rehgious history is that with him prophecy breaks away on its true line, individual, direct, responsible to none save God. The word of the Lord had come to Amos and he could not but speak (). Such a cause produced an inevitable effect. In that direct vision of Jehovah, Amos learned the truths which he was the first to proclaim to the wortd:— that Jehovah was the God of the whole earth; that the nations were m His keeping; that justice and righteousness were His great demands; that privilege, if it meant opportunity, meant likewise responsibility and liability to the doom of those who have seen and have not believed.
i wrnrr „ . BhUCE TaYLOR.
AMOZ C^mSte).— Father of the prophet Isaiah (2 K . etc.), to be carefully distinguished from Amos ( AmBs) the prophet.
Amphipolis
A town in a part of Macedonia formerly reckoned to Thrace, on the river Strymon, about 3 miles from its mouth, where the harbour Eion was situated. It was a place of great strategic and mercantile importance. It underwent various vicissitudes, but retained its importance based on its abundant supplies of excellent wine, figs, oil, and wood, its silver and gold mines, its woollen fabrics. The Romans raised it to the rank of a free town and the chief town of the first district of the province Macedonia; through it the Via Egnatia passed. The verb in the Greek () seems to indicate that St. Paul passed through it without preaching there. A. Souter.
Ampliatus
(AV Amplias). Greeted by St. Paul (). perhaps of the imperial household (Lightfoot on ). and a prominent Christian (Sanday-Head- 1am). The name, a common slave designation, is found inscribed in the catacombs. A. J. Maclean.
Amrahi
1. A Levite, son of Kohath and grandson of Levi (, , , . He married Jochebed his father’s sister, by whom he begat Aaron and Moses () and Miriam (Nu26", l Ch6’). The Amramites are mentioned in , . 2. A son of Bani who had contracted a foreign marriage ().
Amraphel
The king of Shinar (). He has ^been identified (by Schrader and usually) with Hammurabi, king of Babylonia, but apart from the difficulties due to differences of spelling, there is no evidence that Hammurabi was ever allied with a king of Elam and a king of Larsa to invade the West. Boscawen suggests Amah-Pal, the ideographic writing of Sinmuballit, the father of Hammurabi, for whom such an alliance is more likely. See Chedorlaomer. C. H. W. Johns.
Amulets and Charms
1. The custom of wearing amulets (amvZetum from Arab . root = ‘to carry’ ) as charms to protect the wearer against the malign influence of evil spirits, and in particular against ‘the evil eye,’ is almost as wide-spread as the human race itself. Children and domestic animals are supposed to be specially subject to such influence, and to-day ‘in the Arabic border lands there is hardly a child, or almost an animal, which is not defended from the evil eye by a charm’ (Doughty). The Jews were in this respect like the rest of the world, and in the Talmud it is said that ninety-nine deaths occur from the evil eye to one from natural causes (see Magic Divination and Sohcery).
2. RV has substituted ‘amulets’ for AV ‘ear-rings’ in . the Heb. word being elsewhere associated with serpent-charming. There is nothing to indicate their precise nature or shape. Our knowledge of early Palestinian amulets has been greatly increased by the recent excavations at Gezer, Taanach, and Megiddo. These have brought to light hundreds of amulets, bewildering in their variety of substance and form — beads of various colours (the blue variety is the favourite amulet at the present day), pendants of slate, pieces of coral, bronze bells (cf. ), a tiny ebony fish from the Maccabsean period, a yellow glass pendant with ‘good luck to the wearer’ in reoersed Greek letters (PEFSt, 1904, illust. p. 354), a small round silver box with blue enamel (ib. 1903, illust. p. 303), etc. The influence of Egypt, where amulets were worn by men and gods, by the living and the dead, is shown by the great number of scarabs and ‘Horus eyes’ unearthed at Gezer and Taanach.
3. The ‘consecrated tokens’ (2 Maccabees 12:40 RV) found by Judas Maccabaeus on the bodies of his soldiers were heathen charms against death in battle, the peculiar Gr. word being a tr. of the Aram, word for ‘amulet.’ The Mishna (c. a.d. 200) shows that in NT times a favourite charm (gemia’ , whence our ‘cameo ‘) consisted of a piece of parchment inscribed with sacred or cabalistic writing, and suspended from the neck in a leather capsule. In this connexion it may be noted
29 that ‘phylactery’ signifies an amulet, and like the mezuzah or door-post symbol, was often so regarded.
4. In antiquity jewels were worn quite as much for protective as for decorative purposes, being supposed to draw the attention of the spirit from the wearer. A popular form of jewel-amulet was the moon-shaped crescent in gold and silver, like those worn by the Jerusalem ladies ( RV), and the ‘crescents and pendants’ worn by the Midianite chiefs and hung from the necks of their camels (, RV). The ear-rings of , also, were evidently more than mere ornaments, so that AV and RV may both be right in their renderings — ‘ear-rings,’ ‘amulets’ — of .
For the amulets worn by the heathen Arabs see Wellhausen, Beste Arab. Heidenthums (1887), 143 ft., and for modern Jewish amulets the art. ‘Amulet’ in Hastings’ DB. A. R. S. Kennedy.
Amusements
See Games.
Amzi
1. A Merarite (). 2. A priest in the second Temple ().
Anab
A city of Judah in the Negeb hills ( 15’°), inhabited first by the Anakim. Now the ruin ‘Anab near Debir.
Anael
Brother of Tobit and father of Achiacharus (Tobit 1:21).
Anah
1. A daughter of Zibeon, and mother of Oholibamah, one of Esau’s wives (, , f. 26 (R)). Some ancient authorities (including LXX. Sam. Pesh.) read son instead of daughter, which would identify this Anah with— 2. A son of Zibeon(Gn362* (R), , ). 3. A Horite ‘duke,’ brother of Zibeon (, (R), ). If we take Anah as an eponym rather than a personal name, and think of relationships between clans rather than individuals, it is quite possible to reduce the above three references to one. In regard to No. 2 the note is appended, ‘This is Anah who found the hot springs (AV wrongly’ the mules’) in the wilderness, as he fed the asses of Zibeon his father’ ().
Anaharath
Anaharath (). mentioned with Shion and Rabbith on the east side of the Plain of Esdraelon in Issachar. It is perhaps the modern en^Na’urah in the Valley of Jezreel.
ANATAH C J" hath answered’).— 1. A Levite (Neh 8<), called Ananias in 1 Esdras 9:43. 2. One of those who sealed the covenant (Neh IO22).
Anak, Anakim
Eariy inhabitants of the high levels of Judah, whom tradition credited with colossal height. The word Anak is properly a race-name, and, being often used with the article, it is really an appellative, probably meaning ‘the long-necked (people).’ In the genealogizing narrative of , there were three sons or clans of Anak; Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai. These were all driven out by Caleb (cf. ). gives them a wider Jiabitat, as scattered over the hill-country of Palestine generally, whence they were exterminated by Joshua. In Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod some remnants were to be found after Joshua’s time (). See also Abba. J. F. McCurdy.
Anamim
A people, not yet identified, named in () among the descendants of Mizraim, and therefore to be found somewhere in Egypt.
J. F. McCdedy.
Anammelech
A god worshipped by captives transplanted from Sepharvaim to Samaria by the Assyrians (). As human sacrifice () was the most prominent rite connected with the god’s worship, the name, which might be interpreted as meaning ‘Anu is prince,’ in all probabihty owes its origin to a scribal endeavour to identify the god with Molech, in whose cult a similar practice existed. See also Adraaimelech. N. Koeniq.
Anan
1. One of those who sealed the covenant (). 2. 1 Esdras 5:30, , .
Anani
A son of Elioenai ().
AirANIAH.— 1. . the father of Maaseiah, and grandfather of Azariah, who took part in rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. 2. A town inhabited by Benjamites after the Captivity (). Possibly the modern Beit Hanina, a village 2 miles N. of Jerusalem.
Aiudias
This name occurs several times in the Apocrypha: in 1 Esdras 9 ‘8 (representing’ Hanani’ and ‘Hananiah’ of , , ‘Anaiah’ and ‘Hanan’ of , ) and in Tobit 5:12 f.: Judith 8:1. It is the name of three persons in NT. 1 . The husband of Sapphira, who in the voluntary communism of the early Church sold ‘a possession’ and kept part of the price for himself, pretending that he had given the whole ( ff.). The sudden death of husband and wife, predicted by St. Peter, was the signal proof of God’s anger on this Judas-like hypocrisy. 2. A ‘devout man according to the law’ at Damascus, a disciple who instructed and baptized Saul of Tarsus after his conversion, restoring to him his sight by imposition of hands; he had been warned by the Lord in a vision ( ff. ff.). 3. The high priest at the time when St. Paul was arrested at Jerusalem ( ff.). a Sadducee, son of Nedebaeus, and a rapacious oppressor. He had been in trouble at Rome, but was acquitted, and was now at the height of his power. He pressed the prosecution against St. Paul at Csesarea ( ff.). In the Jewish war he was murdered by his countrymen in Jerusalem, out of revenge for his pro-Roman tendencies. A. J. Maclean.
Ananiel
One of the ancestors of Tobit (Tobit 1:1).
Anath
The father of Shamgar ( ). ‘Anat is the name of a goddess worshipped in Pal. (cf. . . ) it is found on Egyptian monuments from the 18th dynasty.
Anathema
See Ban.
James Hastings (ed.), with John A. Selbie and John C. Lambert, Dictionary of the Bible (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909). Public domain. Scan of Cornell University Library’s copy from the Internet Archive; text from its OCR, with the Bible references read again from the page images.