Cockle (Hastings' Dictionary)

The last word of the second member of a parallelism (Job 31"), ' instead of wheat let thistles grow, and instead of barley, cockle.' The signification of the parallel word nin h6ah is general, brier or bramble. There- fore this word should be general. And as the first is harmful, the second should be the same. The root of the word is b'.x3 = ' stink,' hence the marginal renderings, AV stinking weeds, RV noimme weeds, suit the case well. There is no want of such in the Holy Land.

There are a number of ill-smelling goose weeds, Solanum nig- rum, L., Datura Stramonium, L. (the stink-weed i^ax excellence), D. Metel, L., and several fetid arums, and henbane, and mandrake. Neglected fields are overrun by the host of thorny and unsavoury weeds which atllict the farmer in all parts of Pal. and Syria. Some have thouglit that bo'sh&h means ergot or smut or Inint, and others tares. There is, however, no ground for this. A word from the same root, dVx? b^Hshlm (Is 5'-*), is tr.

in AV and RV wild grapes. The context and the etymology are against this rendering. The terrible judgment pronounced against thevineyard (vv.'-')miglit seem unjust if the product were simply inferior. The contrast must be as sharp as in v.' — between judgment and oppression, between right eousne.is and the cry 0} the oppressed. We should therefore look for some ill-smelling fruit, having some resemblance to a grape, and occurring in vineyards. Such plants are Solanum nigrum, L.

, and its congeners S. mini'itum, Berb., and S. villosum. Lam., called in Arali. 'inab-edhdhib, wolf's grapes. They are of CODEX COLLEGE 453 a heavy narcotic odour, and poisonoos, and prow commonly, in the vineyards. Celsius sujiposes aconite; but the latter is not found south of Anianus, and hence would not be known to the readers of Isaiah. It is [lerhaps better to regard bi'iishim as itinking fruits in general, and bo's/uih as stinking weeds. G. E. Post. CODEX.-See K, A, B, C, D ; also TEXT.

C(ELE-SYRIA (Ko/Xt; ^vpla, 'hollow Syria') was the name L'iven under the Seleucids to the valley between tlie Lebanons (I'olj-b. i. 3; Dionysius, Perieg. SOU, 900), and this restricted meaning is retained in 1 Es 4*'. The same restriction appears in Am 1', where, however, ' the valley of Aven ' (which see) cannot be certainl3' identilied with Ccele-Syria, 'The valley of Lebanon' (Jos 11" 12') denotes the same district. Strabo (xvi.

2) confines the term to this valley in describing the boundaries of the separate parts of Syria ; but he also uses it more widely as covering the whole of PfSTC!!; or ' Syria of l)amascus.' Theophrastus; too (Hist, plant, ii. 6. 2; see also ii. 6. 8), e.\tends the name to the valley of the Lower Jordan, and in ii. 6. 5 to the neighbourhood of the Ked Sea. Under the later Seleucida> it almost loses geogr.

limitations altogether, and becomes a convenient name for a political division of the empire, the central valley always being included, out the boumlaries being extended or contracted with every change in the relative influence of the local governors. For some time I'hcenicia and Coele- Syria include between them the whole of the southern part of the Seleucid kingdom, and the latter term covers the entire district E. and S. of Lebanon. The term is so used ia 1 Es 2"- •*■ ^ 6-' 7' 8"', 2 Mac .

S' i* 8» 10" ; and the relation between the two provinces is so close that a single governor generally sufiices for both. In 1 Mac 10"" the settlement of Jewish afl'airs is entrusted almost as a matter of course to the governor of Coele-Syri.-i, and in 2 Mac 3"" Jcrus. is expressly reiircsented as within that province. In later times Jos. {Ant. XIV. iv. 5) wrote of the province as stretching from the Euphrates to Egypt; and within it were the Phil, coast towns of Kaphia (Jos. Wars, IV. xi.

5; Polyb. v. 80) and .loppa (I)iodor. xix. 50). But he generally confines the term to the districts E. of the Jordan, including Moab and Amnion [Ant. I. xi. 5 ; Ptol. V. 15), and admitting Scytliopolis (Bethshan) because of its connexion with the Decapolis (Ant. XIII. xiii. 2). He mentions also si>eoiliially Gadara (Ant. XIII. xiii. 3) as in the province, wliil.

nt the evidence of coins jilaces within it also the neigh- bouring towns of Abila and Philadelphia (Babbali) ; and Stephen of Byzantium adds IJium, Gera.sa, and Pbiloteria (Polyb. v. 70). Strictly, therefore, the term does i.ot cover Judtea and Samaria, but was made to do so when it was wished to ajwert or enforce Syrian claims to those districts. In Jos. Ant. XII. IV. 1-4, in the time of Ptolemy Euergetcs, the fi.scal system and prob. the entire ndniinis- tration of C.

are distinct from those of Judiea ami Samaria. In the civil wars between the sons of Antiochus Grjpus (ii.c. 95-83), C, with l)ama.scus 5 rob. as its ciqiital, waa the name of a trans- ordanic kingdom, .se]iarate from that of Syria proper. In li.c. 47 Herod was appointed by Sextus Ca'sar (Jos. Ant. XIV. ix. 5; II'km, I. x. 8), and again by Cassius in B.C. 43 (Jos. Ant. xiv. xi. 4 j Wars, I. xi. 4), military governor of C.

; but on neither of these occasions did his ft[)pointnicut carry the exercise of any authority within Judaea. K. W. Mos.-!. COFFER occurs only in I S 6«- "• ", and the Heb. term (ipx, LXX 9(iiia), of which it is the tr°, is also found nowhere else. From the fact that in the above passages the word has the article, some have inferred that an 'argdz was an apjiendage to every cart ('(((//id/rtA), but this is not necessary (Driver, Heb. Text of Sa7n. p. 43 f.)

The argAz appears to have been a small chest which contained (?) the golden figures sent by the Philistines as a guilt- ottering. (Cf., however, the LXX, and see Well- bausen and Budde on the text of the passage. ) J. A. Selbie.