Defy (Hastings' Dictionary)

When Goliath ' defied ' the armies of Israel, it is probable that the translators of AV understood him to challenge them to combat, though the Heb. (I'm) means to taunt or scorn (so 1 S 17'»- ">■ »• "• «, 2 S 21=' 239, 1 Ch 20'). But when Balaam is summoned to Balak's camp with the words (Nu 23'- »), ' Come, curee me Jacob, And come, defj' Israel,' it is manifest that 'defy' is used in some other and now obsol. sense. The HeV.

(c;;) means to be indignant, then express indignation against one, denounce, curse ; and that is the meaning the parallelism would require (LXX {iriKaTipaaai., Vulg. detestare, Luth. schelten). Now ' defy ' (from late Lat. dis -Jldare, dis, trust) primarily means to renounce allegiance or affiance, to pronounce all bonds of faith and fellowship dissolved (whence war would generally follow, and so the modern sense of the word). Thus Tindale's tr.

of 1 Co 12' 'no man speakynge in the sprete of God de- iieth Jesus.' 'This is probably the sense in wliich ' defy ' should be taken in Nu, since it is Tindale's word ; though there is a meaning of the word that is closer to the Greek, viz. ' despise,' ' set at nought,' as Olde (1549), £rasm. Par. Thess. 4, 'I detie ail thinges in comparison of the gospel of Christ'; and a rare use nearer still, viz. 'curse,' as Hiill (1548), Chron.

526, ' The faire damoselles defied that dale [at Agincourt] in the whiche thei had lost their paramors. ' Geneva and Douay have ' detest ' in its old sense of ' denounce. ' J. Hastings.