Emerods (Hastings' Dictionary)

The word useil in AV to denote the disease brought upon the Philistines when they had captured tlie ark (1 S 5). Two Heb. words are used for this disease. One of these is 'onhel (Tri'). It is supjiosed to mean some- thing swollen, it is the name of a portion of the fovtilications of Jerus. (2 Ch 27' 33". Neb ,3-«- -■' ll-^')- The verb of the stem is used twice, in the sense of being pufVed up, presumptuous (Hab 2, Nu 14*).

This exhausts the use of the stem, except in the six places where 'ophel, in the plural, is used for the disease in question (Dt 28-'', 1 S 5''- "• '» f)*- "). So far, the disease seems to be something tumid, a swelling of some sort. The other word, iehorlm (o'l'ins), is the only word of its stem in the language. It is used in the six places last mentioned, as the kerf, or marginal reading, to be substituted for 'Ophel, and is also used in 1 S 6"- ". Cognate words in Syr.

and Arab, convey the idea of breathing hard, of easing the belly with violent eflort, of tenesmus with How of blood. It is said that the Massoretcs directed this word to be substituted for the other as being a le.ss indelicate term. As to the nature of the disease, not much can be inferred from 1 S 5", where AV tr. 'They had emerods in their secret parts,' and RV ' tumours brake out upon thum,' for the verb there used ap|iears nowlicre else. That the disea.

se was externally loathsome is evident from Dt 28-', where it is cla-ssed with the boil of Egypt, the scurvy and the itch. That it was terrilily fatal seems to be implied in 1 S 5'°'". That it had some Tiarticularly noteworthy symptom apjiears from tlie fact that they maile golden images of it. The traditions handed down in Joseplius, and in the ailiie<l specilications in the Sept. and Vulg.. are sulticiently specitic and horrible. According to the Vulg.

'compulrescebant prominentcsextalcseorum.' Joseplius says. 'They died of the dy.sentery, a sore distemper that brought death u]H)n them very suddenly ; for . . they brought up their entrails, which were eaten thiongli. and vomited them up entirely rotted away by the disease ' (A nt. VI. i. 1). Joseplius is imaginative, but the evidence indicates some form of dysenteric or typhoid disease, in which a loathsome rectal protrusion was a prominent symptom. See Medicine. LlTKRATlTRli.

— Driver and Dillm. on Dt 28« ; Thenius, Well- hausen.and Driver on 1 8 6«- » a* ; Hitzie, Urgesch. d. PhUtaUier (1845) p. 20! : Oeiger. Ortchfift, 408 f.; Ox/. Beb. Lex. and Siegfried-SUule, s.tJO. W. J. BeECHER.