Rereward (Hastings' Dictionary)

The 'rereward,' i.e. rearguard, was tlie last of the three main divisions of an army, the 'vanguard' { = avant-ward) or 'fore- front' being the first. The word comes from Old Fr. arerewarde, i.e. arere (mod. arriirc) ' beliind ' (from Lat. ad-retro) and %oarde, a variety of Old Fr. garde (which came from Old High Ger. warten to watch over). RV retains the word in all its occurrences (Nu lO'", Jos 6"- '^ 1 S 29^ Is 52'''' 58*) but spells it ' rearward.'

It is always sjielt ' rere- ward ' (sometimes with a hyphen) in A V, and it is always a substantive. Cf. Hakliiyt, Voyages, ii. 20, ' Because ... it was bootlesse for them to assaile the forefront of our battell . . they determined to set upon our rereward.' Berners (/"Voissferi, p. 376, Glooe ed.) uses ' rearband ' in the .same sense : ' The Bishop of Durham with the rearband came to Newcastle and supped.' J. Hastings. RESAIAS ('PTjirafo?

, AV Reesaias), 1 Es 5«, corre- sponds to Reelaiah, Ezr 2=, or Raamiah, Neli V. pU(;.\IA has apparently been read as pCjCAIA. RESEN (i:-i ; KB Mjreii, E Maev ; Vulg. Eesen). — The last of tlie four cities built by Assliur (KV by Nimrod), between Nineveh and Calah (the modern Nimroud), and further described in Gn 10" as 'the great city' (RV). Various conjectures have been made as to the position of tliis settle- ment.

The Byzantine authors and Ptolemy iden- tified it with Rhesinaor Rhesainaon the Khabour, probably the Arab. Ras cl-'Ain — an impossible identification, this site being '200 miles W. of the tw^o cities between which Resen is said to have lain. A better identification is that of Boihavt, which makes Resen to be the L.arissa of Xenophon (Anah. iii. 4), though whether, as he argues, 'Larissa' be an adaptation of 'Laresen,' i.e. 'Rosen's (ruins),' is a matter of doubt.

It is worthy of note that Xenophon describes Larissa, like Resen in Gn 10", as 'a great city.' The identification of the name, however, and that of the site, are two different things. On the one hand, there is the possibility, maintained by some, that Larissa may be Nimroud (Calah), and, on the other, the probaliility that the ruins described by Xenophon — and the city Rosen — may be repre- sented by the remains known as Selamich, an ancient site situated about three miles N.

of Nimroud, and between that city and the mounds of Nineveh (Kouyunjik). These remains have the advantage of being situated in the tract where, according to Gn 10", Resen really lay. As Sayce has pointed out, the name of Resen occurs, under the form R6s-f>ni, in a list of 18 cities or small towns from which Sennaclierib dug canals com- municating with the river Kliouser or Khosr, in_ order to supply them with drinking-water.

Whether this be tlie Resen of Genesis or not is uncertain, — in all jirobability it wa.s a compara- tively unim|iortant place, and situated too far north. Moreover, such a name as R6s-6ni, ' foun- tain-head,' must have been far from rare in ancient Assyria, as is Ras el-'ain in countries where Arabic is spoken at the present day. The Greek forms are api)arently corrupt, and due to the likeness between 1 and 1. l.iTERATi'RK. — Moohart. Oroqraph. ^aer. Iv.

2S ; PolitiMch /'ani((i,'» 2(11 ; Schroder, COT 1. M ; Sayce in the .4r^M/<-inv toi 1st May IS80. X. G. PlNCllKS. 230 KESH RESTORATION