Ware

'Ware,' 'aware,' and 'wary' are forms of the same adj., the a in ' aware ' representing the Anglo-Sax. ge (gewaer. Middle Kng. imar, ywar), and the ?/ in 'wary' being an addition. 'Ware' occurs in Mt 24'" (1611, mod. edd. 'a«are'), Ac 14«, 2Ti 4". So Lv 5'-' Tind. (5>« 'And the preast shall make an attonement for him for the ignor- • The exception is miAm/ir, which is usually tr' ' ward,' but in Ezk as' Neh 4^ «s is rendered ' guard ' ; RV makes no changes.

aunce whiche he dyd and was not ware ') ; Lk n"Rhem. 'Woe to you, because j'ou are as monu. ments that appeare not, and men walking over, are not ware.' Udall (in Erasmus' Paraph, ii. 278) uses 'ware' for modern 'wary'; so Erasmus, CreiU. 127, 'ware and wvse circumspection.' 'Wary oci urs in AV in 2 !Bs 7°*, and ' wariness ' in Sir 11'^ J. Hasti.ngs. WARS OF THE LORD, BOOK OF THE (rcn^p 155 •il.T ; LXX B iv ^i^Mv [A /3i/J\v] IluXe/ios rou Kvplov).

— An authority quoted in Nu 21" to settle a question about the boundary between Moab and the Amorites. In all probability, the other two citations in the above chapter are from the same source. The last of these is indeed referred (v.*") to a poem circulating amongst the mosliilim or reciters of sarcastic verses, but this does not prove that it was not incorporated also in the ' Wars of J".' The book in question is mentioned nowhere else in the OT, for its identity with the ' Book of J.

isliar,' although contended for by some, cannot be established. From the title »e can reailily infer the contents of the book. It was doubtless a collection of songs which celebrated the victories gained by Israel in its religious wars from the Slosaic age downwards. The title was chosen by men who delighted to think of J" as Israel's com- mander-in-chief (niKjs '111' '>/" of the hosts [of Israel] '). Cf. the words in the Song of Moses in Ex 15' ' The Lord is a man of war.'

The meaning of all the three citations in Nu 21 is more or less obscure. The purity of the text is not beyond suspicion, and it may be also, as several critics hold, that some of the extracts refer to events which happened later than the Mosaic age, and that the narrator has only partially succeeded in accommodating the original language to the new context.

Stade, for instance, believes that the third quotation has in view incidents that occurred during the wars between Israel and Moab under the dynasty of Omri. The argument of Wellhausen, that the Well-song (w."- '*) should be metaphori- cally interpreted of tlie conquest of the Moabite city Beer (well), is plausible but not convincing. If Cornill is right in assigning the whole pa.

ssage in which the citations occur to E, llicre is probability also in his conjecture that ' tlie book of the Wars of the Lord ' originated in the N. kingdom. Its com- position will in any case hardly be later than B.C. 750. It is only fair to mention that some deny that Nu 21" furnishes anv evidence whatever for the existence of a book called ' the Wars of J".' Sayce {Academy, 22nd Oct.

1892) would render the pass;ige thus: 'Wherefore it is said in a (the) book, Tlie wars of J" were at Zahab in Supli,' etc. It may, however, be safely predicted that few will agree to follow this line of interpretation. LiTKRATCRB.-Ryle, Canon 0/ OT, 19; W. R. Smith, OTJCt 327; Delitzsch, Gemigig, new ed. i. 7; Reuss, AT iii. 4(53; Cornill, EinleUung'^.<y3l.; Wellhausen, Comp.Mi; Wildcboer, Lit. d. AT, 22 1. ; Kittel, Hist, of Ueli. i. 9u ; Kautzsch, lleU. Schr. d.

AT, Beilagen, 136; Buddc, 'The Well song' in Ant llorW, March 1S95 ; Driver, LOT^ 121. J. A. Selbie.