Ethiopian" is of Greek origin, and associates with the idea blackness, like that of Ham. Thus, Auto, Aithiops, sun-burnt, swarthy as Ethiopians; audos, warmth, heat, fire, ardent, blazing like fire, blackened by fire, black, dark; alloy, burning, fiery, blazing, burned, darkened by fire, dark-coloured, consuming, destroying. Donnegan p. 34. But Isaiah speaks of the descendants of Ham perhaps in a more figurative language, and in a more elevated and poetical strain: 1. Wo to the land shadowing with wings, 2. That sendeth ambassadors by the sea, Even in vessels of bulrushes upon the waters, Saying, Go, ye swift messengers, to a nation scattered and peeled; A nation meted out and trodden down, 3. Whose land the rivers have spoiled! All ye inhabitants of the world, and dwellers on the earth, See ye, when he lifteth up an ensign on the mountains, 4. For so the Lord said unto me, I will take my rest, Like a clear heat upon herbs, And like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest. 5. For afore the harvest, when the bud is perfect, And take away and cut down the branches. 6. They shall be left together unto the fowls of the mountains, And to the beasts of the earth; And the fowls shall summer upon them, And the beasts of the earth shall winter upon them. 7. In that time shall a present be brought unto the Lord of hosts, Of a people scattered and peeled, And from a people terrible from the beginning hitherto; A nation meted out and trodden under foot, Whose land the rivers have spoiled, To the place of the name of the Lord of hosts, the Mount Zion. Isa. 18. The denouncements of Jehovah against the children of Ham are more plainly expressed in the promises of God to these of the true worship, his peculiar people: Thus saith the Lord, The labour of Egypt, and merchandise of Ethiopia, Shall come over unto thee, and they shall be thine⚫ In chains they shall come over; And they shall fall down unto thee. They shall make supplication unto thee, Saying, Surely God is in thee; And there is none else, There is no God (beside),—(or, there is no other God.) Isa. xlv. 14. So Jeremiah: "Declare ye in Egypt, and publish it in Migdol, and publish in Noph and in Taphanhes; say ye, Stand fast, and prepare thee; for the sword shall devour round about thee. "O thou daughter dwelling in Egypt, furnish thyself to go into captivity for Noph shall be waste and desolate, without an inhabitant. "The daughter of Egypt shall be confounded; she shall be delivered into the hands of the people of the north." Jer. xlvi. 1, 19, 24. "And the sword shall come upon Egypt, and great pain shall be in Ethiopia, when the slain shall fall in Egypt, and they shall take away her multitudes, and her foundations shall be broken down. "Ethiopia, and Lybia, and Lydia, and all the mingled (mixedblooded) people, Chub and the men of the land that is in league, shall fall with them by the sword. "In that day shall messengers go forth from me in ships to make the careless Ethiopians afraid, and great pain shall come upon them, as in the day of Egypt: for, lo, it cometh. "The young men of Aven and of Pibeseth shall fall by the sword and these cities shall go into captivity. "At Taphanhes also the day shall be darkened, when I shall break there the yokes of Egypt: and the pomp of her strength shall cease in her: as for her, a cloud shall cover her; and her daughters shall go into captivity. "And I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations and disperse them among the countries, and they shall know that I am the Lord." Ezek. xxx. 4, 5, 9, 17, 18, 26. "And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hands of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people afar off: for the Lord hath spoken it." Joel iii. 8. It may be we have occupied too much time, in remarks too obscure and indistinct for biblical criticism, upon this passage of Zephaniah; and it may be that, in the judgment of some, we have thus made ourselves obnoxious to the satire of the reverend and witty commentator upon the words: "Strange such difference there should be 'Twixt tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee." But we were sure the passage had been greatly misunderstood, and were, perhaps, too much emboldened by the hope, that the providence of the All-wise might yet again issue forth the truth from the tongue of the feeble. LESSON XVI. FROM the root 2 has also been derived the Arabic word. Shaman, and the Syriac haman, and adopted by the Hebrews in the word haman, which Castell translates "images," dedicated to the worship of the sun, the worship of. fire, heat, &c. The Hebrew use of this word will be found in a plural form in Lev. xxvi. 30, thus: "And I will destroy your high places, and cut down your images," hammanekem. 2 Chron. xiv. 3 (the fourth of the Hebrew text:) "And brake down the images," D hammanim; also xxxiv. 4, 7: "And the images, (D'en hammanim) that were on high above them, he cut down," "and had beaten the graven images (Dhammanim) into powder." Isa. xvii. 8: "Either the groves or the images," 'n hammanim ; also xxvii. 9: "The groves and images ( hammanim) shall not stand up." Ezek. vi. 4, 6: "Your altars shall be desolate, and your images (hammanekem) shall be broken," "and your images ( hammanekem) may be cut down." We have no possible word to express literally this term, but the hammanekens, or little HAMS, or fire-houses, the objects of religious adoration, were conical towers, from fifty to one hundred feet high, and fifteen to twenty feet in diameter at the base, and gradually decreasing upward, with a small door or opening fifteen or twenty feet above the base, and four smaller ones near the apex, looking towards the cardinal points. The moderns have no certain knowledge of their particular use, yet all believe that in them was attempted to be kept the perpetual or holy fire, and perhaps into them was thrust the infant sacrificed to the god. May we not suppose that Daniel and his brethren would have informed us, had it been necessary for us to know more? Spencer, Heb. Laws, lib. ii. cap. 25, § 3, says of these edifices: "They were of a conical form and of a black colour." It seems to us this identifies these edifices with the round towers of Persia and elsewhere, remains of many of which were anciently found in Ireland. The curious about this matter are referred to Gesenius's Thesaurus, p. 489; also Lee's Lex. p. 297, where he quotes Henrici Arentii Hamaker Miscellanea Phoenicia, pp. 49, 54; also Diatribe Philologico-Critica aliquot monumentorum Punicorum; Selden, de Diis Syris, ii. cap. 8, and the authors severally cited by them. Upon a full consideration of the subject, Dr. Lee says— "Upon the whole, I am disposed to believe that the term in (haman) is rather derived from DП Ham, the father of Canaan, of Mitsraim, &c., Gen. x. 6-20; and hence by the latter worshipped as presiding angel of the sun, under the title of Auovv, Greek "Auμov (Ammon), which is probably our very word." If so, then his very name became significant of the worship of fire, and even expressive of the fire-temples themselves. By some fanciful relation, not relevant to our subject, between the fire or sun worshippers and astronomy, when the sun was in aries (the ram), the god Ham, Ammon, Hammon, or Jupiter Hammon, was represented with a ram's head for his crest; with this crest became associated the idea of the god, and hence chonchologists, even to this day, call certain shells, that are fancied to resemble the ram's horn, Ammonites, giving further evidence, even now, of how deeply seated was the association between the earlier descendants of Ham and the fire worship of their day. The long and fanciful story of Io, changed by Jupiter into a white cow; of her flight from the fifty sons of Egyptus; of her becoming the progenitor of the Ionians; the Egyptians claiming her under the name of Isis; of her marriage with Osiris, who became at length Apis and Serapis, worshipped in the image of a black bull with a white spot in his forehead, and many such tales, are all legitimately descended from his family peculiarities, their relative condition in the world, and the fact that Ham became the imaginary deity of his descendants. Much evidence may be had proving that Ham became inseparably associated with, and in fact the very father of, idolatry, and of all those enormities growing out of it; enormities with which idolatry has ever been attended, and which time and the history of man for ever give proof to be a total preventive of all physical and moral elevation and improvement; and which, like other breaches against the laws of God, have, at all times, among all men, for ever been accompanied by both physical and moral degradation. But the descendants of Ham gave his name to their country. Hees 66 Chemi was the Coptic name for Egypt, which the Septuagint translates into Xau Cham. Plutarch styles Egypt Xnuía Chemia, from the Coptic Heel Chemi, and, as if he wished to give some account of its origin, adds, θερμή γὰρ ἐστὶν καὶ ἔγρα, “ for it is hot and humid;” showing that theеe Chemi of the Copts signified the same as the Ham of the Hebrews. But the Coptic word Heel Chemi, Xnui and Xnue of Plutarch, also signified the adjective black. See Gibbs's Hebrew Lexicon, under the word D Ham; and with this signification the word Ham is used in Ps. lxxviii. 51: "The chief of their strength in the tabernacles of Ham :" Septuagint, Xau, Cham, from the Coptic Heel chemi, black. cv.23: "And Jacob sojourned in the land of Ham," D Ham: Septuagint, Xau, Cham, from the Coptic chemi, black. 27: "And wonders in the land of Ham :" Septuagint, Xau, Cham, from the Coptic Hees chemi, black. cvi. 22: "Wondrous works in the land of Ham:" Septuagint, Xau, Cham, from the Coptic chemi, black. The idea is, the land of the black people. Heel In this sense also the word is used in Gen. xiv. 5: "And smote the Rephaims in Ashteroth Karnaim, and the Zuzims in Ham." The Septuagint translates this passage into Καὶ έθνη ἰσχυρὰ aua aurois, as though the D be Ham was a pronoun, and which seems to have been the view of several ancient translators. But such certainly was not the view of the translators of the received version; nor of Martindale, and others from whom he compiled. He says of this passage-" 2. Ham, crafty, or heat; the country of the Zuzims, the situation of which is not known:" p. 326. We certainly agree with the Septuagint that □ Zuzim was a significant term, and perhaps well enough explained by |