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Bible Dictionaries
Aloe
Watson's Biblical & Theological Dictionary
or עלו , a plant with broad leaves, nearly two inches thick, prickly and serrated. It grows about two feet high. A very bitter gum is extracted from it, used for medicinal purposes, and anciently for embalming dead bodies. Nicodemus is said, John 19:39 , to have brought one hundred pounds' weight of myrrh and aloes to embalm the body of Jesus. The quantity has been exclaimed against by certain Jews as being enough for fifty bodies. But instead of εκατον it might originally have been written δεκατον , ten pounds' weight. However, at the funeral of Herod there were five hundred αρωματοφορους , spice bearers; and at that of R. Gamaliel, eighty pounds of opobalsamum were used.
The wood which God showed Moses, that with it he might sweeten the waters of Marah, is called alvah, Exodus 15:25 . The word has some relation to aloe; and some interpreters are of opinion that Moses used a bitter sort of wood that so the power of God might be the more remarkable. Mr. Bruce mentions a town, or large village, by the name of Elvah. It is thickly planted with trees; is the oasis parva of the ancients; and the last inhabited place to the west that is under the jurisdiction of Egypt. He also observes that the Arabs call a shrub or tree, not unlike our hawthorn, either in wood or flower, by the name of elvah. "It was this,"
say they, "with which Moses sweetened the waters of Marah; and with this, too, did Kalib Ibn el Walid sweeten those of Elvah, once bitter, and give the place the name of this circumstance." It may be that God directed Moses to the very wood proper for the purpose. M. Neibuhr, when in these parts, inquired after wood capable of this effect, but could gain no information of any such. It will not, however, from hence follow that Moses really used a bitter wood; but, as Providence usually works by the proper and fit means to accomplish its ends, it seems likely that the wood he made use of was, in some degree at least, corrective of that quality which abounded in the water, and so rendered it potable. This seems to have been the opinion of the author of Sir_38:5 . That other water, also, requires some correction, and that such a correction is applied to it, appears from the custom in Egypt in respect to that of the Nile, which, though somewhat muddy, is rendered pure and salutary by being put into jars, the inside of which is rubbed with a paste made of bitter almonds. The first discoverers of the Floridas are said to have corrected the stagnant and fetid water they found there, by infusing in it branches of sassafras; and it is understood that the first inducement of the Chinese to the general use of tea, was to correct the water of their ponds and rivers.
The LIGN-ALOE
or agallochum, Numbers 24:6; Psalms 45:9; and Song of Solomon 4:14 . אחלת , masculine, אחל , whose plural is אחלים , is a small tree about eight or ten feet high. That the flower of this plant yielded a fragrance, is assured to us in the following extract from Swinburne's Travels, letter xii: "This morning, like many of the foregoing ones, was delicious. The sun rose gloriously out of the sea, and all the air around was perfumed with the effluvia of the aloe, as its rays sucked up the dew from the leaves." This extremely bitter plant contains under the bark three sorts of wood. The first is black, solid, and weighty; the second is of a tawny colour, of a light spongy texture, very porous, and filled with a resin extremely fragrant and agreeable; the third kind of wood, which is the heart, has a strong aromatic odour, and is esteemed in the east more precious than gold itself. It is used for perfuming habits and apartments, and is administered as a cordial in fainting and epileptic fits. These pieces, called calunbac, are carefully preserved in pewter boxes, to prevent their drying. When they are used they are ground upon a marble with such liquids as are best suited to the purpose for which they are intended. This wood, mentioned Song of Solomon 4:14 , in conjunction with several other odoriferous plants there referred to, was in high esteem among the Hebrews for its exquisite exhalations.
The scented aloe, and each shrub that showers
Gum from its veins, and odours from its flowers.
Thus the son of Sirach, Sir_24:15 : "I gave a sweet smell like the cinnamon and aspalathus. I yielded a pleasant odour like the best myrrh; like galbanum and onyx, and fragrant storax, and like the fume of frankincense in the tabernacle." It may not be amiss to observe that the Persian translator renders ahalim, sandal wood; and the same was the opinion of a certain Jew in Arabia who was consulted by Neibuhr.
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Watson, Richard. Entry for 'Aloe'. Richard Watson's Biblical & Theological Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/wtd/a/aloe.html. 1831-2.
