- WELL (Hebrews beer), to be distinguished from a fountain (Hebrews
‘ain). A “beer” was a deep shaft, bored far under the rocky surface by the
art of man, which contained water which percolated through the strata in
its sides. Such wells were those of Jacob and Beersheba, etc. (see Genesis
21:19, 25, 30, 31; 24:11; 26:15, 18-25, 32, etc.). In the Pentateuch this
word beer, so rendered, occurs twenty-five times. - WESTWARD sea-ward, i.e., toward the Mediterranean (Deuteronomy
3:27). - WHALE The Hebrew word tan (plural, tannin) is so rendered in Job 7:12
(A.V.; but R.V., “sea-monster”). It is rendered by “dragons” in
Deuteronomy 32:33; Psalm 91:13; Jeremiah 51:34; Psalm 74:13 (marg.,
“whales;” and marg. of R.V., “sea-monsters”); Isaiah 27:1; and “serpent”
in Exodus 7:9 (R.V. marg., “any large reptile,” and so in ver. 10, 12). The
words of Job (7:12), uttered in bitter irony, where he asks, “Am I a sea or
a whale?” simply mean, “Have I a wild, untamable nature, like the waves
of the sea, which must be confined and held within bounds, that they
cannot pass?” “The serpent of the sea, which was but the wild, stormy sea
itself, wound itself around the land, and threatened to swallow it up...Job
inquires if he must be watched and plagued like this monster, lest he throw
the world into disorder” (Davidson’s Job).
The whale tribe are included under the general Hebrew name tannin
(Genesis 1:21; Lamentations 4:3). “Even the sea-monsters [tanninim] draw
out the breast.” The whale brings forth its young alive, and suckles them.
It is to be noticed of the story of Jonah’s being “three days and three
nights in the whale’s belly,” as recorded in Matthew 12:40, that here the
Gr. ketos means properly any kind of sea-monster of the shark or the
whale tribe, and that in the book of Jonah (1:17) it is only said that “a
great fish” was prepared to swallow Jonah. This fish may have been,
therefore, some great shark. The white shark is known to frequent the
Mediterranean Sea, and is sometimes found 30 feet in length.
- WHEAT one of the earliest cultivated grains. It bore the Hebrew name
hittah, and was extensively cultivated in Palestine. There are various
species of wheat. That which Pharaoh saw in his dream was the Triticum
compositum, which bears several ears upon one stalk (Genesis 41:5). The
“fat of the kidneys of wheat” (Deuteronomy 32:14), and the “finest of the
wheat” (Psalm 81:16; 147:14), denote the best of the kind. It was exported