Slime
translated bitumen in the Vulgate. The three instances in which it is mentioned in the Old
Testament are illustrated by travellers and historians. It is first spoken of as used for cement by the
builders in the plain of Shinar or Babylonia. (Genesis 11:3) The bitumen pits in the vale of Siddim
are mentioned in the ancient fragment of Canaanitish history, (Genesis 14:10) and the ark of papyrus
in which Moses was placed was made impervious to water by a coating of bitumen and pitch.
(Exodus 2:3) Herodotus, i. 179, tells us of the bitumen found at Is, the modern Heet, a town of
Babylonia, eight days journey from Babylon. (Bitumen, or asphalt, is “the product of the
decomposition of vegetable and animal substances. It is usually found of a black or brownish-black
color, externally not unlike coal, but it varies in a consistency from a bright, pitchy condition, with
a conchoidal fracture, to thick, viscid masses of mineral tar.”—Encyc. Brit. In this last state it is
called in the Bible slime, and is of the same nature as our petroleum, but thicker, and hardens into
asphalt. It is obtained in various places in Europe, and even now occasionally from the Dead
Sea.—ED.)
Sling
[Arms, Armor]
Smith
[Handicraft]
Smyrna
(myrrh), a city of Asia Minor, situated on the AEgean Sea, 40 miles north of Ephesus. Allusion
is made to it in (Revelation 2:8-11) It was founded by Alexander the Great, and was situated twenty
shades (2 1/2 miles) from the city of the same name, which after a long series of wars with the
Lydians had been finally taken and sacked by Halyattes. The ancient city was built by some piratical
Greeks 1500 years before Christ. It seems not impossible that the message to the church in Smyrna
contains allusions to the ritual of the pagan mysteries which prevailed in that city. In the time of
Strabo the ruins of the old Smyrna still existed, and were partially inhabited, but the new city was
one of the most beautiful in all Asia. The streets were laid out as near as might be at right angles.
There was a large public library there, and also a handsome building surrounded with porticos
which served as a museum. It was consecrated as a heroum to Homer, whom the Smyrnaeans
claimed as a countryman. Olympian games were celebrated here, and excited great interest. (Smyrna
is still a large city of 180,000 to 200,000 inhabitants, of which a larger proportion are Franks than
in any other town in Turkey; 20,000 are Greeks, 9000 Jews, 8000 Armenians, 1000 Europeans,
and the rest are Moslems.—ED.)
Snail
The Hebrew word shablul occurs only in (Psalms 58:8) The rendering of the Authorized Version
is probably correct. The term would denote either a limax or a helix, which are particularly
•
noticeable for the slimy track they leave behind them, by which they seem to waste themselves
away. To this, or to the fact that many of them are shrivelled up among the rocks in the long heat
of the summer, the psalmist refers.
•The Hebrew word chomet occurs only as the name of some unclean animal in (Leviticus 11:30)
Perhaps some kind of lizard may be intended.
Snow
This historical books of the Bible contain only two notices of snow actually falling— (2 Samuel
23:20) 1Macc 13:22; but the allusions in the poetical books are so numerous that there can be no