- TERAPHIM givers of prosperity, idols in human shape, large or small,
analogous to the images of ancestors which were revered by the Romans.
In order to deceive the guards sent by Saul to seize David, Michal his wife
prepared one of the household teraphim, putting on it the goat’s-hair cap
worn by sleepers and invalids, and laid it in a bed, covering it with a
mantle. She pointed it out to the soldiers, and alleged that David was
confined to his bed by a sudden illness (1 Samuel 19:13-16). Thus she
gained time for David’s escape. It seems strange to read of teraphim,
images of ancestors, preserved for superstitious purposes, being in the
house of David. Probably they had been stealthily brought by Michal from
her father’s house. “Perhaps,” says Bishop Wordsworth, “Saul, forsaken
by God and possessed by the evil spirit, had resorted to teraphim (as he
afterwards resorted to witchcraft); and God overruled evil for good, and
made his very teraphim (by the hand of his own daughter) to be an
instrument for David’s escape.”, Deane’s David, p. 32. Josiah attempted
to suppress this form of idolatry (2 Kings 23:24). The ephod and teraphim
are mentioned together in Hos. 3:4. It has been supposed by some
(Cheyne’s Hosea) that the “ephod” here mentioned, and also in Judges
8:24-27, was not the part of the sacerdotal dress so called (Exodus
28:6-14), but an image of Jehovah overlaid with gold or silver (comp.
Judges 17, 18; 1 Samuel 21:9; 23:6, 9; 30:7, 8), and is thus associated with
the teraphim. (See THUMMIM.) - TEREBINTH (R.V. marg. of Deuteronomy 11:30, etc.), the Pistacia
terebinthus of botanists; a tree very common in the south and east of
Palestine. (See OAK.) - TERESH severe, a eunuch or chamberlain in the palace of Ahasuerus, who
conspired with another to murder him. The plot was detected by
Mordecai, and the conspirators were put to death (Esther 2:21; 6:2). - TERTIUS the third, a Roman Christian whom Paul employed as his
amanuensis in writing his epistle to the Romans (16:22). - TERTULLUS a modification of “Tertius;” a Roman advocate, whom the
Jews employed to state their case against Paul in the presence of Felix
(Acts 24:1-9). The charges he adduced against the apostle were, “First,
that he created disturbances among the Romans throughout the empire, an
offence against the Roman government (crimen majestatis). Secondly, that
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