Dict: smith - SO

smith:

SO - S>@ - "So, king of Egypt," is once mentioned in the Bible
( kjv@2Kings:17:4) So has been identified by different writers with the first and second kings of the Ethiopian twenty-fifth dynasty, called by Manetho, Sabakon (Shebek) and Sebichos (Shebetek).

SOAP - S>@ - The Hebrew term borith is a general term for any substance of cleansing qualities. As, however, it appears in kjv@Jeremiah:2:22) in contradistinction to nether , which undoubtedly means "natron" or mineral alkali, it is fair to infer that borith refers to vegetable alkali, or some kind of potash, which forms one of the usual ingredients in our soap. Numerous plants capable of yielding alkalies exist in Palestine and the surrounding countries; we may notice one named hubeibeh (the Salsola kali of botanists) found near the Dead Sea, the ashes of which are called el-kuli , from their strong alkaline properties.

SOCHO - S>@ - (bushy). ( kjv@1Chronicles:4:18) Probably one of the towns called Socoh, in Judah, though which of the two cannot be ascertained.

SOCHOH - S>@ - another form of the name which is more correctly given in the Authorized version as Socoh. The present one occurs in (Kings:4:10) and is therefore probably, though not certainly, Socoh, 1.

SOCOH - S>@ - the name of two towns in the tribe of Judah. In the district of the Shefelah. kjv@Joshua:15:35; kjv@1Samuel:17:1; kjv@2Chronicles:11:7 kjv@2Chronicles:8:18) In the time of Eusebius it bore the name of Socchoth, and lay between eight and nine Roman miles from Eleutheropolis, on the road to Jerusalem. It may be identified with esh
- Shuweikeh , in the western part of the mountains of Judah. From this village probably came Antigonus of Soco, who lived about the commencement of the third century B.C. Also a town of Judah, but in the mountain district. kjv@Joshua:15:48) It has been discovered about 10 miles southwest of Hebron; bearing, like the other Socoh, the name of esh
- Shuweikeh .

SODI - S>@ - (intimate), the father of Geddiel, the spy selected from the tribe of Zebulun. kjv@Numbers:13:10) (B.C. 1490.)

SODOM - S>@ - (burning), one of the most ancient cities of Syria. It is commonly mentioned in connection with Gomorrah, but also with Admah and Zeboim, and on one occasion
kjv@Genesis:14:1) ...
with Bela or Zoar. Sodom was evidently the chief town in the settlement. The four are first named in the ethnological records of kjv@Genesis:10:19) as belonging to the Canaanites. The next mention of the name of Sodom, kjv@Genesis:13:10-13) gives more certain indication of the position of the city. Abram and Lot are standing together between Bethel and Ai, ver. 3, taking a survey of the land around and below them. Eastward of them, and absolutely at their feet, lay the "circle of Jordan." The whole circle was one great oasis
"a garden of Jehovah." ver. 10. In the midst of the garden the four cities of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboim appear to have been situated. It is necessary to notice how absolutely the cities are identified with the district. In the subsequent account of their destruction, kjv@Genesis:19:1) ... the topographical terms are employed with all the precision which is characteristic of such early times. The mention of the Jordan is conclusive as to the situation of the district, for the Jordan ceases where it enters the Dead Sea, and can have no existence south of that point. The catastrophe by which they were destroyed is described in kjv@Genesis:19:1) ... as a shower of brimstone and fire from Jehovah. However we may interpret the words of the earliest narrative, one thing is certain
that the lake was not one of the agents in the catastrophe. From all these passages, though much is obscure, two things seem clear: That Sodom and the rest of the cities of the plain of Jordan stood on the north of the Dead Sea; That neither the cities nor the district were submerged by the lake, but that the cities were overthrown and the land spoiled, and that it may still be seen in its desolate condition. When, however, we turn to more modern views, we discover a remarkable variance from these conclusions. The opinion long current that the five cities were submerged in the lake, and that their remains
walls, columns and capitals
might he still discerned below the water, hardly needs refutation after the distinct statement and the constant implication of Scripture. But, A more serious departure from the terms of the ancient history is exhibited in the prevalent opinion that the cities stood at the south end of the lake. This appears to, have been the belief of Josephus and Jerome. It seems to have been universally held by the medieval historians and pilgrims, and it is adopted by modern topographers probably without exception. There are several grounds for this belief; but the main point on which Dr. Robinson rests his argument is the situation of Zoar. (a) "Lot," says he, "fled to Zoar, which was near to Sodom; and Zoar lay almost at the southern end of the present sea, probably in the month of Wady Kerak ." (b) Another consideration in favor of placing the cities at the southern end of the lake is the existence of similar names in that direction. (c) A third argument, and perhaps the weightiest of the three, is the existence of the salt mountain at the south of the lake, and its tendency to split off in columnar masses presenting a rude resemblance to the human form. But it is by no means certain that salt does not exist at other spots round the lake. (d) (A fourth and yet stronger argument is drawn from the fact that Abraham saw the smoke of the burning cities from Hebron. (e) A fifth argument is found in the numerous lime-pits found at that southern end of the Dead Sea. Robinson, Schaff, Baedeker, Lieutenant Lynch and others favor this view.
ED.) It thus appears that on the situation of Sodom no satisfactory conclusion can at present be readied: On the one hand, the narrative of Genesis seems to state positively that it lay at the northern end of the Dead Sea. On the other hand, long-continued tradition and the names of the existing spots seem to pronounce with almost equal positiveness that it was at its southern end. Of the catastrophe which destroyed the city and the district of Sodom we can hardly hope ever to form a satisfactory conception. Some catastrophe there undoubtedly was but what secondary agencies, besides fire, were employed in the accomplishment of the punishment cannot be safely determined in the almost total absence of exact scientific description of the natural features of the ground round the lake. We may suppose, however, that the actual agent in the ignition and destruction of the cities had been of the nature of a tremendous thunder-storm accompanied by a discharge of meteoric stones, (and that these set on fire the bitumen with which the soil was saturated, and which was used in building the city. And it may be that this burning out of the soil caused the plain to sink below the level of the Dead Sea, and the waters to flow over it
if indeed Sodom and its sister cities are really under the water.
ED.) The miserable fate of Sodom and Gomorrah is held up as a warning in numerous passages of the Old and New Testaments. kjv@Mark:8:11; kjv@2Peter:2:6; kjv@Jude:1:1:4-7)

SODOMA - S>@ - kjv@Romans:2:29) In this place alone the Authorized Version has followed the Greek and Vulgate form of the well-known name Sodom.

SODOMITES - S>@ - This word does not denote the inhabitants of Sodom; but it is employed in the Authorized Version of the Old Testament for those who practiced as a religious rite the abominable and unnatural vice from which the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah have derived their lasting infamy.

SOLOMON - S>@ - (peaceful). I. Early life and occasion to the throne .
Solomon was the child of David’s old age, the last born of all his sons. ( kjv@1Chronicles:3:5) The yearnings of the "man of war" led him to give to the new-horn infant the name of Solomon (Shelomoth, the peaceful one). Nathan, with a marked reference to the meaning of the king’s own name (David, the darling, the beloved one), calls the infant Jedidiah (Jedid’yah), that is, the darling of the Lord. (2 Samuel 11:24-25) He was placed under the care of Nathan from his earliest infancy. At first, apparently, there was no distinct purpose to make him the heir. Absalom was still the king’s favorite son, (2 Samuel 13:37; 18:33) and was looked on by the people as the destined successor. (2 Samuel 14:13; 15:1-6) The death of Absalom when Solomon was about ten years old left the place vacant, and David pledged his word in secret to Bath-sheba that he, and no other, should be the heir. (Kings:1:13) The words which were spoken somewhat later express, doubtless, the purpose which guided him throughout. ( kjv@1Chronicles:28:9; 20) His son’s life should not he as his own had been, one of hardships and wars, dark crimes and passionate repentance, but, from first to last, be pure, blameless, peaceful, fulfilling the ideal of glory and of righteousness after which he himself had vainly striven. The glorious visions of kjv@Psalms:72:1) ... may be looked on as the prophetic expansion of these hopes of his old age. So far,all was well. Apparently his influence over his son’s character was one exclusively for good. Nothing that we know of Bath-sheba lends us to think of her as likely to mould her son’s mind and heart to the higher forms of goodness. Under these influences the boy grew up. At the age of ten or eleven he must have passed through the revolt of Absalom, and shared his father’s exile. (2 Samuel 15:16) He would be taught all that priests or Levites or prophets had to teach. When David was old and feeble, Adonijah, Solomon’s older brother attempted to gain possession of the throne; but he was defeated, and Solomon went down to Gihon and was proclaimed and anointed king. A few months more and Solomon found himself, by his father’s death, the sole occupant of the throne. The position to which he succeeded was unique. Never before, and never after, did the kingdom of Israel take its place among the great monarchies of the East. Large treasures, accumulated through many years, were at his disposal. II. Personal appearance .
Of Solomon’s personal appearance we have no direct description, as we have of the earlier kings. There are, however, materials for filling up the gap. Whatever higher mystic meaning may be latent in kjv@Psalms:45:1) ... or the Song of Songs, we are all but compelled to think of them us having had at least a historical starting-point. They tell of one who was, in the eyes of the men of his own time, "fairer than the children of men," the face "bright, and ruddy" as his father’s, (Solomon kjv@5:10; 1Samuel:17:42) bushy locks, dark as the raven’s wing, yet not without a golden glow, the eyes soft as "the eyes of cloves," the "countenance as Lebanon excellent as the cedars," "the chiefest among ten thousand, the altogether lovely." (Solomon kjv@5:13-18) Add to this all gifts of a noble, far-reaching intellect large and ready sympathies, a playful and genial humor, the lips "full of grace," and the soul "anointed" as "with the oil of gladness," kjv@Psalms:45:1) ... and we may form some notion of what the king was like in that dawn of his golden prime. III. Reign .
All the data for a continuous history that we have of Solomon’s reign are
(a) The duration of the reign, forty sears, B.C. 1015-975. (Kings:11:4) (b) The commencement of the temple in the fourth, its completion in the eleventh, year of his reign. (Kings:6:1-37-38) (c) The commencement of his own palace in the seventh, its completion in the twentieth, year. (Kings:7:1; kjv@2Chronicles:8:1) (d) The conquest of Hamath-zobah, and the consequent foundation of cities in the region of north Palestine after the twentieth year. ( kjv@2Chronicles:8:1-6) IV. Foreign policy .
Egypt. The first act of the foreign policy of the new reign must have been to most Israelites a very startling one. He made affinity with Pharaoh, king of Egypt, by marrying his daughter (Kings:3:1) The immediate results were probably favorable enough. The new queen brought with her as a dowry the frontier city of Gezer. But the ultimate issue of alliance showed that it was hollow and impolitic. Tyre. The alliance with the Phoenician king rested on a somewhat different footing. It had been a part of David’s policy from the beginning of his reign. Hiram had been "ever a lover of David." As soon as he heard of Solomon’s accession he sent ambassadors to salute him. A correspondence passed between the two kings, which ended in a treaty of commerce. The opening of Joppa as a port created a new coasting-trade, and the materials from Tyre were conveyed to that city on floats, and thence to Jerusalem. ( kjv@2Chronicles:2:16) In return for these exports, the Phoenicians were only too glad to receive the corn and oil of Solomon’s territory. The results of the alliance did not end here. Now, for the first time in the history of the Jews, they entered on a career as a commercial people. The foregoing were the two most important to Babylon alliances. The absence of any reference to Babylon and Assyria, and the fact that the Euphrates was recognized as the boundary of Solomon’s kingdom, ( kjv@2Chronicles:9:26) suggests the inference that the Mesopotamian monarchies were at this time comparatively feeble. Other neighboring nations were content to pay annual tribute in the form of gifts. ( kjv@2Chronicles:9:28) The survey of the influence exercised by Solomon on surrounding nations would be incomplete if we were to pass over that which was more directly personal the fame of his glory and his wisdom. Wherever the ships of Tarshish went, they carried with them the report, losing nothing in its passage, of what their crews had seen and heard. The journey of the queen of Sheba, though from its circumstances the most conspicuous, did not stand alone. V. Internal history .
The first prominent scene in Solomon’s reign is one which presents his character in its noblest aspect. God in a vision having offered him the choice of good things he would have, he chose wisdom in preference to riches or honor or long life. The wisdom asked for was given in large measure, and took a varied range. The wide world of nature, animate and inanimate, the lives and characters of men, lay before him, and he took cognizance of all but the highest wisdom was that wanted for the highest work, for governing and guiding, and the historian hastens to give an illustration of it. The pattern-instance is, in all its circumstances, thoroughly Oriental. (Kings:3:16-28) In reference to the king’s finances, the first impression of the facts given us is that of abounding plenty. Large quantities of the precious metals were imported from Ophir and Tarshish. (Kings:9:28) All the kings and princes of the subject provinces paid tribute in the form of gifts, in money and in kind, "at a fixed rate year by year." (Kings:10:25) Monopolies of trade contributed to the king’s treasury. (Kings:10:28-29) The total amount thus brought into the treasury in gold, exclusive of all payments in kind, amounted to 666 talents. (Kings:10:14) It was hardly possible, however, that any financial system could bear the strain of the king’s passion for magnificence. The cost of the temple was, it is true, provided for by David’s savings and the offerings of the people; but even while that was building, yet more when it was finished one structure followed on another with ruinous rapidity. All the equipment of his court, the "apparel" of his servants was on the same scale. A body-guard attended him, "threescore valiant men," tallest and handsomest of the sons of Israel. Forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen made up the measure of his magnificence. (Kings:4:26) As the treasury became empty, taxes multiplied and monopolies became more irksome. A description of the temple erected by Solomon is given elsewhere. After seven years and the work was completed and the day came to which all Israelites looked back as the culminating glory of their nation. We cannot ignore the fact that even now there were some darker shades in the picture. He reduced the "strangers" in the land, the remnant of the Canaanite races, to the state of helots, and made their life "bitter with all hard bondage." One hundred and fifty-three thousand, with wives and children in proportion, were torn from their homes and sent off to the quarries and the forests of Lebanon. (Kings:5:15; kjv@2Chronicles:2:17-18) And the king soon fell from the loftiest height of his religious life to the lowest depth. Before long the priests and prophets had to grieve over rival temples to Molech, Chemosh, Ashtaroth and forms of ritual not idolatrous only, but cruel, dark, impure. This evil came as the penalty of another. (Kings:11:1-8) He gave himself to "strange women." He found himself involved in a fascination which led to the worship of strange gods. Something there was perhaps in his very "largeness of heart," so far in advance of the traditional knowledge of his age, rising to higher and wider thoughts of God, which predisposed him to it. In recognizing what was true in other forms of faith, he might lose his horror at what was false. With this there may have mingled political motives. He may have hoped, by a policy of toleration, to conciliate neighboring princes, to attract larger traffic. But probably also there was another influence less commonly taken into account. The widespread belief of the East in the magic arts of Solomon is not, it is believed, without its foundation of truth. Disasters followed before long as the natural consequence of what was politically a blunder as well as religiously a sin. VI. His literary works.
little remains out of the songs, proverbs, treatises, of which the historian speaks. (Kings:4:32-33) Excerpts only are given from the three thousand proverbs. Of the thousand and five songs we know absolutely nothing. His books represent the three stages of his life. The Song of Songs brings before us the brightness of his -youth. Then comes in the book of Proverbs, the stage of practical, prudential thought. The poet has become the philosopher, the mystic has passed into the moralist; but the man passed through both stages without being permanently the better for either. They were to him but phases of his life which he had known and exhausted, kjv@Ecclesiastes:1:1; kjv@Ecclesiastes:2:1) ... and therefore there came, its in the confessions of the preacher, the great retribution.

SOLOMONS PORCH - S>@ - PALACE; TEMPLE.

SOLOMONS SERVANTS - S>@ - (CHILDREN OF). kjv@Ezra:2:55 kjv@Ezra:2:58 kjv@Nehemiah:7:57 kjv@Nehemiah:7:60) The persons thus named appear in the lists of the exiles who returned from the captivity. They were the descendants of the Canaanites who were reduced by Solomon to the helot state, and compelled to labor in the king’s stone-quarries and in building his palaces and cities. (Kings:5:13-14; kjv@9:20-21; 2Chronicles:8:7-8) They appear to have formed a distinct order, inheriting probably the same functions and the same skill as their ancestors.

SOLOMONS SONG - S>@ - CANTICLES

SOLOMON, WISDOM OF - S>@ - WISDOM, THE, OF SOLOMON, BOOK OF

SON - S>@ - The term "son" is used in Scripture language to imply almost any kind of descent or succession, as ben shanah , "son of a year," i.e. a year old; ben kesheth , "son of a bow," i.e. an arrow. The word bar is often found in the New Testament in composition, as Bar-timaeus.

SOOTHSAYER - S>@ - DIVINATION

SOP - S>@ - In eastern lands where our table utensils are unknown, the meat, with the broth, is brought upon the table in a large dish, and is eaten usually by means of pieces of bread clipped into the common dish. The bread so dipped is called. "It was such a piece of bread a sop dipped in broth that Jesus gave to Judas, kjv@John:13:26) and again, in kjv@Matthew:26:23 It is said "he that dippeth his hand with me in the dish," i.e. to make a sop by dipping a piece of bread into the central dish.

SOPATER - S>@ - (saviour of his father), son or Pyrrhus or Berea, was one of the companions of St. Paul on his return from Greece into Asia. kjv@Acts:20:4) (A.D. 55.)

SOPHERETH - S>@ - (writing). "The children of Sophereth" were a family who returned from Babylon with Zerubbabel among the descendants of Solomon’s servants. kjv@Ezra:2:55; kjv@Nehemiah:7:57) (B.C. before 536.)

SORCERER - S>@ - DIVINATION

SOREK - S>@ - (red), The valley of, a wady in which lay the residence of Delilah. kjv@Judges:16:4) It was possibly nearer Gaza than any other of the chief Philistine cities, since thither Samson was taken after his capture at Delilah’s house.

SOSIPATER - S>@ - (saviour of his father), kinsman or fellow tribesman of St. Paul, kjv@Romans:16:21) is probably the same person as Sopater of Berea. (A.D. 54.)

SOSTHENES - S>@ - (saviour of his nation) was a Jew at Corinth who was seized and beaten in the presence of Gallio.
See kjv@Acts:18:12-17) (A.D. 49.)

SOTAI - S>@ - (changeful). The children of Sotai were a family of the descendants of Solomon’s servants who returned with Zerubbabel. kjv@Ezra:2:55; kjv@Nehemiah:7:57) (B.C. before 536.)

SOUTH RAMOTH - S>@ - RAMATH OF THE SOUTH OF THE SOUTH

SOW - S>@ - SWINE

SOWER, SOWING - S>@ - The operation of a sowing with the hand is one of so simple a character as to need little description. The Egyptian paintings furnish many illustrations of the mode in which it was conducted. The sower held the vessel or basket containing the seed in his left hand, while with his right he scattered the seed broadcast. The "drawing out" of the seed is noticed, as the most characteristic action of the sower, in kjv@Psalms:126:6) (Authorized Version "precious") and kjv@Amos:9:13) In wet soils the seed was trodden in by the feet of animals. kjv@Isaiah:32:20) The sowing season began in October and continued to the end of February, wheat being put in before, and barley after, the beginning of January. The Mosaic law prohibited the sowing of mixed seed. kjv@Leviticus:19:19 kjv@Leviticus:22:9)