Bush

In which Yahweh appeared to Moses in the wilderness (Ex. 3:2; Acts 7:30). It is difficult to say what particular kind of plant or bush is here meant. Probably it was the mimosa or acacia. The words "in the bush" in Mark 12:26; Luke 20:37, mean "in the passage or paragraph on the bush;" i.e., in Ex. 3.

סנה. This word occurs in Exod. iii, 2, 4, and Deut. xxxiii, 16, as the name of the bush in which God appeared to Moses. If it be the χιονὸς mentioned by Dioscorides, it is the white thorn. Celsius calls it the _rubus fructicosus_. The number of these bushes in this region seems to have given the name to the mountain Sinai. The word נהללים, found only in Isa. vii, 19, and there rendered “bushes,” means _fruitful pastures_. BUTTER is taken in Scripture, as it has been almost perpetually in the east, for cream or liquid butter, Prov. xxx, 33; 2 Sam. xvii, 29. The ancient way of making butter in Arabia and Palestine was probably nearly the same as is still practised by the Bedoween Arabs, and Moors in Barbary, and which is thus described by Dr. Shaw: “Their method of making butter is by putting the milk or cream into a goat’s skin turned inside out, which they suspend from one side of the tent to the other; and then pressing it to and fro in one uniform direction, they quickly separate the unctious and wheyey parts. In the Levant they tread upon the skin with their feet, which produces the same effect.” The last method of separating the butter from the milk, perhaps may throw light upon a passage in Job of some difficulty: “When I washed my steps with butter, and the rock poured me out rivers of oil,” Job xxxi, 6. The method of making butter in the east illustrates the conduct of Jael, the wife of Heber, described in the book of Judges: “And Sisera said unto her, Give me, I pray thee, a little water to drink, for I am thirsty: and she opened a bottle of milk, and gave him drink and covered him.” In the Song of Deborah, the statement is repeated: “He asked water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter in a lordly dish,” Judges iv, 19; v, 25. The word חמאה, which our translators rendered _butter_, properly signifies _cream_; which is undoubtedly the meaning of it in this passage: for Sisera complained of thirst, and asked a little water to quench it;--a purpose to which butter is but little adapted. Mr. Harmer, indeed, urges the same objection to cream, which, he contends, few people would think a very proper beverage for one that was extremely thirsty; and concludes that it must have been butter-milk which Jael, who had just been churning, gave to Sisera. But the opinion of Dr. Russel is preferable,--that the _hemah_ of the Scriptures is probably the same as the _haymak_ of the Arabs, which is not, as Harmer supposed, simple cream, but cream produced by simmering fresh sheep’s milk for some hours over a slow fire. It could not be butter newly churned, which Jael presented to Sisera, because the Arab butter is apt to be foul, and is commonly passed through a strainer before it is used: and Russel declares, he never saw butter offered to a stranger, but always _haymak_; nor did he ever observe the orientals drink butter-milk, but always _leban_, which is coagulated sour milk, diluted with water. It was _leban_, therefore, which Pococke mistook for butter-milk, with which the Arabs treated him in the Holy Land. A similar conclusion may be drawn concerning the butter and milk which the wife of Heber presented to Sisera: they were forced cream or _haymak_, and _leban_, or coagulated sour milk, diluted with water, which is a common and refreshing beverage in those sultry regions. In Isaiah vii, 15, butter and honey are mentioned as food which, in Egypt and other places in the east, is in use to this day. The butter and honey are mixed, and the bread is then dipped in it.