24 The Rev. J. Hamilton on the Punic Passage in Plautus, 



frequently alluded to in the Old Testament, and expressed generally by peri- 

 phrasis, but sometimes by a single and special term. The abduction of a captive, 

 as in the case of Lot, is expressed by the word niU?, captivum abducere ; in cases 

 of child-stealing, as that of Joseph, by the word 1'^l,furari; forcible abduction, 

 as in the case of the women at Shiloh, P^tDn, rapere. But in cases of bereave- 

 ment, threatening the extinction of the family line, the phrases used are such as 

 follow : " Write this man childless ;" "I will cut off son and nephew, name, and 

 remnant ;" " I will bring evil upon his house ;" or, finally, " I will take away his 

 posterity." 



The most general, as well as the most brief formula, is the last one. Par- 

 ticular instances of such extinction of the line are of course to be looked for 

 rather in the records of royal than of private families. In those of the kings of 

 Israel we find the following denunciations : " I will take away the remnant of the 

 house of Jeroboam ;" " I Avill take away the posterity of the house of Baasha ;" 

 " I will take away thy posterity," again addressed to Ahab. The Hebrew word 

 for taking away, or abduction, in all these sentences being the same, the word "lyi. 

 Its reiteration in the same meaning, and on similar occasions seems to imply a spe- 

 cial and singular propriety in its application to cases of extinction of the family 

 line. This was Hanno's case, and the word ^yi is the word he uses, :i^n pya 

 byr'n arob, " he took them, or swept them clean off — the lier in wait." 



The word ~iyi, as thus used in Scripture, must be confessed to be a word of 

 curious felicity and of rare pith and pregnancy, and admirably adapted to ex- 

 press the sure, swift, and fatal effect, of an unseen destroying power. Not less, 

 but rather more curious and interesting is its selection, adoption, and propriety 

 of application in the case before us, a fragment of heathen poetry, the sole sur- 

 viving fragment, that can be so called, of the Carthaginian language and poetry. 

 Certainly, no other single word could have been put into the mouth of Hanno, 

 so capable of adequately expressing the gravamen of his wrongs, hopeless be- 

 reavement of posterity. It is admirably in keeping with the case and the dra- 



* The word hyr, the Septuagint renders by the Greek a^olvi^uj, to cause to disappear, and the 

 Latin version of Castalio, by " abstergere," to sweep off". The idea conveyed by it in the great 

 majority of occasions on which it is used, and in which both the above interpretations agree, includes 

 the more or less rapid disapparilion of an object as the effect, from the operation of some violent 

 and sweeping agency as the cause. 



