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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadMcClintock Biblical Encyclopedia: Cottage
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is employed in our version for three Hebrew words. SEE BOOTH.
1. ñֻëָּä , sukkah', signifies a hut made of boughs (Isa_1:8), and is usually elsewhere translated “booth.” It was anciently the custom in the East, as it still is, to erect little temporary sheds, covered with leaves, straw, or turf, giving shelter from the heat by day and the cold dews at night to the watchman that kept the garden or vineyard while the fruit was ripening, which otherwise might be stolen, or destroyed by jackals. These erections, being intended only for the occasion, were of the very slightest fabric, and when the fruits were gathered were either taken down, or left to fall to pieces, or were blown down during the winter (Job_27:18). SEE LODGE.
2. îְìéּðָä , melunah' (fem. of îָìåֹï , an inn), signifies properly a lodging- place, and is associated with the booth (“cottage”) in the above passage (Isa_1:8), where it is translated “lodge,” being probably a somewhat slighter structure, if possible, as a cucumber patch is more temporary than a vineyard. It also occurs in Isa_24:20, in the mistranslated expression “and shall be removed [i.e. shaken about] like a cottage,” where it denotes a hanging-bed or hammock suspended from trees, in which travelers, and especially the watchmen in gardens, were accustomed to sleep during summer, so as to be out of the reach of wild animals. The swinging of these aptly corresponds with the staggering of a drunken man. Or it may, perhaps, more appropriately denote here those frail structures of boughs, supported by a few poles, which the Orientals use for the same purpose.
3. In Zep_2:6, the original term is ëְֹּøֹú , keroth' (literally diggings), i.e. pits for holding water, and, instead of “dwellings [and] cottages for shepherds,” it should be rendered “fields full of shepherds' cisterns,” for watering their flocks; that is, the sites of the cities of Philistia should be occupied for pastoral purposes. This word does not occur elsewhere.