the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Dictionaries
Aloes
American Tract Society Bible Dictionary
or Or more properly, ALOE, and East Indian tree, that grows about eight or ten feet high, and yields a rich perfume, Psalm 45:8 Proverbs 7:17 Song of Song of Solomon 4:14 . This tree or wood was called by the Greeks Agallochon, and has been known to moderns by the names of Lign-aloe, aloe-wood, paradise-wood, eagle-wood, etc. Modern botanists distinguish two kinds: the one grows in Cochin China, Siam, and China, is never exported, and is of so great rarity in India, as to be worth its weight in gold. The tree is represented as large, with an erect trunk and lofty branches. The other or more common species is called garo in the East Indies, and is the wood of a tree growing in the Moluccas, the Excoecaria Agallocha of Linnaeus. The leaves are like those of a pear-tree; and it has a milky juice, which, as the tree grows old, hardens into a fragrant resin. The trunk is knotty, crooked, and usually hollow. Aloe-wood is said by Herodotus to have been used by the Egyptians for embalming dead bodies, and Nicodemus brought it, mingled with myrrh, to embalm the body of our Lord, John 19:39 . This perfume, it will be seen, is something altogether different from the aloes of the apothecaries, which is a bitter resin, extracted from a low herb.
These files are public domain and are a derivative of the topics are from American Tract Society Bible Dictionary published in 1859.
Rand, W. W. Entry for 'Aloes'. American Tract Society Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/ats/a/aloes.html. 1859.
