the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Dictionaries
Rimmon (1)
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
or RIMMON (god). Rimmon is the Hebraized form of Rammân , the Bab. [Note: Babylonian.] air-, weather-, and storm god assimilated by popular etymology to the word for ‘pomegranate.’ He is mentioned, however (in 2 Kings 5:18 ), not as a Palestinian or Babylonian, but as a Syrian, deity, who was honoured as the chief god of Damascus. Elsewhere there are many Indications that the chief Aramæan divinity was called by that people not Rimmon or Rammân, but Hadad (wh. see). Rammân (meaning the thunderer) was, in fact, indigenous in Babylonia, where he played a great mythological and religious rôle, in his twofold aspect of a beneficent deity, as the giver of rain, and of a maleficent, as the maker of storms and the wielder of the thunderbolt. His symbol was the axe and a bundle of lightning-darts. He was thus in some features the analogue of Zeus or Jupiter and Thor.
In Assyria, both the Aram [Note: ram Aramaic.] , and the Bab. [Note: Babylonian.] forms of the name were current (see Hadad). The currency of the latter among the Hebrews (as Rimmon ) is to be attributed to the long Babylonian occupation of Palestine before Aramæan times. The same combination as the Assyrian is indicated in the Biblical Hadad-rimmon (wh. see).
J. F. McCurdy.
The emblem of Rammân was the bull, and the widespread cult of the air-god may have had something to do with nationalizing the worship of Jahweh as represented by that animal. Cf. also the name Tab-rimmon .
J. F. McCurdy.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Rimmon (1)'. Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdb/r/rimmon-1.html. 1909.
