the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Dictionaries
Abomination
People's Dictionary of the Bible
or Abominable, Abomination. 1. All abomination, or an abominable thing, is a thing hateful or detestable, as the employment or calling of shepherds was to the Egyptians. Genesis 46:34. 2. Under the Mosaic law those animals and acts are called abominable the use or doing of which was prohibited. Leviticus 11:13 and Deuteronomy 23:18. 3. Idolatry of every kind is especially denoted by this term. Jeremiah 44:4 and 2 Kings 23:13. 4. So of sins in general. Isaiah 66:3. The Abomination of Desolation, literally the abomination of the desolator. This was Daniel's prediction of the pollution of the temple at Jerusalem, by Antiochus Epiphanes, who set up in it the altar and the statue of Jupiter Olympus: the daily sacrifice was taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate drove ail the true worshippers of God from the temple. Daniel 11:31; Daniel 12:11. But the prophecy had, to say the least, a further reference. For our Lord appeals to it, Matthew 24:15-18; Mark 13:14-16, and declares that its fulfillment was to be the warning for his disciples to flee from the doomed city. This would be simultaneous with the Investment of Jerusalem. Luke 21:20-21. Some have believed the investment (when Cestius Gallus first encamped around Jerusalem, 66 a.d., and then withdrew) the abomination of desolation itself; the Roman standards (objects of worship to the soldiers) being then planted on holy ground. But these standards had been there before: and so it is more likely that the abominable thing was something done by the Jews themselves. Now Josephus mentions a profanation by the Zealots who had got possession of the temple; and to this or some similar deed our Lord, we may suppose, referred. The Christians, it may be added, took the warning, the opportunity being afforded by the retirement of Gallus, and fled to Fella.
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Rice, Edwin Wilbur, DD. Entry for 'Abomination'. People's Dictionary of the Bible. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/rpd/a/abomination.html. 1893.
