Page:04.BCOT.KD.PoeticalBooks.vol.4.Writings.djvu/1235

 anointing was wanting, the installation into the office of high priest took place by his being invested in the pontifical robes. The poet, however, when he calls the high priest as such Aaron, has the high-priesthood in all the fulness of its divine consecration (Lev 21:10) before his eyes. Two drops of the holy oil of anointing, says a Haggada, remained for ever hanging on the beard of Aaron like two pearls, as an emblem of atonement and of peace. In the act of the anointing itself the precious oil freely poured out ran gently down upon his beard, which in accordance with Lev 21:5 was unshortened. In that part of the Tôra which describes the robe of the high priest, שׁוּלי is its hems, פּי ראשׁו, or even absolutely פּה, the opening for the head, or the collar, by means of which the sleeveless garment was put on, and שׂפה the binding, the embroidery, the border of this collar (vid., Exo 28:32; Exo 39:23; cf. Job 30:18, פּי כתנתּי, the collar of my shirt). פּי must apparently be understood according to these passages of the Tôra, as also the appellation מדּות (only here for מדּים, מּדּים), beginning with Lev 6:3, denotes the whole vestment of the high priest, yet without more exact distinction. But the Targum translates פּי with אמרא (ora = fimbria) - a word which is related to אמּרא, agnus, like ᾤα to ὄΐς. This ᾤα is used both of the upper and lower edge of a garment. Accordingly Appolinaris and the Latin versions understand the ἐπὶ τὴν ὤαν of the lxx of the hem (in oram vestimenti); Theodoret, on the other hand, understands it to mean the upper edging: ὤαν ἐκάλεσεν ὃ καλοῦμεν περιτραχήλιον, τοῦτο δὲ καὶ ὁ Ἀκύλας στόμα ἐνδυμάτων εἴρηκε. So also De Sacy: sur le bord de son vêtement, c'est-à-dire, sur le haut de ses habits pontificaux. The decision of the question depends upon the aim of this and the following figure in Psa 133:3. If we compare the two figures, we find that the point of the comparison is the uniting power of brotherly feeling, as that which unites in heart and soul those who are most distant from one another locally, and also brings them together in outward circumstance. If this is the point of the comparison, then Aaron's beard and the hem of his garments stand just as diametrically opposed to one another as the dew of Hermon and the mountains of Zion. פּי is not the collar above, which gives no advance, much less the antithesis of two extremes, but the hem at the bottom (cf. שׂפה, Exo 26:4,