LEAD

of the Messianic Kingdom (cf. Mt8"). Jesus, ever anxious to appeal to His hearers, has clothed His parable with this famihar imagery.

The purpose of the parable is not to condemn riches and exalt poverty in the spirit of Ebionitic asceticism. It is an enlargement of the Lord's admonition in v.': ' Make to yourselves friends by means of the mammon of unrighteousness, that, when it shall fail, they may receive you into the eternal tabernacles' (RV). The merit of Lazarus was not that he was poor, but that he had found his help in God ; the offence of the Rich Man was not that he was rich, but that he lived a self-indulgent and luxurious life, regardless of the misery around him. Had he made friends to himself of Lazarus and others like him by means of his mammon of unrighteousness, he would have had a place and a welcome among them when he entered the unseen world. David Smith.

LEAD. — See Mining and Metals.

LEAH. — The elder daughter of Laban, married to Jacob by stratagem (Gn 292iff). Jacob's love for her was less than for Rachel (v.'"); sometimes she is said to be hated (vv.m- =»). She was the mother of Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, and a daughter Dinah (29^i-^ SO's- '«■ 21). She was buried in the cave of Machpelah before Jacob went to Egypt (49"). She is mentioned in Ru 4". Her name probably means 'mistress,' equivalent to Assyrian Wat (Haupt, GGN, 1883, p. 100, and others). This is preferable to the view that it means 'wild cow,' from the Arabic, chiefly be-cause the correspondence in form of the words is more exact. George R. Berry.

LEASING.— A 'leasing' is a lie. WycUf uses the word often. Thus Jn 8" 'Whanne he spekith a lesinge, he spekith of his owne thingis; for he is a lyiere, and fadir of it.' The word occurs in AV in Ps 42 5° and 2 Es 141s.

LEATHER.— See Arts and Crafts, § 5.

LEAVEN.— The leaven both of OT and of NT may be assumed to have always consisted of a piece of fermented dough from a previous baking. There is no clear trace, even in the Mishna, of other sorts of leaven, such as the lees of wine or those enumerated by Pliny (Hist. Nat. xviii. 26). In ordinary cases, in the preparation of the household bread, the lump of dough, above referred to, was either broken down into the water in the kneading- trough (see Bread) before the fresh flour was added, or it might be ' hid ' in the latter and kneaded along with it, as in the parable, Mt 13^. The bread made from dough thus prepared was 'leavened bread' (Ex 12'^ and oft.); cakes made from flour without the addition of leaven received the special name mazzoth, ' unleavened cakes,' which gave their name to ' the feast of unleavened cakes' (Ex 23's etc., EV 'unleavened bread').

The prohibition of leavened bread during the con-tinuance of this Feast, including the Passover, is prob-ably another illustration of conservatism in ritual, the nomadic ancestors of the Hebrews, like the Bedouin of the present day, having made their bread without leaven. The further exclusion of leaven from the offerings placed upon the altar of J" — although ad-mitted when the bread was to be eaten by the priests (Lv 7" 23") — is to be explained, like the similar ex-clusion of honey, from the standpoint that fermentation implied a process of corruption in the dough. The antiquity of this prohibition is attested by its occurrence in the earliest legislation (Ex S*® 23"). It does not seem to have been observed, however, in Amos' day in the Northern Kingdom (see the Comm. on Am 4>).

This antique view of leaven as (in Plutarch's words) 'itself the offspring of corruption, and corrupting the mass of dough with which it has been mixed,' is re-flected in the figurative use of ' leaven ' in such passages as Mt 16= II, and especially in the proverbial saying twice quoted by St. Paul, 'a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump' (1 Co 5\ Gal 5'; cf. 1 Co 5"-)- In Mt IS^s,

LEBANON

however, it is the silent but all-pervading action of leaven in the mass of the dough that is the point of comparison. A. R. S. Kennedy.

LEBANA (Neh 7") or LEBANAH (Ezr 2") .—The head of a family of returning exiles; called in 1 Es 5«» Labana.

LEBANON, now Jebel LebnS/n, is mentioned more than 60 times in the OT. The name, from the root labOn ('white'), was probably given on account of the mountain's covering of snow. The snow of Lebanon is mentioned in Jer 18". Many passages refer to its beauty, particularly in relation to its cedars and other trees (see Ps 72i«, Ca 4", Hos 145- '). From Lebanon was obtained wood for building the first (2 Ch 2') and the second (Ezr 3') Temple. Lebanon was famous for its fruitfulness (Ps 72") and its wine (Hos 14').

The term 'Lebanon' may be considered in most places as referring to the whole mountain mass, more correctly distinguished as Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon (Libanus and Antilibanus of Jth 1'). The two ranges traverse N. Syria, running roughly parallel, from S.W. to N.E., and are separated by a deep valley — the biq'ah of Jos 11" 12' — known to-day as el-Buqa^ . The western range, Lebanon proper, is nearly 100 miles long, but the eastern, if Hermonis deducted as a separate entity, is only 65 miles long. The former range is divided from the mountains of GaUlee by the deep chasm made by the Liidni river in its passage sea-wards. In the N. a somewhat similar gorge formed by the Nahr d-Keblr, the ancient Eleutherus, divides it from the Jebel Nusairiyeh. The summits of the range rise in height from south to north. In the S. a few points attain to almost 7000 feet; in the centre, E. of Beyrout, Jebel Kuneiseh is 6960 feet, and Jebel Sannln 8554 feet; further N., to the S.E. of TripoU, is a great semicircular group of mountains, sometimes known as the 'Cedar group,' on account of the famous group of these trees in their midst, where the highest point, Jebel Mukhmal, reaches 10,207 feet, and several other points are almost as lofty. Geologically the Lebanon is built of three main groups of strata. Lowest comes a thick layer of hard limestone, named — after its most characteristic fossil (.Cidaris glandaria) — Glandaria hmestone; above this are strata of Nubian sandstone, yellow and red in colour, and in places 1500 feet thick, overlaid and interlaced with strata of limestone con-taining fossil echinoderms and ammonites; and thirdly, above this group, and forming the bulk of the highest peaks, is another layer, many thousand feet thick in places, of a limestone containing countless fossils known as hippurites, radiolites, and such like. The sandstone strata are most important, for where they come to the surface is the richest soil and the most plentiful water, and here fiourish most luxuriantly the pines which are such a characteristic feature of W. Lebanon scenery. A great contrast exists between the W. and E. slopes. The former are fertile and picturesque, while down their innumerable valleys course numberless mountain streams to feed the many rivers fiowing seawards. The E. slopes are comparatively barren, and, except at one point, near Zafileh, there is no stream of import-ance. Of the Lebanon rivers besides the Nahr LitB/ni (Leontes) and the Nahr el-KeWr (Eleutherus), the fol-lowing may be enumerated from S. to N. as the more important: Nahr ez-Zaherani, Nahr el- Auwali (Bost-renus), Nahr Beirut (Magoras), Nahr el-Kdb (Lycus), Nahr Ibrahim (Adonis), and the Nahr Qadlsha or 'holy river,' near TripoU.

The Lebanon is still fairly well wooded in a few places, though very scantily compared with ancient times, when Hiram, king of Tyre, supplied Solomon with 'cedar trees, fir trees, and algum trees out of Lebanon' (1 K 511, 2 Ch 28). In regard to cultivation there has been a very great improvement in recent years, and the terraced lower slopes of the mountain are now covered with mulberry, walnut, and oUve trees as well

539