teraphim

2 definitions found

teraphim - Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 :

  Teraphim \Ter"a*phim\, n. pl. [Heb. ter[=a]ph[imac]m.]
     Images connected with the magical rites used by those
     Israelites who added corrupt practices to the patriarchal
     religion. Teraphim were consulted by the Israelites for
     oracular answers. --Dr. W. Smith (Bib. Dict.).
     [1913 Webster]

teraphim - Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary :

  Teraphim
  givers of prosperity, idols in human shape, large or small,
  analogous to the images of ancestors which were revered by the
  Romans. In order to deceive the guards sent by Saul to seize
  David, Michal his wife prepared one of the household teraphim,
  putting on it the goat's-hair cap worn by sleepers and invalids,
  and laid it in a bed, covering it with a mantle. She pointed it
  out to the soldiers, and alleged that David was confined to his
  bed by a sudden illness (1 Sam. 19:13-16). Thus she gained time
  for David's escape. It seems strange to read of teraphim, images
  of ancestors, preserved for superstitious purposes, being in the
  house of David. Probably they had been stealthily brought by
  Michal from her father's house. "Perhaps," says Bishop
  Wordsworth, "Saul, forsaken by God and possessed by the evil
  spirit, had resorted to teraphim (as he afterwards resorted to
  witchcraft); and God overruled evil for good, and made his very
  teraphim (by the hand of his own daughter) to be an instrument
  for David's escape.", Deane's David, p. 32. Josiah attempted to
  suppress this form of idolatry (2 Kings 23:24). The ephod and
  teraphim are mentioned together in Hos. 3:4. It has been
  supposed by some (Cheyne's Hosea) that the "ephod" here
  mentioned, and also in Judg. 8:24-27, was not the part of the
  sacerdotal dress so called (Ex. 28:6-14), but an image of
  Jehovah overlaid with gold or silver (comp. Judg. 17, 18; 1 Sam.
  21:9; 23:6, 9; 30:7, 8), and is thus associated with the
  teraphim. (See THUMMIM.)