1. The word upon which the immersion argument here rests, is the Hebrew _tābal_, which is translated, “he dipped.” As to its meaning in this place, there are several available sources of information. First, is the manner in which the word is employed elsewhere in the Scriptures. It occurs, in all, but fifteen times. It is evident, that while these places are sufficient to establish the fact that the word was used as they illustrate, they are wholly insufficient to constitute a basis for the assumption that it was never used in a sense not there found, or in a sense not there doubly illustrated. For example, Gesenius gives, “to immerse,” as one of the meanings, and appeals to the text of Naaman as the only example. Without pretending to emulate the learning of that great scholar, I venture to assert that, although the definition be not illustrated by other examples, there is abundant and various evidence that the word is here used as the equivalent of _rāhatz, to wash_, according to the proper sense of that word as already ascertained. The primary and essential idea of _tābal_ appears to be contact by touch, a contact which may be of the slightest and most superficial kind, as when the priest was directed to dip the finger of his right hand in a few drops of oil held in the palm of his left hand (Lev. xiv, 15, 16), and when those who bore the ark dipped the soles of their feet in the brim or edge of Jordan and the waters instantly fled away. (Josh. iii, 13, 15.) Again, it is used to describe the staining or smearing of Joseph’s coat with the blood of the kid. (Gen. xxxvii, 31.) In this case, there can have been no immersion, since the blood of a kid would have been wholly insufficient, and the uniform stain thus induced would have detected the fraud of Joseph’s brothers, as the violence of a wild beast would not have produced such a result. How the word, in this place was understood by the rabbins of Alexandria, is shown by the Greek of the Septuagint, in which it is represented by _moluno_, to soil, to stain, to smear. “They stained or smeared his coat with the blood.” The same is no doubt the meaning of Job, when he says to God, “Yet shalt thou _plunge me_ in the ditch and mine own clothes shall abhor me.”—Job ix, 31. Not the mode of action, but the soiling contact, was the thought present to Job’s mind. The usage of the word in the Scriptures does not justify the belief that it is ever employed in the energy of meaning expressed by “_plunge_.” “Yet shalt thou _soil_ me in the ditch.”