It is probable that the rods which the princes of Israel bore, were scions of the almond tree, at once the ensign of their office, and the emblem of their vigilance. Such, we know from the testimony of Scripture, was the rod of Aaron; which renders it exceedingly probable, that the rods of the other chiefs were from the same tree. The hoary head is beautifully compared by Solomon to the almond tree, covered in the earliest days of spring with its snow white flowers, before a single leaf has budded: “The almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail,” Eccl. xii, 5. Man has existed in this world but a few days, when old age begins to appear, sheds its snows upon his head, prematurely nips his hopes, darkens his earthly prospects, and hurries him into the grave. ALMUG TREE, a certain kind of wood, mentioned 1 Kings, x, 11; 2 Chron. ii, 8; ix, 10, 11. Jerom and the Vulgate render it, _ligna thyina_, and the Septuagint ξύλα ϖελεκητὰ, _wrought wood_. Several critics understand it to mean _gummy wood_; but a wood abounding in resin must be very unfit for the uses to which this is said to be applied. Celsus queries if it be not the sandal; but Michaelis thinks the particular species of wood to be wholly unknown to us. Dr. Shaw supposes that the almug tree was the cypress; and he observes that the wood of this tree is still used in Italy and other places for violins, harpsichords, and other stringed instruments. ALOE, עלר, a plant with broad leaves, nearly two inches thick, prickly and serrated. It grows about two feet high. A very bitter gum is extracted from it, used for medicinal purposes, and anciently for embalming dead bodies. Nicodemus is said, John xix, 39, to have brought one hundred pounds’ weight of myrrh and aloes to embalm the body of Jesus. The quantity has been exclaimed against by certain Jews, as being enough for fifty bodies. But instead of ἑκατὸν it might originally have been written δέκατον, _ten_ pounds’ weight. However, at the funeral of Herod there were five hundred ἀρωματόφορους, _spice bearers_; and at that of R. Gamaliel, eighty pounds of opobalsamum were used.