[49]: The purple die is called in I Maccab. iv. 23, _purple of the sea,_ or _sea purple_; it being the blood or juice of a turbinated shell-fish, which the Jews call [Hebrew] _Chalson_; this they speak of as a shell-fish. Hence those words 'Go and learn of the _Chalson_, for all the while it grows, its shell grows with it:' and that purple was died with the blood of it, appears from the following instances: _The best fruits in the land_, Gen. xliii. 11, are interpreted, the things that are the most famous in the world, as the Chalson, _&c,_ with whose blood, as the gloss on the passage says, they die purple: and the purple died with this was very valuable, and fetched a good price. The tribe of _Zebulon_ is represented as complaining to God, that he had given to their brethren fields and vineyards, to them mountains and hills; to their brethren lands, to them seas and rivers: to which it is replied, All will stand in need of thee because of Chalson; as it is said, Deut. xxxiii. 19 _They shall suck of the abundance of the seas_; the gloss upon it, interpreting the word _Chalson_ is, it comes out of the sea to the mountains, and with its blood they die purple, which is sold at a very dear price.... It may be further observed, that the fringes which the Jews wore upon their garments, had on them a riband of blue or purple. Numb. xv. 38, for the word there used is by the Septuagint rendered _the purple_, in Numb. iv. 7, and sometimes _hyacinth_; and the whole fringe was by the Jews called [Hebrew], _purple_. Hence it is said, 'Does not every one that puts on the purple (i.e. the fringes on his garments) in Jerusalem make men to wonder? and a little after, the former saints or religious men, when they had wove in it (the garment) three parts, they put on it [Hebrew], _the purple_. And there were persons who traded in these things, and were called, [Hebrew], _sellers of purple_, as here; that is, for the _tzitzith_, or fringes for the borders of the garments, on which the riband of blue or purple was put, as the gloss explains it. The Jews were very curious about the colour and the dying of it, that it should be a colour that would hold and not change, and that the riband be died on purpose for that use. Maimonides gives rules for the dying of it, and they were no less careful of whom they bought it; for they say that _the purple_ was not to be bought, but of an approved person, or one that was authorized for that purpose; and a scruple is raised by one, whether he had done right or no in buying it of the family of a doctor deceased. Now, since Lydia might be a Jewess, or, at least, as appears by what follows, was a proselytess of the Jewish religion, this might he her business, to sell the purple for their fringes, and, it may be, the fringes themselves. GILL in loc. [50]: Eighth Report of the British and Foreign Bible Society. [51]: Herod. Euterpe. [52]: Tacit. de Moribus Germanoram, chap, xviii. xix. [53]: Tacit. Hist. [54]: Xenophon.