Daniel 3:21

coats The meaning of the Aram. sarbâl(only here and Daniel 3:27) is uncertain (see the very full discussion in Ges. Thesaurus); but on the whole mantles is the most probable. This is the sense which the word has in the Talmud [230], in which it occurs frequently (Ges. p. 971; Levy, NHWB[231], s.v.), so that it has ancient usage in its favour. On the other hand, Aq. and Theod. (σαράβαρα), LXX. in Daniel 3:27 (94), Symm. (ἀναξυρίδες), Pesh., express the meaning trousers(though of a looser kind than those worn by us), an article of dress known independently (from Herod., and other authorities) to have been worn at least by the ancient Scythians and Persians, and to have been called by them σαράβαρα. The word, in the same sense, passed into Arabic, in the form sirwâl(e.g. in Saadyah's version of Leviticus 6:3), as well as into several of the Romance languages. In both these senses the word may be originally Persian: in that of mantle, meaning properly (according to Andreas) a head-covering(* sarabâra), for which in Persia the peasants often use their mantle; in that of trousers, corresponding to the Mod. Pers. shalwâr, -under-breeches." The Syriac form of σαράβαρα has however a different sibilant from the one which is here used; and, as Mr Stanley A. Cook remarks [232], -mantles, long flowing robes, and therefore extremely liable to catch the flames," are more likely to be specially mentioned in the present connexion than trousers, or (R.V.) hosen.

[230] And so also, as a loan-word from the Aram., the Arabic sirbâl: see Fränkel, Aram. Fremdwörter im Arab. (1886), p. 47.

[231] HWB.M. Levy, Neuhebräisches und Chaldäisches Wörterbuch, 1876 89.

[232] -On the articles of dress mentioned in Daniel 3:21," in the Journ. of Philology, xxvi. (1899), p. 306 ff.

their hosen Another uncertain word (Aram. paṭṭish). Sept. and Theod. render τιάραι, -turbans"; Pesh. uses the same word, which, however, seems otherwise to be known only to the Syriac lexicographers, who explain it sometimes as a -tunic," sometimes as -trousers," sometimes as a kind of -gaiter" (Payne Smit [233] Thes. Syr.col. 3098). R.V. tunics; marg. -Or, turbans."

[233] yne Smith R. Payne Smith, Thesaurus Syriacus.

hats The rendering hats(or caps) is supported by the fact that the same word karbâl(in the fem.) seems in post-Bibl. Hebrew (Levy, s.v.) to denote some kind of covering for the head, and means certainly, both in the Talmud and in Syriac (P.S [234] 1810), the combof a cock. Others, comparing what is apparently the cognate verb in 1 Chronicles 15:27, render mantle; but the text of the passage quoted is uncertain.

[234].S. R. Payne Smith, Thesaurus Syriacus.