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Scales
skalz
(1) qasqeseth "fish-scales";
(2) meghinnah, maghen, "scales of the crocodile";
(3) lepis, with verb lepizo "scale away" (Tobit 3:17; 11:13)):
(1) The first Hebrew word qasqeseth means the imbricated scales of fish, which together with the dorsal fin were a distinguishing mark of all fish allowed as food to the Israelite (
(2) Meghinnah from maghen, literally, "a buckler" or "small shield" (
(3) The Greek lepis, which in classical language has a much wider range of meaning than the above Hebrew words ("rind," "husk," "shell," "fish-scale," "scale of snake," "flake of metal and of snow," etc.), is found in the New Testament description of Paul’s recovery from temporary blindness, "And straightway there fell from his eyes as it were scales, and he received his sight" (
There is nothing in the words of the sacred text which compels us to think of literal scales. (In Tobit, however, a literal flaking-off of foreign substance is meant.) We have here rather a description of the sensation which terminated the three days’ period of blindness which the apostle suffered after his meeting with the risen Lord on the road to Damascus. The apostle himself does not use this expression in his own graphic description of the same experience: "In that very hour I looked upon him" (
In
See Balance.