Host

Vine's Expository Dictionary of OT Words

A. Noun.

Tsâbâ' ( צָבָא , Strong'S #6633), “host; military service; war; army; service; labor; forced labor; conflict.” This word has cognates in either a verbal or noun form in Akkadian, Ugaritic, Arabic, and Ethiopic. The noun form occurs 486 times in biblical Hebrew and in all periods of the language.

This word involves several interrelated ideas: a group; impetus; difficulty; and force. These ideas undergird the general concept of “service” which one does for or under a superior rather than for himself. Tsâbâ' is usually applied to “military service” but is sometimes used of “work” in general (under or for a superior). In Num. 1:2-3 the word means “military service”: “Take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel … from twenty years old and upward, all that are able to go forth to war in Israel.…” The idea is more concrete in Josh. 22:12, where the word represents serving in a military campaign: “And when the children of Israel heard of it, the whole congregation of the children of Israel gathered themselves together at Shiloh, to go to war against them.” Num. 31:14 uses tsâbâ' of the actual battling itself: “And Moses was wroth with the officers of the [army], … which came from the battle.”

The word can also represent an “army host”: “And Eleazer the priest said unto the men of war which went to the battle …” (Num. 31:21). Even clearer is Num. 31:48: “And the officers which were over thousands of the host, the captains of thousands, and captains of hundreds, came near unto Moses.“This meaning first appears in Gen. 21:22, which mentions Phichol, the captain of Abimelech’s “army.” At several points this is the meaning of the feminine plural: “And it shall be, when the officers have made an end of speaking unto the people, that they shall make captains of the armies to lead the people” (Deut. 20:9). In Num. 1, 2, and 10, where tsâbâ' occurs with regard to a census of Israel, it is suggested that this was a military census by which God organized His “army” to march through the wilderness. Some scholars have noted that the plan of the march, or the positioning of the tribes, recalls the way ancient armies were positioned during military campaigns. On the other hand, groupings of people might be indicated regardless of military implications, as seems to be the case in passages such as Exod. 6:26: “These are that Aaron and Moses, to whom the Lord said, Bring out the children of Israel from the land of Egypt according to their armies.”

That tsâbâ' can refer to a “nonmilitary host” is especially clear in Ps. 68:11: “The Lord gave the word: great was the company of those that published it.” The phrase “hosts of heaven” signifies the stars as visual indications of the gods of the heathen: “And them that worship the host of heaven upon the housetops; and them that worship and that swear by the Lord, and that swear by Malcham …” (Zeph. 1:5). This meaning first appears in Deut. 4:19. Sometimes this phrase refers to the “host of heaven,” or the angels: “And [Micaiah] said, Hear thou therefore the word of the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven [the angels] standing by him on his right hand and on his left” (1 Kings 22:19). God Himself is the commander of this “host” (Dan. 8:10-11). In Josh. 6:14 the commander of the “host” of God confronted Joshua. This heavenly “host” not only worships God but serves to do all His will: “Bless ye the Lord, all ye his hosts; ye ministers of his, that do his pleasure” (Ps. 103:21).

Another meaning of the phrase “the host(s) of heaven” is simply “the numberless stars”: “As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand of the sea measured: so will I multiply the seed of David my servant, and the Levites that minister unto me” (Jer. 33:22). This phrase can include all the heavenly bodies, as it does in Ps. 33:6: “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.” In Gen. 2:1 tsâbâ' includes the heavens, the earth, and everything in the creation: “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.”

The meaning “nonmilitary service in behalf of a superior” emerges in Num. 4:2-3: “Take the sum of the sons of Kohath … from thirty years old and upward even until fifty years old, all that enter [the service], to do the work in the tabernacle of the congregation.” In Job 7:1 the word represents the burdensome everyday “toil” of mankind: “Is there not an appointed time to man upon earth? Are not his days also like the days of a hireling?” In Job 14:14 tsâbâ' seems to represent “forced labor.” In Dan. 10:1 the word is used for “conflict”: “In the third year of Cyrus king of Persia a word was revealed to Daniel, who was named Belteshazzar. And the word was true, and it was a great conflict” [[[Rsv; Kjv]] “time appointed”].

B. Verb.

Tsâbâ' ( צָבָא , Strong'S #6633), “to wage war, to muster an army, to serve in worship.” This verb appears 14 times in biblical Hebrew. Tsâbâ' means “to wage war” in Num. 31:7: “And they warred against the Midianites, as the Lord commanded Moses.…” The word is used in 2 Kings 25:19 to refer to “mustering an army.” Another sense of tsâbâ' appears in Num. 4:23 with the meaning of “serving in worship”: “… all that enter in to perform the service, to do the work in the tabernacle of the congregation.”

Easton's Bible Dictionary

 Romans 16:23 Luke 10:35

In warfare, a troop or military force. This consisted at first only of infantry. Solomon afterwards added cavalry ( 1 Kings 4:26;  10:26 ). Every male Israelite from twenty to fifty years of age was bound by the law to bear arms when necessary ( Numbers 1:3;  26:2;  2 Chronicles 25:5 ).

Saul was the first to form a standing army ( 1 Samuel 13:2;  24:2 ). This example was followed by David ( 1 Chronicles 27:1 ), and Solomon ( 1 Kings 4:26 ), and by the kings of Israel and Judah ( 2 Chronicles 17:14;  26:11;  2 Kings 11:4 , etc.).

King James Dictionary

HOST, n. L.hostis, a stranger, an enemy, probably of the same family. See Hospitable.

1. One who entertains another at his own house, without reward.

Homer never entertained guests or hosts with long speeches.

2. One who entertains another at his house for reward an innkeeper a landlord. 3. A guest one who is entertained at the house of another. The innkeeper says of the traveler,he has a good host,and the traveler says of his landlord, he has a kind host. See Guest.

HOST, n. L. hostis, a stranger, an enemy. The sense is probably transferred from a single foe to an army of foes.

1. An army a number of men embodied for war. 2. Any great number or multitude.

HOST, n. L. hostia, a victim or sacrifice, from hostis, an enemy.

In the Romish church, the sacrifice of the mass, or the consecrated wafer, representing the body of Christ, or as the Catholics allege, transubstantiated into his own body.

HOST, To lodge at an inn to take up entertainment. Little used.

HOST, To give entertainment to. Not used.

Vine's Expository Dictionary of NT Words

1: Στρατιά (Strong'S #4756 — Noun Feminine — stratia — strat-ee'-ah )

"an army," is used of angels,  Luke 2:13; of stars,  Acts 7:42; some mss. have it instead of strateia, in  2—Corinthians 10:4 ("warfare"). Cp. strateuma, "an army."

Webster's Dictionary

(1): ( n.) The disembodied soul; the soul or spirit of a deceased person; a spirit appearing after death; an apparition; a specter.

(2): ( n.) The spirit; the soul of man.

(3): ( n.) Any faint shadowy semblance; an unsubstantial image; a phantom; a glimmering; as, not a ghost of a chance; the ghost of an idea.

(4): ( n.) A false image formed in a telescope by reflection from the surfaces of one or more lenses.

(5): ( v. t.) To appear to or haunt in the form of an apparition.

(6): ( v. i.) To die; to expire.

Charles Buck Theological Dictionary

In the church of Rome, a name given to the elements used in the eucharist, or rather to the consecrated wafer, which they pretend to offer up every day, as a new host or sacrifice for the sins of mankind. They pay adoration to the host upon a false presumption that the elements are no longer bread and wine, but transubstantiated into the real body and blood of Christ.

See Transubstantiation

Pope Gregory IX. first decreed a bell to be rung, as the signal for the people to betake themselves to the adoration of the host. The vessel wherein the hosts are kept is called the cibory, being a large kind of covered chalice.

Wilson's Dictionary of Bible Types

 Mark 15:37 (a) Here and elsewhere the word should be rendered "Spirit." It is the same word rendered "Spirit" in all the other places where "Spirit" is used.

Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament

HOST. —See (1) Angels; (2) Hospitality, Inn, Invitation.

Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible

HOST . See next art. and Army.

Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature

(oblation, from hostia, victim, sacrifice), the name given in- the Romish Church to the bread or wafers used in the celebration of the Eucharist. It is unleavened, thin, flat, and of circular form, and has certain emblematic devices, as the crucifixion, the Lamb, or some words, or initials of words, having reference to the sacrifice, impressed on it. The Greek and other Oriental churches, as well as the various Protestant churches, celebrate the Eucharist by using leavened bread only differing from ordinary bread in being of a finer quality; and one of the grounds of separation from the West alleged by Michael Cerularius was the Western practice of using unleavened bread. "The Greek and Protestant controversialists allege that in the early Church ordinary or leavened bread was always used, and that our Lord himself, at the Last Supper, employed the same.

Even the learned cardinal Bona and the Jesuit Sirmond are of the same opinion; but most Roman divines, with the great Mabillon at their head, contend for the antiquity of the use of the unleavened bread, and especially for its conformity with the institution of our Lord, inasmuch as at the paschal supper, at which ‘ he took bread, and blessed, and brake it,' none other than the unleavened was admissible ( Exodus 12:8;  Exodus 12:15;  Leviticus 23:5). (See Klee, Dogmatik, 3, 190.)" — Chambers. At the Council of Florence it was left at the option of the churches to use leavened or unleavened bread. "Romanists worship the host under a false presumption that they are no longer bread and wine, but transubstantiated into the real body and blood of Christ, who is, on each occasion of the celebration of that sacrament, offered up anew as a victim (hostia) by the so-called ‘ priests.' Against this error the 31st Article of Religion is expressly directed, and also these words in the consecration prayer of the Communion Service of the Protestant Episcopal Church, ‘ By his one oblation of himself once offered,' etc., that Church pointedly declaring in both those places that the minister, ‘ so far from offering any sacrifice himself, refers' the people ‘ to the sacrifice already made by another' (Eden). After the Council of Trent had determined that, upon consecration, the bread and wine in the sacrament are changed into the Lord Jesus Christ, true God and man, and that though the Savior always sits at the right hand of God in heaven, he is, notwithstanding, in many other places sacramentally present, this decision follows: "There is, therefore, no room to doubt that all the faithful in Christ are bound to venerate this most holy sacrament, and to render thereto the worship of latria, which is due to the true God, according to the constant usage of the Catholic Church. Nor is it the less to be thus adored that it was instituted by Christ the Lord."

We learn that, in conformity with this instruction, as the Missal directs, the priest, in every mass, as soon as he has consecrated the bread and wine, with bended knees adores the sacrament. He worships what is before him on the paten and in the chalice, and gives to it the supreme worship, both of mind and body, that he would pay to' Christ himself. With his head bowing towards it, and his eyes and thoughts fixed on it and directed towards it, he prays to it as to Christ: "Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, give us peace." The following is a translation from the rubric of the Missal: "Having uttered the words of consecration, the priest, immediately falling on his knees, adores the consecrated host; he rises, shows it to the people, places it on the corporale, and again adores it." When the wine is consecrated, the priest, in like manner, ‘ falling on his knees, adores it, rises, shows it to the people, puts the cup in its place, covers it over, and again adores it."

The priest, rising up after he has adored it himself, lifts it up as high as he can conveniently, and, with his eyes fixed upon it shows it, to be devoutly adored by the people; who, having notice also, by ringing the mass-bell, as soon as they see it, fall down in the humblest adoration to it, as if it were God himself. If Christ were visibly present, they could not bestow on him more acts of homage than they do on the host. They pray to it, and use the same acts of invocation as they do to Christ himself. The host is also worshipped when it is carried through the street in solemn procession, either before the pope, or when taken to some sick person, or on the feast of Corpus Christi. The person who, in great churches, conveys the sacrament to the numerous communicants, is called bajulus Dei, the porter or carrier of God. This idolatrous custom of the Church of Rome was not known till the year 1216; for it was in 1215 that transubstantiation, by the Council of Lateran, under pope Innocent III, was made an article of faith; and we also find in the Roman canon' law that it was pope Honorius who ordered, in the following year, that the priests, at a certain part of the mass service, shout elevate the host, and cause the people to prostrate themselves in worshipping it. See Augulsti, Denkwiu-digkeiten aus der christl. Archaeol. 8:275 sq.; Elliott, Delineation of Romanism, bk. 2:ch. 4:5; Brown, Expos. of the 39 Articles, p. 606, 731, n.; Neale, Introduction East. Church, 2, 516; Siegel, Christ. AIterth. 1, 30; Bingham, Christ. Antiq. 2:819; Farrar, s.v. Adoration; Schr Ö ckh, Kirchengesch 28, p. 73; and the articles (See Azymites); (See Lord'S Supper); (See Mass); (See Transubstantiation). (J.H.W.)