Forms: 4 bidellium, bdelyum, bdellyum, 6 bedellion, 6–7 bdelium, 6– bdellium. [a. L. bdellium (Vulgate), ad. Gr. βδέλλιον (according to Dioscorides and Pliny, a plant, and the fragrant gum exuded by it: see senses 1 and 2); used in the Greek versions later than the LXX to translate the Heb. b’dōlakh, which Josephus also rendered βδέλλα. The Greek word is evidently of oriental origin, but whether it has any relation either of etymology or sense with the Heb. is uncertain, as is also the meaning and origin of the latter, which the LXX had rendered in Genesis by ἄνθραξ ‘carbuncle,’ and in Numbers by κρύσταλλος ‘crystal’: the Rabbins and Bochart explain it as meaning ‘pearl, pearls.’]
1. The name given to several trees or shrubs of the N.O. Amyridaceæ, chiefly of the genus Balsamodendron, from which exudes a kind of gum-resin resembling impure myrrh, of pungent taste and agreeable odor, used in medicine and as a perfume.
1398. Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., XVII. xix. (1495), 614. Bidellium is … a blacke tre moost lyke to the Oliue and the gumme therof is bryght and bytter.
1596. Lodge, Marg. Amer. The blacke bdellium [bringeth forth] sweete gumme.
1620. T. Peyton, Parad., in Farr’s S. P. (1848), 178. Where can a man … Find bdelium, that pleasant tree, to grow.
[1878. H. Stanley, Dark Cont., II. xii. 350. Where the myrrh and bdellium shrubs exhaled their fragrance.]
2. The gum-resin thus procured.
1585. Lloyd, Treas. Health, Q v. Afterwarde put … thervnto … pouder of Masticke, of Castoreum, bdelii, myrre.
1601. Holland, Pliny, I. 362. The right Bdellium … being washed and drenched with wine … is more odoriferous.
1859. R. Burton, Centr. Afr., in Jrnl. R. G. S., XXIX. 448. The important growths of the interior are frankincense and bdellium.
3. The translation, in the English Bible, of the Hebrew word (b’dōlakh); see above.
1382. Wyclif, Gen. ii. 12. Ther is foundun bdelyum and the stoon onychynus. Ibid., Num. xi. 7. Manna forsothe was … of the colour of bdelli [1388 of bdellyum, which is whijt and bryȝt as cristal]. 1535 Coverdale, ibid., There is founde Bedellion. Ibid., The Manna was … like Bedellion. 1560 Genev., ibid., The Man also was … the colour of bdelium. 1611 ibid., There is bdellium. Ibid., The colour of Bdelium.
