some 560 times in the Scriptures, and is applied to individuals and mankind in general, It is also used as a proper name.

1. God said: “Let us make man in our image.” (Gen. 1:26) What a historic pronouncement! And what a singular position in history “Adam, the son of God,” holds—the first human creature! (Luke 3:38) Adam was the crowning glory of Jehovah’s earthly creative works, not only because of the timing near the close of six creative epochs, but, more importantly, because “in God’s image he created him.” (Gen. 1:27) This is why the perfect man Adam, and his degenerate offspring to a much lesser degree, possessed mental powers and abilities far superior to all other earthly creatures.

Made in the likeness of his Grand Creator, Adam had the divine attributes of love, wisdom, justice and power; hence he possessed a sense of morality involving a conscience, something altogether new in the sphere of earthly life. In the image of God, Adam was to be a global administrator and have in subjection the sea and land creatures and the fowl of the air. It was, therefore, not necessary for Adam to be a spirit creature, in whole or in part, to possess Godlike qualities. Jehovah formed man out of the dust particles of the ground, put in him the force of life so that he became a living soul and gave him the ability to reflect the image and likeness of his Creator. “The first man is out of the earth and made of dust.” “The first man Adam became a living soul.” (Gen. 2:7; 1 Cor. 15:45, 47) That was in the year 4026 B.C.E. It was likely in the fall of the year, for mankind’s most ancient calendars began counting time in the autumn around October 1, or at the first new moon of the lunar civil year.—See YEAR.

Adam’s home was a very special paradise, a veritable garden of perfection and pleasure called Eden (see EDEN No. 1), providing him with all the necessary physical things of life, for “every tree desirable to one’s sight and good for food” for his perpetual sustenance was there. (Gen. 2:9) All about Adam were peaceful animals of every kind and description. But Adam was alone. There was no other creature ‘according to his kind’ with which to talk. Jehovah recognized that “it is not good for the man to continue by himself.” So by divine surgery, the first and only case of its kind, Jehovah took a rib from Adam and fashioned it into a female counterpart to be his wife and the mother of his children. Overjoyed with such a beautiful helper and constant companion, Adam burst forth in the first recorded poetry, “This is at last bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,” and she was called woman “because from man this one was taken.” Later Adam called his wife Eve. (Gen. 2:18-23; 3:20) The truthfulness of this account is attested to by Jesus and the apostles. (Matt. 19:4-6; Mark 10:6-9; Eph. 5:31; 1 Tim. 2:13) Furthermore, Jehovah blessed these newlyweds with plenty of enjoyable work. They were not cursed with idleness. They were to keep busy and active dressing and taking care of their garden home, and as they multiplied and filled the earth with billions of their kind, they were to expand this paradise to earth’s limits. This was a divine mandate.—Gen. 1:28.

“God saw everything he had made and, look! it was very good.” (Gen. 1:31) Indeed, from the very beginning Adam was perfect in every respect. He was equipped with the power of speech and with a highly developed vocabulary. He was able to give meaningful names to the living creatures all about him. He was capable of carrying on a two-way conversation with his God and his wife.

For all these reasons and many more, Adam was under obligation to love, worship and strictly obey his Grand Creator. More than that, the Universal Lawgiver spelled out for him the simple law of obedience and fully informed him of the just and reasonable penalty for disobedience: “As for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will positively die.” (Gen. 2:16, 17; 3:2, 3) Notwithstanding this explicit law carrying severe penalty for disobedience, he did disobey.

RESULTS OF SIN

Eve was thoroughly deceived by Satan the Devil, but not so her husband. “Adam was not deceived,” says the apostle Paul. (1 Tim. 2:14) With full knowledge Adam willfully and deliberately chose to disobey and then as a criminal he tried to hide. When brought to trial, instead of showing sorrow or regret or asking for forgiveness, Adam attempted to justify himself and pass the responsibility off on others, even blaming Jehovah for his willful sin. “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree and so I ate it.” (Gen. 3:7-12) So out of Eden Adam was cast, into an unsubdued earth that was cursed to produce thorns and thistles, there to sweat out an existence harvesting the bitter fruits of his sin. Outside the garden, awaiting execution, Adam fathered sons and daughters, the names of only three being preserved—Cain, Abel and Seth. To all of Adam’s children he passed on hereditary sin and death, since he himself was sinful.—Gen. 3:23; 4:1, 2, 25.

This was the tragic start Adam gave the human race. Paradise, happiness and everlasting life were forfeited, and in their place sin, suffering and death were acquired through disobedience. “Through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men because they had all sinned.” “Death ruled as king from Adam down.” (Rom. 5:12, 14) But Jehovah in his wisdom and love provided a “second man,” the “last Adam,” who is the Lord Jesus Christ. By means of this obedient “Son of God” the way was opened up whereby descendants of the disobedient “first man Adam” could regain Paradise and everlasting life, the church or congregation of Christ even gaining heavenly life. “For just as in Adam all are dying, so also in the Christ all will be made alive.”—John 3:16, 18; Rom. 6:23; 1 Cor. 15:22, 45, 47.

After sinner Adam’s expulsion from Eden he lived to see murder, murder of his own son, banishment of his killer-son, abuse of the marriage arrangement and profanation of Jehovah’s sacred name. He witnessed the building of a city, the development of musical instruments, and the forging of tools out of iron and copper. He watched and was condemned by the example of Enoch, “the seventh man in line from Adam,” one who “kept walking with the true God.” He even lived to see Noah’s father Lamech of the ninth generation. Finally, after 930 years, all but a very little of which was spent in the slow process of dying, Adam returned to the ground from which he was taken, in the year 3096 B.C.E., just as Jehovah had said.—Gen. 4:8-26; 5:5-24; Jude 14.

2. A city mentioned at Joshua 3:16 as being at the side of Zarethan. It is generally identified with Tell ed-Damieh, a site on the E bank of the Jordan River just below the mouth of the torrent valley of Jabbok, about eighteen miles (29 kilometers) N of Jericho. The name of the city may be derived from the color of the alluvial clay, which is abundant in that region.—1 Ki. 7:46.

The Bible record indicates that the damming up of the river Jordan’s waters at the time of Israel’s crossing the river took place at Adam. The Jordan valley narrows considerably, beginning at the site of Tell ed-Damieh northward, and history records that in the year 1267 a blockage of the river occurred at this very point due to the falling of a lofty mound across the river, stopping the flow of water for some sixteen hours. In modern times, earth tremors in the summer of 1927 again caused landslides that dammed up the Jordan so that the flow of water was cut off for twenty-one and a half hours. (See The Foundations of Bible History—Joshua-Judges, by John Garstang, pp. 136, 137.) If this was the means God saw fit to employ, then such a damming of the river in the days of Joshua was miraculously timed and effected so as to synchronize with the crossing of the Jordan on the day previously announced by Jehovah through Joshua.—Josh. 3:5-13.

ADAMAH

(Adʹa·mah).

One of the fortified cities in the territory assigned to the tribe of Naphtali. Its location is not definitely known.—Josh. 19:32, 36.

ADAMI-NEKEB

(Adʹa·mi-neʹkeb) [red earth of the narrow pass].

A place in the southern part of Naphtali. (Josh. 19:33) Its site is generally identified as modern Khirbet ed-Damiyeh, about five miles (8 kilometers) SW of the Sea of Galilee and approximately midway between Tiberias and Mount Tabor. Its position commanded a pass on an old caravan route between Gilead and the Plain of Acco.

ADAR

(A·darʹ).

The postexilic name of the twelfth Jewish lunar month of the sacred calendar, but the sixth of the secular calendar. (Esther 3:7) It corresponds to part of February and part of March. The name is thought by some to mean “dark” or “clouded.” It is after the month Adar that the intercalary month, called Veadar or Adar Sheni or Second Adar is added in leap years.—See VEADAR.

During this month, which came at the close of the winter season and led into spring, the carob trees began to blossom in parts of Palestine, and in the warm lowlands the orange and lemon trees were ready for harvesting.

By a royal decree of King Ahasuerus of Persia the thirteenth day of Adar was to mark the destruction of all the Jews in the jurisdictional districts of his domain, this at the instigation of his prime minister, Haman. A new decree, issued through Queen Esther’s mediation, enabled the Jews to gain a victory over their would-be assassins, and thereafter Mordecai ordered the fourteenth and fifteenth days of Adar to be celebrated in commemoration of their deliverance. (Esther 3:13; 8:11, 12; 9:1, 15, 20, 21, 27, 28) This Jewish festival is known as “Purim,” a name derived from “Pur, that is, the Lot.”—Esther 9:24-26; see PURIM.

Adar is also the month in which Governor Zerubbabel finished the reconstruction of the temple in Jerusalem. (Ezra 6:15) Elsewhere in the Bible it is mentioned only as the “twelfth month.”—2 Ki. 25:27; 1 Chron. 27:15; Jer. 52:31; Ezek. 32:1.

ADBEEL

(Adʹbe·el) [disciplined or invited by God].

A grandson of Abraham, listed third among the twelve sons of Ishmael, his mother being an Egyptian. He was the chieftain of a tribal clan bearing his name.—Gen. 21:21; 25:13-16; 1 Chron. 1:29.

ADDAR

(Adʹdar) [amplitude, or wide, open place].

1. A son of Bela, a Benjamite.—1 Chron. 8:1, 3.

2. A southern border town of Judah located near Kadesh-barnea. (Josh. 15:3) In Joshua’s account it is listed as lying between Hezron and Karka, but at Numbers 34:4 it appears that the name “Hezron” (meaning “enclosure”) is combined with Addar to form Hazar-addar, since the accounts are parallel. The book Biblical Archaeology (by G. Ernest Wright, p. 71) suggests as a possible location that of ʽAin el-Qudeirat, where a perennial spring waters a small but fertile valley. It lies about five miles (8 kilometers) from ʽAin Qedeis, the possible location of Kadesh-barnea.

ADDI

(Adʹdi) [ornament].

The son of Cosam and father of Melchi. As a descendant of David through Nathan, Addi was an ancestor of Jesus.—Luke 3:28, 31.

ADDON

(Adʹdon).

Apparently an unidentified location in Babylonia, from which some returning to Jerusalem in 537 B.C.E., at the end of the seventy-year desolation of Judah, were unable to establish their genealogy from the public records. As a consequence, they were disqualified from serving in the priesthood. Other authorities think Addon was an individual who was unable to prove his ancestry.—Ezra 2:59-62; Neh. 7:61-64.

ADIEL

(Adʹi·el) [an ornament is God].

1. The father of Azmaveth, whom King David appointed to be over his royal treasure house.—1 Chron. 27:25, 31.

2. One of the chieftains of the tribe of Simeon, who, in the days of King Hezekiah of Judah in the eighth century B.C.E., shared in the dispossession of the Hamites from the region near Gedor.—1 Chron. 4:36, 38-41.

3. An Aaronic priest of the paternal house of Immer whose father was Jahzerah. His son Maasai served at Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile.—1 Chron. 9:12.

ADIN

(Aʹdin) [pleasure-given, voluptuous].

One of the paternal heads of Israel, several hundred of whose descendants returned from Babylonian exile with Zerubbabel. (Ezra 2:15; Neh. 7:20) Later, fifty-one more of his lineage returned with Ezra in 468 B.C.E. (Ezra 8:6) A princely representative of Adin’s paternal house was among those who attested to the “trustworthy arrangement” drawn up in the days of Nehemiah.—Neh. 9:38; 10:1, 16.

ADINA

(Adʹi·na) [ornament, delicate].

The son of Shiza, and an officer over thirty other Reubenites in David’s army.—1 Chron, 11:26, 42.

ADINO

See JOSHEB-BASSHEBETH.

ADITHAIM

(Ad·i·thaʹim) [perhaps, double crossing].

One of the cities of Judah located in the Shephelah or lowlands. (Josh. 15:33, 36) The exact site is uncertain.

ADJUTANT

[Heb., sha·lishʹ, third man, referring to the third warrior in a war chariot].

The word sha·lishʹ has been translated in various Bible versions as “captain,” “chariot-leader,” “lord,” “warrior,” “adjutant.”

Some monumental inscriptions illustrating “Hittite” and Assyrian war chariots show three men: one, the driver; another, the fighter with the sword, lance or bow, and a third, the carrier of the shield. Though no monuments have been found showing Egyptian three-manned chariots, the term is used at Exodus 14:7 with respect to Pharaoh’s charioteers. The third chariot warrior, usually the one carrying the shield, was an assistant commander in the war chariot, an adjutant. The English word “adjutant” literally means “one that helps: assistant.”

After mentioning that none of the sons of Israel were constituted slaves by Solomon, 1 Kings 9:22 states: “For they were the warriors and his servants and his princes and his adjutants and chiefs of his charioteers and of his horsemen.” C. F. Keil, in Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, states that the term sha·li·shimʹ (plural), used in this passage, could be understood as “royal adjutants, captains over the royal war-chariots and cavalry.”

In the days of King Jehoram of Israel, the Syrians put Samaria under siege, which in time caused famine conditions within the city. When Elisha prophesied that there would be plenty of food, Jehoram’s special adjutant ridiculed the prophecy. As Elisha had foretold, the adjutant saw the fulfilment of the prophecy but did not get to eat any of the food, being trampled to death in the gateway.—2 Ki. 7:2, 16-20.

At Jehu’s command, his runners and adjutants, likely including Bidkar, struck down the Baal worshipers. (2 Ki. 9:25; 10:25) Pekah, another adjutant referred to in the Scriptures, assassinated Pekahiah the king of Israel and succeeded him to the throne.—2 Ki. 15:25; see Ezekiel 23:15, NW, ftn., 1960 ed.

ADLAI

(Adʹlai) [justice of Jehovah].

Father of Shaphat, who served as overseer of the herds of David in the low plains.—1 Chron. 27:29.