Son

Son - (Webster's 1828 Dictionary)

SON, n.

1. A male child; the male issue of a parent, father or mother. Jacob had twelve sons. Ishmael was the son of Hagar by Abraham.

2. A male descendant, however distant; hence in the plural, sons signifies descendants in general, a sense much used in the Scriptures. The whole human race are styled sons of Adam.

3. The compellation of an old man to a young one, or of a confessor to his penitent; a term of affection. Eli called Samuel his son. Be plain, good son, and home;y in thy drift.

4. A native or inhabitant of a country; as the sons of Britain. Let our country never be ashamed of her sons.

5. The produce of any thing. Earth's tall sons, the cedar, oak and pine. [Note. The primary sense of child is produce, issue; a shoot.]

6. One adopted into a family. Moses was the son of Pharaoh's daughter. Exo 2.

7. One who is converted by another's instrumentality, is called his son; also, one educated by another; as the sons of the prophets.

8. Christ is called the Son of God, as being conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, or in consequence of his relation to the Father.

9. Son of pride, sons of light, son of Belial. These are Hebraisms, which denote that persons possess the qualities of pride, of light, or of Belial, as children inherit the qualities of their ancestors.

sun, sunz:

(1) In Biblical language the word "son" is used first of all in its strictly literal sense of male issue or offspring of a man or woman. In a few cases in the Old Testament, as in Ge 3:16; Jos 17:2; Jer 20:15, the Hebrew word ben, is translated correctly in the English by the word "child" or "children" as it includes both sexes, as in Ge 3:16, or is limited to males by the use of the modifying term "male." Closely connected with this meaning of direct male issue or of children is its use to denote descendants, posterity in the more general sense. This usage which, as in the case of the sons (children) of Israel, may be regarded perhaps as originating in the conception of direct descent from the common ancestor Israel, came in the course of time to be a mere ethnographic designation, so that the term "the children of Israel" and "the children of Ammon" meant no more than Israelites or Ammonites, that is, inhabitants of the lands of Israel or Ammon respectively. An extension of this usage is to be found in the designation of a people as the sons or children of a land or city; so in Am 9:7 "children of the Ethiopians," or Eze 16:28, where the literal rendering would be "sons of Asshur," instead of the Assyrians, and "the children of Jerus" in Joe 3:6.

See BAR (prefix); BEN-.

(2) More characteristic of Biblical usage is the employment of the word "son" to indicate membership in a class or guild, as in the common phrase "sons of the prophets," which implies nothing whatever as to the ancestry, but states that the individuals concerned are members of the prophetic guilds or schools. In the New Testament the word "sons" (huioi) in Lu 11:19, rendered "children" in Mt 12:27 the King James Version, means, not physical descendants, but members of the class or sect; according to Mt the Pharisees, who were attacking Christ.

(3) The word "son" is used with a following genitive of quality to indicate some characteristic of the person or persons described. In the English the word "son" is usually omitted and the phrase is paraphrased as in 2Sa 3:34, where the words translated "wicked men" in the King James Version mean literally, sons or children of wickedness. Two examples of this usage may be cited: the familiar phrase "sons of Belial" in the Old Testament (De 15:13 the King James Version, and often), where the meaning is simply base or worthless fellows (compare Nu 24:17, margin "children of Sheth" (Expository Times, XIII, 64b)); and in the New Testament the phrase "sons of thunder," which is given in Mr 3:17 as the explanation of the epithet "Boanerges." This use is common in the New Testament, as the phrases "children of the kingdom," "children of light," etc., indicate, the general meaning being that the noun in the genitive following the word children indicates some quality of the persons under consideration. The special phrases "Son of man" and "Son of God" are considered in separate articles.

See also RELATIONSHIPS, FAMILY.

Walter R. Betteridge