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•SERGEANTS Acts 16:35, 38 (R.V., “lictors”), officers who attended the magistrates and assisted them in the execution of justice.
A remarkable memorial of this proconsul was recently (1887) discovered at Rome. On a boundary stone of Claudius his name is found, among others, as having been appointed (A.D. 47) one of the curators of the banks and the channel of the river Tiber. After serving his three years as proconsul at Cyprus, he returned to Rome, where he held the office referred to. As he is not saluted in Paul’s letter to the Romans, he probably died before it was written.
•SERMON ON THE MOUNT After spending a night in solemn meditation and prayer in the lonely mountain-range to the west of the Lake of Galilee (Luke 6:12), on the following morning our Lord called to him his disciples, and from among them chose twelve, who were to be henceforth trained to be his apostles (Mark 3:14, 15). After this solemn consecration of the twelve, he descended from the mountain-peak to a more level spot (Luke 6:17), and there he sat down and delivered the “sermon on the mount” (Matthew 5-7; Luke 6:20-49) to the assembled multitude. The mountain here spoken of was probably that known by the name of the “Horns of Hattin” (Kurun Hattin), a ridge running east and west, not far from Capernaum. It was afterwards called the “Mount of Beatitudes.”
•SERPENT (Hebrews nahash; Gr. ophis), frequently noticed in Scripture. More than forty species are found in Syria and Arabia. The poisonous
character of the serpent is alluded to in Jacob’s blessing on Dan (Genesis 49:17; see Proverbs 30:18, 19; James 3:7; Jeremiah 8:17). (See ADDER.)
This word is used symbolically of a deadly, subtle, malicious enemy (Luke 10:19).
The serpent is first mentioned in connection with the history of the temptation and fall of our first parents (Genesis 3). It has been well remarked regarding this temptation: “A real serpent was the agent of the temptation, as is plain from what is said of the natural characteristic of the serpent in the first verse of the chapter (3:1), and from the curse pronounced upon the animal itself. But that Satan was the actual tempter, and that he used the serpent merely as his instrument, is evident (1) from the nature of the transaction; for although the serpent may be the most subtle of all the beasts of the field, yet he has not the high intellectual faculties which the tempter here displayed. (2.) In the New Testament it is both directly asserted and in various forms assumed that Satan seduced our first parents into sin (John 8:44; Romans 16:20; 2 Corinthians 11:3, 14;
Revelation 12:9; 20:2).” Hodge’s System. Theol., ii. 127.