INTREAT . Besides the mod. sense of ‘beseech,’ intreat (spelled also ‘entreat’) means ‘deal with,’ ‘handle,’ mod. ‘treat,’ always with an adverb ‘well,’ ‘ill,’ ‘shamefully,’ etc. Coverdale translates Isaiah 40:11 ‘He shal gather the lambes together with his arme, and carie them in his bosome, and shal kindly intreate those that beare yonge.’ It is even more important to notice that when the meaning seems to be as now, viz. ‘beseech,’ the word is often in reality much stronger, ‘prevail on by entreaty.’ Thus Genesis 25:21 ‘And Isaac intreated the Lord for his wife, … and the Lord was intreated of him,’ i.e. yielded to the entreaty, as the Heb. means. Cf. Grafton, Chron . ii. 768, ‘Howbeit she could in no wise be intreated with her good wyll to delyver him.’ In Jeremiah 15:11 and its margin the two meanings of the word and the two spellings are used as alternative renderings, ‘I will cause the enemy to entreat thee well,’ marg. ‘I will intreat the enemy for thee’ (RV [Note: Revised Version.] ‘I will cause the enemy to make supplication unto thee’).