Online Bible 1995 March/ROM-1025.iso/olb/gill/3_500_e.lzh/3_510.TXT

Text File | 1995-01-23 | 7KB | 145 lines

\*Ver. 17. \\He moveth his tail like a cedar\\, &c.] To
which it is compared, not for the length and largeness
of it; for the tail both of the elephant and of
the river horse is short; though Vartomannus {c} says,
the tail of the elephant is like a buffalo's, and is
four hands long, and thin of hair: but because of the
smoothness, roundness, thickness, and firmness of it;
such is the tail of the river horse, being like that of a
hog or boar {d}; which is crooked, twisted, and which
it is said to turn back and about at pleasure, as the
word used is thought to signify. Aben Ezra interprets
it, %maketh to stand%: that is, stiff and strong, and
firm like a cedar. One writer {e} speaks of the horse
of the Nile, as having a scaly tail; but he seems to
confound it with the sea horse. Junius interprets it of
its penis, its genital part; to which the Targum in the
King's Bible is inclined: and Cicero {f} says, the ancients
used to call that the tail; but that of the elephant,
according to Aristotle {g}, is but small, and not in proportion
to the bigness of its body; and not in sight, and
therefore can hardly be thought to be described; though
the next clause seems to favour this sense:
\*\\the sinews
of his stones are wrapped together\\; if by these are
meant the testicles, as some think, so the Targums;
the sinews of which were wreathed, implicated and
ramified, like branches of trees, as Montanus renders
it. Bochart interprets this of the sinews or nerves of
the river horse, which having such plenty of them,
are exceeding strong; so that, as some report, this creature
will with one foot sink a boat {h}; I have known
him open his mouth, says a traveller {i}, and set one
tooth on the gunnel of a boat, and another on the
second strake from the keel, more than four feet distant,
and there bite a hole through the plank, and sink the boat.

\*Ver. 18. \\His bones [are as] strong pieces of brass: his bones [are] as\\
\\bars of iron\\.] Than which nothing is
stronger. The repetition is made for greater illustration
and confirmation; but what is said is not applicable
to the elephant, whose bones are porous and
famous, light and spongy for the most part, as appears
from the osteology {k} of it; excepting its teeth, which
are the ivory; though the teeth of the river horse are
said to exceed them in hardness {l}; and artificers say {m}
they are wrought with greater difficulty than ivory.
The ancients, according to Pausanias {n}, used them instead
of it; who relates, that the face of the image of
the goddess Cybele was made of them: and Kircher {o}
says, in India they make beads, crucifixes, and statues
of saints of them; and that they are as hard or harder
than a flint, and fire may be struck out of them. So
the teeth of the morss, a creature of the like kind in
the northern countries, are valued by the inhabitants
as ivory {p}, for hardness, whiteness, and weight, beyond
it, and are dearer and much traded in; \\see Gill on "Job 40:20"\\;
but no doubt not the teeth only, but the other
bones of the creature in the text are meant.

\*Ver. 19. \\He [is] the chief of the ways of God\\, &c.]
Or the beginning of them, that is, of the works of God
in creation; which must be restrained to animals,
otherwise there were works wrought before any of
them were created. There were none made before the
fifth day of the creation, and on that day was the river
horse made; in which respect it has the preference to
the elephant, not made till the sixth day. But if this
phrase is expressive of the superexcellency of behemoth
over other works of God, as it seems to be, it
must be limited to the kind of which it is; otherwise
man is the chief of all God's ways or works, made
either on the fifth or sixth day: and so as the elephant
may be observed to be the chief of the beasts of the
earth, or of land animals, for its largeness and strength,
its sagacity, docility, gentleness, and the like; so the
river horse may be said to be the chief of its kind, of
the aquatic animals, or of the amphibious ones, for the
bulk of its body, which is not unlike that of the elephant,
as says Diodorus Siculus {q}; and it has been by
some called the Egyptian elephant {r}; and also from its
great sagacity, of which instances are given by some
writers {s}. However, it is one of the chief works of
God, or a famous, excellent, and remarkable one,
which may be the sense of the expression; see \\#Nu
24:20\\. It might be remarked in favour of the
elephant, that it seems to have its name from \^Pla\^, the
first and chief; as the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet
is called %aleph%; unless it should have its name
from this root, on account of its docility;
\*\\he that
made him can make his sword to approach [unto him]\\;
not the sword of God, as if this creature could not be
killed by any but by him that made it; for whether
the elephant or river horse be understood, they are both
to be taken and slain: but the sword of behemoth is
that which he himself is furnished with; which some
understand of the trunk of the elephant, with which
he defends himself and annoys others; but that has no
likeness of a sword. Bochart {t} renders the word by
%harpe%, which signifies a crooked instrument, sickle or
scythe; and interprets it of the teeth of the river
horse, which are sharp and long, and bent like a
scythe. That which Thevenot {u} saw had four great
teeth in the lower jaw, half a foot long, two whereof
were crooked; and one on each side of the jaw; the
other two were straight, and of the same length as the
crooked, but standing out in the length: see the figure
of it in Scheuchzer {w}; by which it also appears to have
six teeth. Another traveller says {x}, of the teeth of
the sea horse, that they are round like a bow, and
about sixteen inches long, and in the biggest part
more than six inches about: but another relation {y}
agrees more nearly with Thevenot and Scheuchzer;
that four of its teeth are longer than the rest, two in
the upper jaw, one on each side, and two more in the
under; these last are four or five inches long, the other
two shorter; with which it mows down the corn and
grass in great quantities: so that Diodorus Siculus {z}
observes, that if this animal was very fruitful, and
brought forth many young and frequently, the fields
in Egypt would be utterly destroyed. This interpretation
agrees with what follows.

{c} Navigat. l. 4. c. 9.
{d} Aristot. Plin. Solin. & Isidore ut supra.
{e} Nicet. Choniat. apud Fabrit. Gr. Bibliothec. vol. 6. p. 410.
{f} Epist. l. 9. ep. 22.
{g} Hist. Amimal. l. 2. c. 1.
{h} Apud Hierozoic, par. 2. l. 5. c. 14. col. 758.
{i} Dampier's Voyages, vol. 2. part 2. p. 105.
{k} In Philosoph. Transact. vol. 5. p. 155, 156.
{l} Odoardus Barbosa apud Bochart. ut supra.
{m} Diepenses apud ib.
{n} Arcadica, sive, l. 8. p. 530.
{o} China cum Monument. p. 193.
{p} Olaus Magnus, ut supra, l. 2. c. 19. Voyage to Spitzbergen, p. 115.
{q} Ut supra.
{r} Achilles Tatius, l. 4.
{s} Ammian. Marcellin. Plin. Solin. ut supra. Vid. Plin. l. 28. c. 8.
{t} Ut supra, col. 760.
{u} Travels, part 1. c. 72.
{w} Physic. Sacr. tab. 532.
{x} Dampier's Voyages, vol. 2. part 2. p. 105.
{y} Capt. Rogers apud Dampier, ib. p. 106.
{z} Ut supra.