CHAPTER IV

BIRDS OF "ABOMINATION"

After Moses had led the Hebrews from that "hard bondage, wherein they were made to serve," he located them in what is now known as the Holy Land. Because they long had been accustomed to slavery and its exactions, he was compelled to make severe laws for them in this wonderful freedom, or he could not have held them together and founded a great nation with their blood. So he laid down laws for religious rites, for daily conduct, for dress, for food, and for the building of their homes and temples. It is with these "pure food" laws of Moses that this chapter is concerned.

In that part of the laws relating to the birds, the King James translation of the Bible names the eagle, ossifrage, and ospray, vulture, and kite, after his kind; the raven, the owl, night hawk, cuckoo, and hawk; the little owl, cormorant, and great owl; swan, pelican, and great eagle; stork, heron, and lapwing. The latest version makes some change in this. Beginning with the eagle, it changes the ossifrage to the gier eagle, leaves the ospray, changes the vulture and kite to the kite and falcon; leaves the raven, changes the owl to ostrich, leaves the night hawk, and changes the cuckoo to the sea mew; leaves the hawk, little owl, cormorant, great owl, and vulture, and adds the horned owl; drops the swan, leaves the pelican, changes the great eagle to the vulture, and ends with the stork,

heron, and lapwing, as does the old version. There are only three changes of any importance: that of the owl to the ostrich, of the cuckoo to the sea mew, and the omission of the swan.

The translators of the Bible seem to have had much confusion with the owl and the ostrich; and the term "ya'anah," meaning greediness, was applied in several instances to the owl where Bible students of wide research are sure the ostrich was intended.

If people cared to eat cuckoos, they might have been used as food; but as the sea mews lived on fish and carrion, there was sufficient reason why the ban should be placed on them. As for the swan, there is no probability that it was designated among the birds of abomination. Geese, ducks, and swans are older than any historical record. They are water-birds whose food is not in any way objectionable to the most fastidious palate. They always have been eaten, and when young and tender are considered great delicacies. Swans were not very plentiful, but they did exist at the time and in the land of Moses, and no doubt were among the fatted fowl served at great feasts in Bible lands, as they were in Greece and Italy at that time.

The other changes merely apply to different members of the eagle, vulture, hawk, and owl families. Undoubtedly Moses found every species of all of these unfit. for food, for he was a man of fastidious taste and great learning. He has the sanction of our time, and almost all nations from the beginning. However, when this law was made it was necessary, for the mountaineers of Lebanon were eating hawks and eagles, and so were the halfwild tribes of Syria and Arabia, with which the Hebrews would come in contact.

Of these nineteen birds mentioned in the latest version of the Bible, thirteen are referred to elsewhere for other reasons, so that their history belongs in the chapter devoted to them. But the night hawk, sea mew, heron, lapwing, ospray, and vulture are mentioned only in the food laws, and only as birds of "abomination."

The Night Hawk.

Almost every Bible student and commentator has a personal opinion as to the bird here intended. The Hebrew word, "tachmas," originally means, "to tear or scratch the face." That probably would happen to one coming in contact with any captive hawk or owl, and easily might occur in the case of any of two dozen different birds. The first translators of the Bible thought this referred to a bird identical with our strix flammea, or barn owl.

To me it seems that the later version indicates the night hawk, or night jar, and as it is of this bird we think when we read of the night hawk, I shall write of it. It was in all probability a bird very similar to ours, for there were three species in the Holy Land, one almost identical with ours.

Never was there truer night hawk country than Palestine, where most of the action of the Old Testament was confined. The country is of as mountainous character as Switzerland, though the mountains are much lower. One great plain, Esdraelon, sweeps from the ocean to the river, lesser plains lie between hills and mountains; there are many small lakes connected by rivers, and wherever there was moisture, rank vegetation flourished, and spicy shrubs and waxy sweet flowers that attracted insects.

One of the rivers often mentioned by Bible writers, the Kedron, is now lying a dry bed, but in those days it was of importance, as it helped to water the plains.

To all the attractions of location almost tropical climate was added, so that earth afforded no more alluring haunt for the night hawk. There was mountain, valley, and plain hunting for food, taken on wing: perfumed air so thick with insects that they were a pest to the people, river and lake water frequent, and little shelves among the rocky mountains, and bare brown spots of plain for nesting-places, where the color of nature would so match the birds' backs as to conceal them when brooding.

Here they could deposit their eggs, so similar in color to the earth upon which they were laid, with scarcely an attempt at nest-building, that one might step upon them unaware. The brooding birds were shades of grayish white, browns, and tans, and quite as invisible as the eggs. It was the habit of these birds when brooding to remain perfectly quiet upon the nest, trusting that their likeness to the surroundings would conceal them. If danger threatened too closely, they fluttered from the nest, using the old trick of brooding birds when they pretended to have a broken wing, and hopped away as if helpless, to lure one from their location.

Since in the thousands of years intervening between now and the time when Moses placed the ban on these birds there has been no perceptible change in their looks and habits, it is quite likely that travelers of the plains and shepherds herding their flocks were familiar with this sight in the days of Moses, and even before his time.

If these birds were cornered or disturbed just as their young were emerging, they sat upon their tails, fought with beak and claws like a hawk, distended the throat