doves was proven by the fact that they were mentioned more frequently than any other bird by these observers of nature, and always as they were offered a loving sacrifice, by way of comparison, or in exquisite poetic outburst of devotion to the Almighty. Because people appreciated them above all other feathered creatures, they offered these pairs of innocent and tender young birds to the Almighty with tears and prayers of repentance, when they felt they had sinned or defiled themselves. They gave them in the hope that the sacrifice of such loved and beautiful creatures would leave men with clean hearts and pure bodies. Moses stated that a pair of young doves and a pair of young pigeons were to be offered in purification of a leper. If anything would heal this dreadful disease, it almost seems that the sacrifice of four loving and beautiful birds that enjoy life as do doves and pigeons might avail. So close is the relationship of the birds, and so slight the distinction between them in the law, that I doubt if the casual observer always distinguished one from the other among the wild. I believe that Solomon, David, and Isaiah, who say such exquisite things concerning them, were thinking quite as much of the pigeons that fluttered around their homes and temples, and of the wild pigeons of the wilderness, as they were of the doves of the fruit orchards, palm groves, and spice thickets. No bird form was nearly so common as the pigeons cooing over the cotes of every home of the country, small villages, and even the royal city, Jerusalem. These birds were so fed and petted by the people that later Pliny wrote that in Rome a man could call a pigeon from the nest on which she brooded, to his hand, as he sat inside his home. In some instances where even the latest and most scholarly revision of the Bible says "doves," the text makes it quite plain that pigeons were the birds intended by the writer. Take the beautiful song of Redemption sung by Isaiah, in the sixtieth chapter of his book, and study this couplet: "Who are these that fly as a cloud, And as doves to their windows?" Doves were wild birds; they had no windows. But the openings for the entrance of pigeons to their clay cotes closely resembled latticed windows. Moreover, doves lived their lives in pairs and flew "in clouds" only twice a year, at the times of migration. The pigeons of villages and cities scattered over the country searching the grain fields, plains, and thickets for seeds and other food, and returned to their cotes "in clouds" at all hours of the day, all the year long. This makes me positive that the last line should read, "And as pigeons to their windows?" Also I am sure that the dove that dwelt in the "clefts of the rock, in the covert of the steep place," was a rock pigeon. Any reference to the voice of these birds would apply equally to either by one not skillful in bird notes, and I have not a doubt but the cages that Jesus removed from the temple contained almost as many pigeons as doves. The records of no other country show that pigeons were so housed and protected as in Bible lands; and it may be from centuries of such intimacy with them that men of those nations are to-day the breeders of the finest |