WILD BOAR OF PALESTINE.
"The Boar out of the wood doth waste it."—Ps. lxxx. 13.
We now come to the wild animal. Their is only one passage in the Scriptures in which the Wild Boar is definitely mentioned, and another in which a reference is made to it in a paraphrase.
The former of these is the well-known verse of the Psalms: "Why hast thou broken down her hedges, so that all they which pass by the way do pluck her?
"The boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast of the field doth devour it" (Ps. lxxx. 12, 13). The second passage is to be found in Ps. lxviii. 30. In the Authorized Version it is thus rendered: "Rebuke the company of spearmen, the multitude of bulls, with the calves of the people." If the reader will refer to the marginal translation (which, it must be remarked, is of equal authority with the text), the passage runs thus: "Rebuke the beasts of the reeds," &c. Now, this is undoubtedly the correct rendering, and is accepted in the Jewish Bible.
Having quoted these two passages, we will proceed to the description and character of the animal.
In the former times, the Wild Boar was necessarily much more plentiful than is the case in these days, owing to the greater abundance of woods, many of which have disappeared by degrees, and others been greatly thinned by the encroachments of mankind. Woods and reed-beds are always the habitations of the Wild Boar, which resides in these fastnesses, and seems always to prefer the reed-bed to the wood, probably because it can find plenty of mud, in which it wallows after the fashion of its kind. There is no doubt whatever that the "beast of the reeds" is simply a poetical phrase for the Wild Boar.
If there should be any cultivated ground in the neighbourhood, the Boar is sure to sally out and do enormous damage to the crops. It is perhaps more dreaded in the vineyards than in any other ground, as it not only devours the grapes, but tears down and destroys the vines, trampling them under foot, and destroying a hundredfold as much as it eats.