Bible animals

by J. G. Wood

The Talmudical writers exaggerated, after their custom, the dimensions, voracity, and other attributes of the Behemoth. They said that the animal devoured daily the herbage of a thousand hills, but that, in order to prevent the devastation of the world which such voracity would occasion, the herbage was miraculously renewed every night. Only two of the Behemoth were ever created, and, lest they should increase in numbers, and destroy every green thing on the face of the earth, they were made incapable of propagating their kind. There are other legends of the Behemoth too puerile to be narrated.

We will now proceed to the next verse. After mentioning that the Behemoth can eat grass like an ox, and finds its food upon the hills, the sacred writer proceeds to show that in its moments of repose it is an inhabitant of the rivers and marshy ground: "He lieth under the shady trees, in the covert of the reed, and fens.

"The shady trees cover him with their shadow; the willows of the brook compass him about."

Here I may remind the reader that the compound Hebrew word which is rendered in the Authorized Version as "shady trees" is translated by some persons as "wild lotuses"—a rendering which is followed by the editor of the Jewish Bible. Apparently, however, the Authorized Version gives a more correct meaning of the term. Judging from a well-known Egyptian painting, which represents a hunter in the act of harpooning the hippopotamus, the tall papyrus reeds are the plants that are signified by this word, which occurs in no other place in the Scriptures.

THE HIPPOPOTAMUS, OR BEHEMOTH OF SCRIPTURE.

"Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee."—Job xl. 15.

Nothing can be more accurate than this description of the habits of the animal. I have now before me a number of sketches by Mr. T. Baines, representing various incidents in the life of the hippopotamus; and in one or two of them, the little islands that stud the river, as well as the banks themselves, are thickly clothed with reeds mixed with papyrus, the whole being exactly similar to those which are represented in the conventional style of Egyptian art. These spots are the favourite haunts of the hippopotamus, which loves to lie under their shadow, its whole body remaining concealed in the water, and only the eyes, ears, and nostrils appearing above the surface.

As reference will be made to this painting when we come to the Leviathan, it will be as well to describe it in detail. In order that the reader should fully understand it, I have had it translated, so to speak, from the conventional outline of Egyptian art into perspective, exactly as has been done with the Assyrian and Egyptian chariots.

In the foreground is seen the hunter, standing on a boat that closely resembles the raft-boat which is still in use in several parts of Africa. It is made of the very light wood called ambatch, by cutting down the requisite number of trees, laying them side by side so that their bases form the stern and their points the bow of the extemporized boat. They are then firmly lashed together, the pointed ends turned upwards, and the simple vessel is complete. It is, in fact, nothing more than a raft of triangular shape, but the wood is so buoyant that it answers every purpose.