It is evident, however, that no such interpretation is needed, and that the Psalmist, when using the expression "renewing the youth like an eagle's," only employed a metaphorical expression significative of longevity.
If we recapitulate the various passages in which the Nesher is mentioned in the Scriptures, we shall find that the sacred writers were thoroughly acquainted with the bird, and that they wrote of it with an occasional fulness and an invariable precision which shows how familiar they were with a bird at once so plentiful and so conspicuous.
The illustration represents one of the rocky gorges so plentiful in Palestine, inhabited by a number of Griffon Vultures. Some of them are feeding upon the carcase of a dead animal, another is upon her nest, and several Vultures, who have gorged themselves with food after their fashion, are sitting listlessly on the rock, in some of the singular positions which this bird affects. There is, perhaps, no bird which has a more curious set of attitudes than the Griffon Vulture, or which exhibits so different an aspect at various times.
In flight it is one of the most magnificent birds that can be seen, and even when perched it often retains a certain look of majesty and grandeur. Sometimes, however, especially when basking in the sun, it assumes a series of attitudes which are absolutely grotesque, and convert the noble-looking bird into a positively ludicrous object. At one moment it will sit all hunched up, its head sunk between its shoulders, and one wing trailing behind it as if broken. At another it will bend its legs and sit down on the ankle-joint, pushing its feet out in front, and supporting itself by the stiff feathers of its tail. Often it will crouch nearly flat on the ground, partly spread its wings, and allow their tips to rest on the earth, and sometimes it will support nearly all the weight of its body on the wings, which rest, in a half doubled state, on the ground. I have before me a great number of sketches, taken in a single day, of the attitudes assumed by one of these birds, every one of which is strikingly different from the others, and transforms the whole shape of the bird so much that it is scarcely recognisable as the same individual.
THE EAGLE.
"Though thou shouldest make thy nest as high as the eagle."—Jer. xlix. 16.
THE EAGLE.
Signification of the word Asniyeh—The Golden Eagle and its habits—The Imperial Eagle—Its solitary mode of life—The Short-toed Eagle—Its domestic habits and fondness for the society of man—The Osprey, or Fishing Eagle—Its mode of catching fish—Its distribution in Palestine.
As to the Eagle, rightly so called, there is little doubt that it is one of the many birds of prey that seem to have been classed under the general title of Asniyeh—the word which in the Authorized Version of the Bible is rendered as Osprey. A similar confusion is observable in the modern Arabic, one word, ogab, being applied indiscriminately to all the Eagles and the large falconidæ.