(a) By digging a pitfall for the larger animals, e.g. for a lion in 2 Sam. xxiii. 20;
(b) By traps, which were set in the runs of the animals (Prov. xxii. 5) and caught them by the leg (Job xviii. 9), or were set underground (ibid. 10); and
(c) By nets of various kinds—for an antelope in Isaiah (li. 20, R.V.).
CHAPTER XXXIX
FISH WITH AND WITHOUT SCALES—METHODS OF FISHING—VIVARIA
In Moses’ enumeration of what the tribesmen might or might not eat, there is a careful distinction by their names of the creatures in fur and feathers, but the fishes are merely divided (as were the animals entering the ark into “clean and unclean,” Gen. vii.) into “all that have fins and scales ye shall eat: and whatsoever hath not fins and scales ye shall not eat; it is unclean unto you” (Deut. xiv. 9, 10).
This classification has often been assumed to have been taken from the prohibitions enjoined by the Egyptian priesthood, but without any authority, because we do not know what fish were actually ruled out by their dietary canon. Moses not only limits the use of fish as an article of food, as originally granted in the covenant with Noah (Gen. ix. 2, 3), but fails to discriminate between fish from the sea and elsewhere. He does, however, exclude all scaleless fish such as the important group of siluridæ, skates, lampreys, eels, and every variety of shell fish.[1025]
As may naturally be expected, this law and other decisions, which by debarring so many species[1026] of fish denied to the people a food supply at once plentiful and cheap, were in time whittled away. Fish with “at least two scales and one fin” were gradually permitted. Eventually, as experience proved that all fish with scales have also fins, Israel was allowed as food any part of any fish on which only scales were visible.[1027]
In the west this whittling was carried even further. ’Ab. Zarah, 39 a, expressly states that no one need hesitate about eating the roe of any fish, because no unclean fish is to be found there![1028] The Jews of Constantinople in Belon’s time had more scruples; debarred of caviare proper, i.e. made from the roe of the sturgeon, they discovered an excellent and legal substitute in the roe of the Carp.