(B) The line and hook. The line occurs only in Job xli. 1, “Canst thou draw out Leviathan (i.e. the crocodile) with a fish hook (ḥakkāh), or press down his tongue with a cord (ḥebel)?” (R.V.). The hook, designated by several names, finds frequent place in descriptions and metaphors in the O.T.
The difficult verse (Job xli. 2), “Canst thou put a rope (agmōn, literally, as in R.V. margin, a rope of rushes) into his (Leviathan’s) nose?” is possibly explained by the ordinary procedure of fishermen in carrying their fish.[1037] The (marginal) “rope of rushes” will recall to many a boy and many a man how often a handy rush has served for carrying home his catch of small fish. For the crocodile, however, such means of portage, as it is the intent of the verse to make clear, would in Bret Harte’s parlance be “onsatisfactory.”
The word, it has been held, probably means a ring, placed in the mouth of a fish by a rope of reeds tied to a stake, for the purpose of keeping it alive in the water. The use of a ring would give a perfect parallelism, “a ring in his nose” and “a hook in his jaw.” Benzinger, however, makes it very doubtful whether this practice of keeping fish alive by a ring ever prevailed among the Jews.
The lure, or esca, was ground bait. Travellers maintain that even now no Nile or Palestine fish is educated enough to rise to a fly. But my friend Dr. Henry Van Dyke, author of Little Rivers and other fascinating books, shows me from a diary kept during his visit to Palestine in 1907 that this rule certainly has exceptions.
Wading from shore near the mouth of a stream flowing into Lake Tiberias, and again near the head waters of the Jordan above the Lake of Merom, he found pleasant clear streams where fish took the fly willingly. Whether this departure from traditional habit was due to the skill of the super-man, or the enticing cunning of the American flies used, viz. “Queen of the Water,” “Beaverkill,” and “The Abbey” (size No. 12 American) the diarist stateth not.
(C) The hand net (ἀμφίβληστρον), mentioned in New Testament, still holds its own in the Sea of Galilee, and the coast. It in the main resembles the Roman funda.
“It is like the top of a tent in shape, with a long cord fastened to the apex. This is tied to the arm, and the net so folded that when it is thrown, it expands to its utmost circumference, around which are strung beads of lead to make it drop suddenly to the bottom. As soon as the game is spied, away goes the net, expanding as it flies, and its leaded circumference strikes the bottom ere the fish know its meshes have closed on them. By the aid of his cord the fishermen leisurely draws up the net, and the fish with it.”[1038] A fuller description of the various nets now in use on the lake, with an account of present-day methods of fishing, will be found in Dr. Masterman’s interesting volume, chap. ii, The Inland Fisheries of Galilee (also in Pal. Explor. Fund Quarterly Statement, 1908, p. 40).
Netting was the almost universal method. On Lake Tiberias (or the Sea of Galilee, or Lake of Gennesaret) which yielded then, as it does now, a most copious supply of fish, night lines and line and hook were also in vogue. The highest value was attached to these fisheries. According to tradition one of the so-called Laws of Joshua, while reserving certain privileges to dwellers on its shores, opened its waters to every comer. Weirs and fences, because of the damage their stakes inflicted on fishing boats, were strictly forbidden.
The observance of this custom may have originated from a compact made by all the tribes, as the Talmud states, or from “the blessing” (in Deut. xxxiii. 23) conditioning the allotment of the territory of Napthali and the Sea of Tiberias—“Possess thou the sea, and the south“ (“the sea” is the alternative version in R.V. for “the west”); or perhaps (according to Baba Kamma) from an absolute order of Joshua to the tribe of Napthali (Jew. Encyc., v. 404).
By law, or rather custom, fishing was, except in private vivaria, etc., universally free; thus “in the Sea of Tiberias fishing with hook and net was everywhere allowed” (Krauss, Talmud Archäol., ii. 146,) with references to Bab. Kam. 81b. Cf. the Roman Digest which lays down that “omnia animalia quæ terra, mari, cælo capiuntur, id est feræ bestiæ, et volucres, et pisces, capientium fiunt.”[1039]