Psalm 104:16-18 |
16. The trees of Jehovah 1 shall be satiated; the cedars of Lebanon, which he hath planted; 17. For there the birds build their nests: the stork, 2 whose dwelling is the fir trees. 18. The high mountains are for the deer 3 and the rocks are a place of shelter for the hedgehogs. 4 |
16.
1 "In the Septuagint it is,
2 "
3 "On, chevreux." -- Fr. marg. "Or, the kids." Calvin, by giving two different translations of the original word, appears to have been at a loss as to the animal meant. "The animal here intended," says Mant, "is the Ibex or Rock Goat, a species of wild goat, deriving its Hebrew name from the wonderful manner in which it mounts to the top of the highest rocks, to which quality the sacred writers allude in the other two passages where the word occurs as well as in this. -- See 1 Samuel 24:3; Job 39:1. To this quality natural historians bear abundant witness. Mr Cox thus describes the action of the Ibex, in ascending the mountains of Switzerland: -- 'He mounts a perpendicular rock of fifteen feet at three leaps, or rather three successive bounds of five feet each. It does not seem as if he found any footing on the rock, appearing to touch it merely to be repelled, like an elastic substance striking against a hard body. He is not supposed to take more than three successive leaps in this manner. If he is between two rocks which are near each other, and wants to reach the top, he leaps from the side of one rock to the other alternately, till he has obtained the summit.'"
4 "Ou, connils." -- Fr. marg. "Or, the conies, or rabbits." The Hebrew name of this animal,