d4} Rev. Dr Scott on the Semamith of' Solomon. 



lexicographer declares to be a certain fish or a lizard, i^hq Troixi 



As lizards are not unlike fishes in shape, and some of them 

 live in water as well as on land, that expositor was to be excused, 

 who contended that Solomon meant a fish by semamith, though 

 it required no great reach of thought to discover, that fishes are 

 not the residents of a king's palace, however they may inhabit 

 his ponds. 



The calahotes of the Septuagint is rendered stellio by the 

 Vulgate interpreter ; and many lizards may be called stelliwies, 

 because of the variegations in the colour of the skin, peculiarly 

 brilliant in warm countries. Hence, Ovid says of the stellio, 



" aptumque colori 



Nomen habet, variis stellatus corpora guttis." 



This rendering of the semamith by the Septuagint and Vul- 

 gate is supported by the Syriac, Chaldee and Samaritan trans- 

 lators. The term which each employs signifies stellio, or a 

 spotted lizard. 



Bochart, in his Hierozoicon, says, that there are two species 

 of stellio, the one poisonous and the other harmless ; but doubts 

 which was meant by the semamith. If it be the stellio reputed 

 poisonous, sem with a samech, which is convertible with sin, 

 according to some, will signify poison, and of course the sema- 

 mith will be the poisonous lizard. Others, however, pronounce 

 shemamith, and bring it from a verb, which signifies to stun or 

 stupify ; and they think this lizard is so called, because it stuns 

 or stupifies the scorpion, to which it is said to be a determined 

 and terrible enemy. So Galen, De Theriaca ad Pisonem, as- 

 serts, that " the stellio, as soon as seen by scorpions, stuns, and 

 so destroys them ;" and ^lian and Isidore, &c. agree with Ga- 

 len in ascribing to the stellio this power over the scorpion. 



But what is still more to our purpose, in proving the sema- 

 mith to be a stellio, is this sentence of the Talmud, treatise on 

 the Sabbath, chap. 8. " The terror of the sernamith is upon the 

 scorpion,"" a sentence which cannot be predicated of any spider, 

 however formidable. Every spider has no other way of catch- 

 ing its prey, but by entangling it in its web ; and the scorpion 

 must have a far stronger and fiercer creature to deal with, when 

 it is almost deprived of sense and life, at its very sight. 



