translated Swallow in the English Bible. 93 



the deror its nest, where it can bring forth its young undistur- 

 bed. Each has a home to which it can come as a dwelling, when- 

 ever it pleases, and every desire and affection be fully gratified. 



Not so was the condition of the Psalmist ; and the strong 

 sense which he had of it, made him utter words very like the 

 pathetic declaration of our Lord. " The foxes have holes, and 

 the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not 

 where to lay his head.*" The sparrow findeth for herself a house, 

 and the deror a nest, but I am not allowed to approach the taber- 

 nacle of God, in which I would dwell for ever, or worship him in 

 his sanctuary, which I count the greatest of blessings. 



Having cleared this passage of the mistakes of commentators 

 and translators, without offering the least injury to the original, 

 we are prepared to investigate what kind of bird is understood 

 by deror ; and especially, whether it be the swallow, as it is said 

 to be in the English Bible. 



Now, without the least limitation, we are authorised to say, that 

 all the ancient versions are against the swallow. The Chaldee 

 paraphrase pronounces deror to be the dove, the Septuagint and 

 Vulgate translations, the turtle dove; the Ethiopic, the ring dove. 



That deror could not be the swallow, we are inclined more 

 to think, because sis * is the Hebrew term for that bird; and why, 

 it may be asked, is not sis used in the two passages, in which 

 deror occurs, if the swallow be intended ? 



To this account it may be objected, that the trygon of the Sep- 

 tuagint, and the turtur of the Vulgate, cannot be the right trans- 

 lation of deror, as these interpreters employ the same terms to 

 denote tur of the Hebrews, which all acknowledge to be the tur- 

 tle dove. In answer, the Septuagint and Vulgate seem to have 

 mistranslated deror, not so much from mistaking the original, as 

 from the want of a proper word to express its true sense. There 

 are at least 70 species of dove, few of which have a proper name ; 

 and these interpreters did in this, what they have done in other 

 cases ; they made choice of a word which expressed a dove very 

 like deror, because they had not a better. 



Thus much we may infer from their translation, that deror, 

 at least, was a wild dove ; and its true meaning agrees very well 



• A memoir on the «*, or true swallow of the ancient Hebrews, and not 

 the crane, as the English translators of the Bible make it, was read br the 

 author before the Wernerian Nat. Hist. Soc. Nov. 29. 1828. 



