4i8 FORBIDDEN FISH— NETTING— F7F^i?M 



The methods of fishing in Palestine, Hke those (save Anghng) 

 of Egypt and the ancient world, were : — 



(A) The spear, harpoon, and bident (still used in Lebanon 

 and Syria) of which we read in Job xli. 7, " Canst thou fill his 

 skin with barbed irons, or his head with fish spears ? " 



(B) The line and hook. The line occurs only in Job xli. i, 

 " Canst thou draw out Leviathan {i.e. the crocodile) with a 

 fish hook {hakkdh), or press down his tongue with a cord 

 (hebel) ? " (R.V.). The hook, designated by several names, finds 

 frequent place in descriptions and metaphors in the O.T. 



The difficult verse (Job xH. 2), " Canst thou put a rope 

 [agmon, 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.^ 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 wilHngly. Whether this departure 

 from traditional habit was due to the skill of the super-man, 



^ Wilkinson, op. cii., II. p. ii8. 



