BV WHICH THE VINE IS INFESTED. 1*73 



The word that I have rendered *' plant" is kikajon in the Hebrew, 

 and the sense of the passage shows that it was a plant large enough 

 to have foliage sufficient to form a shade. But what is this plant? No 

 one is acquainted with it. In the Septuagint it is called a gourd, and 

 St. Jerome makes it an ivj', but St. Augustine informs us in a letter to 

 that Father, that the people of Africa were greatly shocked by this altera 

 ation, and obliged their bishop to remove the word ivj from the version 

 of St. Jerome. De Sacy, who retains in his version the ivy of St. Jerome 

 because it is the text of the Vulgate, inclines to the idea that it'is a vine or 

 a fig-tree. The pastors of Geneva and M. Gesenius* make the Kikajon 

 a Ricinus agreeing with Bochartf , who leans to the same opinion ; but 

 he, far from having proved it, brings before us texts which support the 

 contrary opinion. 



But if we indulge in conjectures respecting the plant mentioned in 

 this passage of Jerome, we must for the same reason conjecture the 

 species of insect which caused its destruction, and shall thus be liable 

 to give to the word Tholaat a different signification from that really be- 

 longing to it. The liability to error is much increased if we translate 

 with De Sacy, " it pricked the ivy at the root," a circumstance which is 

 not mentioned either in the Hebrew text or in the Vulgate, and which 

 would expose us to the danger of drawing consequences from false pre- 

 mises, which would be erroneous in proportion to the regularity and 

 learning with which they were deduced. 



I have therefore altered the translation of the text in such a manner 

 as to leave nothing that may not be read with certitude. 



From all that has just been said it appears that the words Rimma, 

 and Thola or Tholaath, are often indifferently employed in the Bible, 

 one for the other, in the sense of worm or grub, of an animal born of 

 corruption, vile, and despicable ; but with this difference, that the word 

 Thola or Tholaat is twice used in the Bible to designate a worm which 

 preys upon a plant. In the first of the passages alluded to this plant is 

 the vine ; we are ignorant of the species of plant intended in the second 

 passage, but we are certain that it is a plant. We know that such an 

 animal, though it possesses the form of a worm, is not one strictly 

 speaking ; we are certain that it is either a grub, or a little insect, or 

 the larva of an insect subject to metamorphosis. The word Rimma 

 has never been employed in this last sense, at least not in the Bible. 

 It appears therefore that in this point of view the Hebrew language is 

 richer than our own, since in ordinary discourse we have only one 

 word to designate the worms of the nut, pear, apple, and all other fruits, 

 and likewise the earthworm, though these animals differ not only in 

 genus, but belong to very different orders J. 



• Gesenius, Handbuch, &c., 1828, 8vo, p. 883. 



i- Bocharti Hierozoicon, vol. ii. p. 023. 



I Vide Cuvier, Repne Animal, t.iii. p. 180, on the third grand division of nr- 



