EARLY IIISTOIIY OF THE HOUSE. 3 



would be the character and fate of tlieir descendants. Of Dan he ^ays 

 ' Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path that biteth'the 

 horse s heels, so that his rider shall fall backward.' We have nothino- here 

 to do with the fultilnient of this prediction. Tiiat which principally con- 

 cerns the reader is the office which is, for the first time, assio-ucd to the 

 horse. He is ridden. ° 



We hear no more of the horse until the time of Job, who lived about 

 twenty years before the Israelites Avere brought out of Egypt by Moses 

 He was well acquainted with the horse, and admired hinfon account of 

 his unrivalled beauty and the purposes to which he was devoted. Job's 

 description of the horse is quoted in almost every work on the subject, 

 and Dr. Blair cites it as an instance of the sublimity of the inspired 

 writers. ' Hast thou ' — the Divine Being is supposed to inquire of Job— 

 'given the horse Jiis strength ? Hast thou clothed his neck with his 

 beautiful mane ? The glory of his nostrils is terrible. He paweth in the 

 valley, and rejoiceth in his strength. He hurries on to meet the armed 

 men— he mocketh at fear— he turneth not his back from the sword. The 

 'luiver rattleth against liim— the glittering spear and the shield— he 

 swalloweth the ground Avith fierceness and rage ; neither believeth he that 

 it IS the sound of the trumpet (ordering a retreat). He saith amono- the 

 trumpets, Ha ! ha !— and he smelleth the battle afar off, and heareth the 

 thunder of the captains and the shouting.' The Hebrew word which is 

 translated ' thunder ' in the 19th verse, also signifies the mane of a horse 

 Whoever has observed how much the mane of a thorough-bred perfect 

 liorse, and under some momentary excitement, contribute! to the noble- 

 ness of his appearance, will enter into the sublimity of the question, ' Hast 

 thou clothed his neck AA-ith his beautiful mane ? ' To ' clothino- the neck 

 AVith thunder ' no meaning can be attached. ° 



It appears from tliis that the horse, nearly 1500 years before the birth 

 of Christ, was used for the purposes of war. The noble animal which Job 

 described belonged to the cavalry service of that time. 



The same autlior assigns to him another task. Job had been previously 

 speaking of the ostrich and of the hunting of that bird, and he says, ' What 

 time she lifteth herself on high, '—springs from the ground as she'runs _ 

 ' she scorneth the horse and his rider.' ' 



In less than twenty years after this, we are told that Pharaoh ' took 600 

 chosen chariots and all the horses and chariots of Eg-ypt, and all the horse- 

 men, and pui^sued the Israelites to the Red Sea.' Here we seem to have 

 three distinct classes of horses, the chosen chariot horse, the more ordinary 

 chariots, and the cavalry. In fact, the power and value of the horse were 

 now fully appreciated. Buxtorff says that the word ' parash,' or ' horse- 

 man,' is derived from the Hebrew root to prick or spur, and that the rider 

 derived his name from the use of the spur. It would seem from Berenger 

 that ridmg was at this period not only a famihar exercise, but had atta,ined 

 a degree of perfection not generally imagined. 



In what country the horse was first domesticated there are no records 

 certainly to determine. The most ancient of all histories is silent as to his 

 existence m the time of Abraham ; although it can hardly be imao-ined 

 that this noble animal was not used when Nimrod founded the Babylonish 

 monarchy, full 200 years before the birth of Abraham— or Semiramis 150 

 years afterwards, reigned over the same country— or the Shepherd Kino-s, 

 a little while before that period, conquered Egypt. It is natural "to 

 imagine that the domestication of the horse was coeval with the establish- 

 ment of civilisation. 



The author was disposed, in a former edition of this work, to trace the 

 first domestication of the horse to Egypt ; but farther consideration has 



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