412 THE HOG. 



rible, is to be ascribed that unconquerable aversion to the 

 unclean beast which the Jewish people came at length to 

 entertain to such a degree, that they would not even pro- 

 nounce its name ; and no example, mockery, or persecution, 

 ever brought them to adopt the usages of other nations in 

 this respect. Yet it is known that great numbers of Hogs 

 were reared in the country of the Jews, probably for the 

 uses of the strangers who dwelt amongst them, or for the 

 purposes of traffic with the neighbouring countries. But even 

 now, when all the glory of their beloved land is but to them 

 a splendid vision, when their altars and tabernacles have 

 mouldered into dust with the temples of the idolaters and the 

 palaces of their tyrants, when nearly twenty centuries have 

 seen them scattered like chaff over every land, the humblest 

 mendicant that boasts the blood of Jacob would not pollute 

 his lips with the food which his forefathers held it impious 

 to taste. 



Writers have laboured to explain the reason of this re- 

 markable prohibition against the use of an aliment so whole- 

 some and nutritious as the flesh of the Hog. One writer 

 will have it, that it was owing to the filthiness of the animal, 

 and the impurity of his food, the law carefully providing 

 against all filth in the fields, the camp, or in cities :* another 

 maintains that it was a lesson to the Jews to abstain from 

 the sensuality and grossness of which this animal was typi- 

 cal, t Tacitus informs us, that the Jews abstained from it in 

 consequence of a leprosy by which they formerly suffered, 

 and to which the animal itself was subject ; and the common 

 opinion is, that the use of swine's flesh is calculated to pro- 

 duce that leprosy to which it is known the inhabitants of 

 Palestine, and the neighbouring countries, including Egypt, 

 were subject. To this has been attributed the rigid inter- 

 diction of its flesh for food by the Egyptians and Jews. It 

 may be doubted if any of these reasons are good with regard 



* Mahnonicles, More Nevochim. f Laclantius, Inst. 



