June,i9i7 Bulletin of the Brooklyn Entomological Society 67 



the magicians did so with their enchantments to bring forth lice, 

 but they could not ; so there were lice upon man, and upon beast." 



The Hebrew word is kinnim (always plural), and it occurs 

 again in Psalm CV as a direct paraphrase throwing no light upon 

 its meaning. There have been great differences of opinion about 

 its proper translation. Commentators have dug up a Hebrew 

 verb root implying to be fixed or remaining fast, this to back up 

 a translation as ticks with lice as a second choice, but the root 

 is in doubt. In the Talmuds there appear not a few references 

 to kinnah, meaning there lice without possibility of mistake. 

 This was the word which caused the King James translators to 

 agree upon lice. Even before the time of the Septuagint there 

 had been noted a resemblance to the Greek word knips, plu. 

 knipes; but to connect the two the consonant ps must be gotten 

 rid of in violation of every etymological law. In the Syriac ver- 

 sion the word was first spelled Ciniphes, this translator taking it 

 for granted that the word was the same knipes. The Roman 

 fathers based their ideas on this version. St. Augustine says: 

 " Scyniphes musculce sunt hrevissimce," and Arnobius Afer, 295 

 A. D., expresses the same idea. That the kinnim were flies was 

 wholly a Roman interpretation. This plague was known to 

 Flavins Josephus, the Roman historian, who regarded the beasts 

 as lice, getting his information not from the Old Testament, which 

 he never saw, but from the Chaldsean Targum, or Commentary. 

 The Polyglot translators held to Josephus and used the word 

 pediculi, which is both good Latin and modern scientific for the 

 various species of lice. In the English Revised version there is 

 a marginal note suggesting fleas or sand fleas, this idea being ac- 

 cepted from the argument of an eminent Medieval Rabbi. The 

 translations as ticks are for the most part quite modern. The 

 scholars of Linnaeus were inclined to fix upon the Acarus san- 

 guisugus, the blood-sucking mite. 



Even more than in any previous passage of the Pentateuch 

 there occurs in the present instance the repetition of phrases 

 which is the poetic form which is the equivalent of rhyme or 

 rhythm in other languages. The writer of Exodus knew per- 

 fectly well what kinnim were, for lice were a constant plague in 

 Egypt, but he cared little what beast it was that figured as the 



