BY WHICH THE VINE IS INFESTED: 173 
‘The word that I have rendered “plant” is Ackajon 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 ivy, but St. Augustine informs us in a letter to 
that Father, that the people of Africa were greatly shocked by this alter- 
ation, and obliged their bishop to remove the word ivy 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 Bochart}+, who leans to the same opinion; but 
he, far from having proved it, brings belore us texts which support the 
contrary opinion. 
But if we indulge in conjectures ieceibns 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 eniployed 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}. 
* Gesenius, Handbuch, &c., 1828, 8vo, p. 883. 
+ Bocharti Hieroxoicon, aol ii. p. 623. 
t Vide Cuvier, Regné Animal, t.iii. p, 180, on the third grand division of ar- 
