CONSISTENCY OF GEOLOGY WITH SACRED HISTORY. 



445 



distinguished from herbs and trees, as they are from one another. The 

 term in question (deshe) is a noun from a verb, which, from Joel ii. 

 22, we learn the meaning is to spring, to shooty to vegetate, " Be not 

 afraid, ye beasts of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness do 

 spring, (dasheu.") In the 11th verse under consideration, we find 

 both the verb and the noun, for the words translated " Let the earth 

 hring forth'''' are (tadeshe haaretz,) which, in accordance with the 

 obvious sense in Joel, would be better rendered " Let the earth shoot 

 out.'''' From this meaning of the verb, then, the noun, would signify 

 the springing or shooting plant, and as used here in contradistinction 

 to both herbs and trees bearing seeds, it is surely not recommending 

 any forced interpretation to suggest that it is meant to express that 

 class of vegetables, which all botanists recognise as being naturally 

 distinguished by the obscurity of their means of reproduction. 



It tends to support this interpretation, that the Hebrew has a dif- 

 ferent term for grass, the common food of cattle (chatzir,) which the 

 lexicographers have shewn is derived from its tubular structure. Thus, 

 in Job, xl. 15, we have "he eateth grass (chatzir) as an ox;" and, 

 Psalm civ. 14, " He causeth grass (chatzir) to grow for the cattle." 



In several passages besides this of Genesis, we find deshe contra- 

 distinguished from both oeseb and chatzir, as in Deuteronomy xxxii. 2, 

 "As the small rain upon the tender herb (deshe), and as the showers 

 upon the grass (oeseb);" and Psalm xxxvii. 2, "They shall soon be 

 cut down like the grass (chatzir), and wither like the green herb 

 (deshe);" and 2d Kings xix. 26, "They were as the herb (oeseb) of 

 the field, as the green herb (deshe), as the grass (chatzir) on the 

 house tops." These quotations shew the want of uniformity with 

 which the English translators have rendered these terras, and go to 

 support the sense we would assign to deshe. 



But we must not conceal that there are three passages in which this 

 word occurs, that might seem to imply, until closely examined, that 

 we should not be warranted to restrict the sense of it in the manner 

 proposed. One is in the 23d Psalm, "The Lord is my shepherd, I 

 shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in the pastures of teiider 

 grass* (deshe)." On this we have to observe, that the word render- 

 ed here in the pastures, has been rendered in the Vulgate, in various 

 places where it occurs, and by the Septuagint in some instances, de- 

 sirable or beautiful places, and their accuracy in doing this seems 

 confirmed by the circumstance, that the Hebrew has another term for 



* The marginal translation, which is the literal one. 



