Mouse

Heb. ‘akhbar, “swift digger”), properly the dormouse, the field-mouse (1 Sam. 6:4). In Lev. 11:29, Isa. 66:17 this word is used generically, and includes the jerboa (Mus jaculus), rat, hamster (Cricetus), which, though declared to be unclean animals, were eaten by the Arabs, and are still eaten by the Bedouins. It is said that no fewer than twenty-three species of this group (‘akhbar=Arab. ferah) of animals inhabit Palestine. God “laid waste” the people of Ashdod by the terrible visitation of field-mice, which are like locusts in their destructive effects (1 Sam. 6:4, 11, 18). Herodotus, the Greek historian, accounts for the destruction of the army of Sennacherib (2 Kings 19:35) by saying that in the night thousands of mice invaded the camp and gnawed through the bow-strings, quivers, and shields, and thus left the Assyrians helpless. (See SENNACHERIB.)

(the corn-eater). The name of this animal occurs in (Leviticus 11:29; 1 Samuel 6:4,5; Isaiah 66:17) The Hebrew word is in all probability generic, and is not intended to denote any particular species of mouse. The original word denotes a field-ravager, and may therefore comprehend any destructive rodent. Tristram found twenty-three species of mice in Palestine. It is probable that in (1 Samuel 6:5) the expression "the mice that mar the land" includes and more particularly refers to the short-tailed field-mice (Arvicola agrestis , Flem.), which cause great destruction to the corn-lands of Syria.

mous, mis (`akhbar; Septuagint mus, "mouse"; compare Arabic `akbar, "jerboa" not 'akbar, "greater"; compare also proper noun, `akhbor, "Achbor" (Ge 36:38; 1Ch 1:49; also 2Ki 22:12,14; Jer 26:22; 36:12)): The word occurs in the list of unclean "creeping things" (Le 11:29), in the account of the golden mice and tumors (the King James Version and the American Revised Version margin "emerods") sent by the Philistines (1Sa 6:4-18), and in the phrase, "eating swine's flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse" (Isa 66:17). The cosmopolitan housemouse, Mus musculus, is doubtless the species referred to. The jerboa or jumping mouse, Arabic yarbu, is eaten by the Arabs of the Syrian desert, Northeast of Damascus. Possibly allied to `akhbar is the Arabic `akbar (generally in plural, `akabir), used for the male of the jerboa.

Alfred Ely Day