snail

  1. Hebrew: shablul

    (Psalm 58:8), the snail or slug proper

    Tristram explains the allusions of this passage by a reference to the heat and drought by which the moisture of the snail is evaporated.

    “We find,” he says, “in all parts of the Holy Land myriads of snail-shells in fissures still adhering by the calcareous exudation round their orifice to the surface of the rock, but the animal of which is utterly shrivelled and wasted, ‘melted away’.” —Henry Baker Tristram, The Natural History of the Bible

  2. Hebrew: homit

    listed among the unclean creeping things (Leviticus 11:30)

    This was probably the sand-lizard, of which there are many species in the wilderness of Judea and the Sinai peninsula.

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