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 [424]SENNACHERIB.)

עבבר, in Chaldee _acalbar_, probably the same with the _aliarbui_ of the Arabians or the _jerboa_, Leviticus xi, 29; 1 Samuel vi, 4, 5, 11, 18; Isaiah xlvi, 17. All interpreters acknowledge that the Hebrew word _achbar_ signifies a mouse,” and more especially a field mouse.” Moses declares it to be unclean, which insinuates that it was sometimes eaten; and, indeed, it is affirmed that the Jews were so oppressed with famine during the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans, that, notwithstanding this prohibition, they were compelled to eat dogs, mice, and rats. Isaiah, lxvi, 17, justly reproaches the Jews with eating the flesh of mice and other things that were impure and abominable. It is known what spoil was made by mice in the fields of the Philistines, 1 Sam. vi, 5, 6, &c, after this people had brought into the country the ark of the Lord; so that they were obliged to take the resolution to send it back, accompanied with mice and emerods of gold, as an atonement for the irreverence they had committed, and to avert from their land the vengeance that pursued them. Judea has suffered by these animals in other times. William, archbishop of Tyre, records, that in the beginning of the twelfth century a penitential council was held at Naplouse, where five and twenty canons were framed for the correction of the manners of the inhabitants of the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem, who, they apprehended, had provoked God to bring upon them the calamities of earthquakes, war, and famine. This last the archbishop ascribes to locusts and devouring mice, which had for four years together so destroyed the fruits of the earth, as seemed to cause almost a total failure in their crops. Bochart has collected many curious accounts relative to the terrible devastation made by these animals.