Frog

(Heb. tsepharde'a, meaning a "marsh-leaper"). This reptile is mentioned in the Old Testament only in connection with one of the plagues which fell on the land of Egypt (Ex. 8:2-14; Ps. 78:45; 105:30). In the New Testament this word occurs only in Rev. 16:13, where it is referred to as a symbol of uncleanness. The only species of frog existing in Palestine is the green frog (Rana esculenta), the well-known edible frog of the Continent.

צפרדע; Arabic, _akurrak_; Greek, βάτραχος; Exod. viii, 2–14; Psalm lxxviii, 45; cv, 30; Rev. xvi, 13. When God plagued Pharaoh and his people, the river Nile, which was the object of great admiration to the Egyptians, was made to contribute to their punishment. “The river brought forth frogs abundantly;” but the circumstance of their coming up into the bed chambers, and into the ovens and kneading troughs, needs explanation to us, whose domestic apartments and economy are so different from those of the ancient nations. Their lodgings were not in upper stories, but in recesses on the ground floor; and their ovens were not like ours, built on the side of a chimney, and adjacent to a fireplace, where the glowing heat would frighten away the frogs, but they dug a hole in the ground, in which they placed an earthen pot, which having sufficiently heated, they stuck their cakes to the inside to be baked. To find such places full of frogs when they came to heat them in order to bake their bread, and to see frogs in the beds where they sought repose, must have been both disgusting and distressing in the extreme. Frogs were reckoned unclean by the Hebrews.