Horse-Leech

Occurs only in Prov. 30:15 (Heb. alukah); the generic name for any blood-sucking annelid. There are various species in the marshes and pools of Palestine. That here referred to, the Hoemopis, is remarkable for the coarseness of its bite, and is therefore not used for medical purposes. They are spoken of in the East with feelings of aversion and horror, because of their propensity to fasten on the tongue and nostrils of horses when they come to drink out of the pools. The medicinal leech (Hirudo medicinalis), besides other species of leeches, are common in the waters of Syria.

עלוקה, from a root which signifies _to adhere_, _stick close_, or _hang fast_, Prov. xxx, 15. A sort of worm that lives in water, of a black or brown colour, which fattens upon the flesh, and does not quit it till it is entirely full of blood. Solomon says, “The horse-leech hath two daughters, Give, give.” This is so apt an emblem of an insatiable rapacity and avarice, that it has been generally used by different writers to express it. Thus Plautus makes one say, speaking of the determination to get money, “I will turn myself into a horse-leech, and suck out their blood;” and Cicero, in one of his letters to Atticus, calls the common people of Rome horse-leeches of the treasury. Solomon, having mentioned those that devoured the property of the poor as the worst of all the generations which he had specified, proceeds to state the insatiable cupidity with which they prosecuted their schemes of rapine and plunder. As the horse-leech had two daughters, cruelty and thirst of blood, which cannot be satisfied, so the oppressor of the poor has two dispositions, rapacity and avarice, which never say they have enough, but continually demand additional gratifications.