This may be said of the hunting-hound, lévrier (according to which the Venet., incorrectly translating מתנים: λαγῳοκύων ψοιῶν),[1] which Kimchi ranks in the first place. Luther, by his translation, Ein Wind = Windhund [greyhound], of good limbs, has given the right direction to this opinion. Melanchton, Lavater, Mercier, Geier, and others, follow him; and, among the moderns, so also do Ewald and Böttcher (also Bertheau and Stuart), which latter supposes that before זרזיר מתנים there originally stood כבל, which afterwards disappeared. But why should the greyhound not at once be called זרזיר מתנים? We call the smaller variety of this dog the Windspiel [greyhound]; and by this name we think on a hound, without saying Windspielhund. The name זרזיר מתנים (Symmachus excellently: περιεσφιγμένος, not περιεσφραγισμένος, τὴν ὀσφύν, i.e., strongly bound in the limbs) is fitted at once to suggest to us this almost restless, slender animal, with its high, thin, nimble limbs. The verbal stem זרר (Arab.) zarr, signifies to press together, to knit together; the reduplicative form זרזר, to bind firmly together, whence זרזיר, firmly bound together, referred to the limbs as designating a natural property (Ewald, §158a): of straight and easily-moveable legs.[2]
The hunting-hound (salâki or salûki, i.e., coming from Seleucia) is celebrated by the Arab. poets as much as the hunting-horse.[3]
The name כּלב, though not superfluous, the author ought certainly to have avoided, because it does not sound well in the Heb. collocation of words.
There now follows תישׁ, a goat, and that not the ram (Jerome, Luther), which is called איל, but the he-goat, which bears this name, as Schultens has already recognised, from its pushing, as it is also called עתּוּד, as paratus ad pugnam; the two names appear to be only provincially different; שׂעיר, on the contrary, is the old he-goat, as shaggy; and צפיר also perhaps denotes it, as Schultens supposes, with twisted, i.e., curled hair (tortipilus). In
- ↑ Thus reads Schleusner, Opusc. Crit. p. 318, and refers it to the horse: nam solebant equos figuris quibusdam notare et quasi sigillare.
- ↑ The Aram. זרז is shortened from זרזר, as כּרך from כּרכּר; the particip. adj. זריז signifies nimble, swift, eager, e.g., Pesachim 4a: “the zealous obey the commandment - as soon as possible hasten to fulfil it.”
- ↑ Vid., Ahlwardt, Chalef elahmar's Qasside, p. 205f.
