Deuteronomy 14:5

Seven varieties of game; LXX B gives only five: hart, gazelle, roebuck, wild-ox and giraffe (?); codd. AF, etc. add after gazelle, buffalo and tragelaphos. It may not be unnecessary to remark that neither to the nomads nor to the fellaḥîn is hunting sport; it is, especially to the former, a hard and hungry search for food. -The nomad is not a hunter" (Doughty, i. 157). The hunters of Arabia are the Sleyb, wandering gypsies without cattle and camels: according to Burckhardt (p. 12) they live on dried gazelle-flesh. Besides the varieties of game given here as edible, the ancient Arabs relished also the flesh of the wild-ass (Georg Jacob, op. cit.115).

hart and gazelle "Ayyal, ṣebi: see on Deuteronomy 12:22; cp. Deuteronomy 12:15; Deuteronomy 15:22; hart probably fallow deer, cervus dama; gazelle, gazella dorcas.

roebuck Yaḥmûralso deut 1 Kings 4:23 (Deuteronomy 5:3) A.V. fallow-deer. Yakhmûr is the name still given to a deer found on Mt Carmel (Conder, Tent Work, i. 173) and identified as the roebuck, cervus capreolus; called in Gilead khamûr (Post, PEFQ, 1890, 171 f.; Conder, id.173); also seen on Lebanon (Tr. 4). Found throughout Europe it does not range farther S. than Palestine. As roebuckis the name of the male, roedeeris perhaps the better rendering.

wild goat "Aḳḳoonly here, LXX AF τραγέλαφος, Targ. ya-al, ibex such as about Engedi, 1 Samuel 24:2. With "aḳḳoas if for "anḳocp. Ar. "anaḳ(long-necked) goat.

pygarg As LXX πύγαργος -white-rump." The Heb. dîshon(as if from Heb. dash= tread, leap) is rather antelope: the large white addax (Tr. 5).

antelope te-oonly here and Isaiah 51:20, LXX ὄρυξ, A.V. wild-ox. Tristram (p. 5) takes the name as generic and suggests that it covers both the antilope bubalis, which, he says, is called -wild-cow" in Moab and Gilead, and a leucoryx -the Oryx or white antelope," to which the Arabs of Arabia give the name of -wild-ox" (G. Jacob, op. cit.117, citing from Ar. poets descriptions of it as shining like a white-washed house or as if with a white tunic); Post (Hastings" D.B.-Ox") proposes the oryx beatrix; Doughty (1. 328) takes the woṭhŷḥî of central Arabia, -an antelope beatrix," to be the O.T. re'emor wild-ox. R.V. antelopeand A.V. wild-oxare thus probably both correct, the former giving the genus of the animal the latter its popular name among the Hebrews and the Arabs. With regard to the Heb. name te"oor the"oI notice that Lane gives the Ar. Sha"(shand the soft thcorrespond) as applied to the wild-bull or wild-cow.

chamois Certainly not this! This animal is European and is not found so far S. as Palestine. Heb. zemer, Targ. diṣa, wild-goat. In the Mts of Yemen the wild maned sheep, ovis tragelaphus, was anciently numerous (G. Jacob, p. 21). Probably mountain-goat or - sheep.

Thus the names in this verse are all general and popular; each may have covered more than one species found in Syria or Arabia: to identify it with any one species is foolish.