Jeremiah 12:9

Mine heritage is unto me as a speckled bird,.... Or, "is not mine heritage unto me as a speckled bird?" b as a bird of various colours, delightful to look at, as the peacock, so Jerom interprets it here; it was so formerly, but not so now; or as a bird of various colours, and unusual, which other birds get about, look on, hate, and peck at. Some think this refers to the motley party coloured religion the Jews had embraced, consisting of various rites and ceremonies of the Heathens; on which account they thought they looked beautiful and comely, when they were hated and rejected of God for them; but the word signifies rather to be dipped or stained, as with blood, and so denotes a bird of prey that is stained with the blood of others; a fit emblem of the cruelty of the Jews, in shedding the blood of the prophets. Some, because a word near akin to this signifies a finger, render it a "fingered bird" c; that is, a bird with talons or claws; like fingers, a ravenous bird, and it comes to the same sense as before. But the Septuagint take it, to be not a bird, but a beast, and render it by the hyena; and which Bochart d approves of, since the word in the Arabic language signifies such a creature; and Schindler observes, that צבע, with the Arabians, is the name of a creature between a wolf and a middling dog, which agrees with the hyena. The word here used, in the Talmudic e language signifies a she leopard or panther, so called from its variety of spots; and is the same, as Maimonides says f, which, in the Arabic language, is called אלצבע; with the Targumists it is used for a kind of serpents or vipers. So the valley of Tzeboim is rendered, in the Targum, the valley of vipers, 1 Samuel 13:18. And it is said g,

צבוע, the word in the text,

"this is from a white drop (or seed), and yet it has three hundred and sixty five kinds of colours, according to the number of the days of a solar year.''

The birds round about are against her; or, "are not the birds round about against her?" the birds of prey? they are; meaning the neighbouring nations, that under Nebuchadnezzar came up against Jerusalem to take and destroy it.

Come ye, assemble all ye beasts of the field, come to devour; this is an invitation to the enemies of the people of the Jews, comparable for their fierceness and savageness to the beasts of the field, to come and destroy them; and shows that their destruction was by divine permission, and according to the will of God. Compare with this

Revelation 19:18. The Targum interprets it of those that kill with the sword; kings of the earth, and their armies.

b So V. L. Pagninus, Montanus, Calvin, Jarchi, and Kimchi. c העיט צבוע "avis digtata", Junius Tremellius, Piscator, Gusetius "ales unguibus praedita", Cocceius. d Hierozoic. par. 1. l. 3. c. 11. col. 830, 838, 839. e T. Bab. Bava Kama, fol. 16. 1. f In Misn. Bava Kama, c. 1. sect. 4. g Bereshit Rabba, sect. 7. fol. 6. 2.