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Show Jackals Described as "Foxes" in Scripture The ancient Roman writer Ovid let us know that it was not an uncommon thing to fasten firebrands to foxes' tails to do damage in an enemy's country coun-try and that at one of the state festivals fes-tivals it was a custom to tie a number of foxes together by their tails, affix firebrands among them and let them run wild. This was apparently a well-known trick in olden times and is referred to in Judges 15:4, where we read that Samson Incensed against the Philistines, Philis-tines, the most warlike and most greatly great-ly dreaded of the enemies of the Israelites Isra-elites in the early days of their settlement settle-ment in the Land of Promise "went and caught three hundred foxes and took firebrands and turned tail to tall and put a firebrand In the midst between be-tween two tails, and when he had set the brands on fire, he let them go into the standing corn of the Philistines and burnt up both the shocks and also the standing corn with the vineyards and olives." Now, even in those early days it would have been a tremendous task for even the clever Samson to catch three hundred specimens of the fox, which has always been a solitary hunter. But jackals traveled then as now in large packs and by pits or cleverly constructed con-structed driveways Into enclosures it would not have been a very trying task to take three hundred of them alive. And so In this passage we shall almost certainly be right In reading "three hundred jackals," Instead of foxes, as a marginal reading of the authorized version of the Bible suggests. sug-gests. Montreal Herald. |