Poisonous serpents are mentioned in Nu 21°, Dt 32%, Job 20% 16, Is 118 1429 595, Jer 817, Mt 37 124 238, Mk 1618, Lk 37 10, Ac 28%6. The fiery serpents of the plague in the wilderness are not called flying: that word is imported into their description from Is 14” and 30°, There are several poisonous serpents in the Desert of the Exodus, the sand-viper Echis carinata, and the horned viper Cerastes Lgyptiacus and Hasselquistii, which are sometimes found in great numbers in favour- able localities, and whose bites are burning and often fatal (see Strabo, xvi. 2. 30). Naia Haje, the asp, has also been found there. One or other of these was most likely the fiery serpent, the brazen model of which miraculously healed the bitten people. Kiichenmeister (Sydenham Soc. Tr. i. 391) suggested that these fiery serpents were guinea- worms, Filaria Medinensis, parasitic worms which burrow under the skin and set up local inflamma- tion: these are not uncommon in this region, and he supposes that they are the same as the δρακόντια
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μικρά of Plutarch (Symposiakon viii., Question 9), which are said by Agatharchides of Cnidus to eat away the flesh of the peoples near the Red Sea (see for other refs. Bennett, Diseases of Bible, 134). The story of Moses and the serpents given by Josephus (Ant. τι. x. 2) is interesting in this connexion. Scorpion bites are not very common and rarely fatal in Palestine, but are common and often fatal to children in Egypt ; see Pruner, p. 430.
The disease ot Herod Agrippa I., recorded in Ac 12", was a sudden and fatal seizure of some abdominal complaint, accompanied with intense agony, and in some way connected with worms. Sir J. R. Bennett has surmised that it was acute pasion set up by the perforation of the bowel
y an intestinal worm. ‘This is a rare but not an impossible condition. The term employed is σκωληκόβρωτος, used here, as also in Theophrastus (de Causis Plantarum, vy. 10), to signify ‘eaten of worms.’ Vulg. has a vermibus erosus. The mis- taken idea that it was a case of phthiriasis has no support in the passage, and still less from the narrative in Josephus, which does not mention worms, but says that Herod was seized with a violent abdominal pain which lasted for five days (Eusebius says four) and proved fatal (XIX. viii. 2). The death of Pheretime (Herod: iv. 205) took place not from this disease, but from some exhausting disorder with superficial ulceration; the εὐλαί or maggots which were fatal to her were probably blow-fly larvae. Antiochus Epiphanes, fatally in- jured by a fall, had probably compound fractures in which blow-flies laid their eggs and maggots were hatched. In former times cases of this sort were not rare when the injuries were neglected (2 Mac 9°). See also Jos. Ant. XVII. vi. 5.
The third Egyp. plague was one of insects which are called kinnadm (LXX σκνῖφες) ; and as the root p2 probably means ‘to pierce or cut into,’ it is likely that they were mosquitoes or sand-fleas, or some pest of that nature, which would be a much more serious plague in the East than one of lice. It was only the priests, Herodotus tells us, that were defiled by these (ii. 37). RVm renders ‘ sand- flies or fleas.’ The argument that they must have been lice, because coming from the dust, is not of much force, for sand-fleas live in the same material, and lice are not generated in dust any more than gnats. It is therefore improbable that this plague was phthiriasis.
Among the causes of ceremonial impurity were certain discharges (Lv 155. 5), some natural (Dt 23"), others probably the result of evil practices. How far the diseases consequent on vice were known among the ancients is a doubtful point. The passages in Ps 107!7-18, Pr 218 51-22 723.26 (see tract Zebaim, and Maimonides’ commentary thereon) seem to refer to such, but this group of diseases was not known in Europe until A.D. 1495.
Blindness was, and is, one of the commonest afflictions of the natives of Palestine; the blear- eyes, often crusted round with dried secretion, and fly-infested, make some of the most sickening sights in a Syrian village crowd. ‘The words ‘blindness’ or ‘blind’ occur 87 times in the Bible ; 41 times in a metaphorical sense, and 39 in refer- ence to literal want of sight. The OT uses the words ‘ blind’ or ‘blindness’ 35 times: in 28 the word is ny (Pi. ‘to blind’) or ‘ivvér (adj.), 19 times literal, 9 figurative ; in 3 it is ‘twvdrén or ‘avvereth, ‘blindness,’ always literal; in 2 it is oj} sanverim, ‘a dazzling,’ Gn 194, 2 K 68; once it is o>yn ‘to hide’ (sc. my eyes, 1S 12%, but the text here is probably corrupt, ef. the LXX). In Is 29° RV has ‘be blind,’ where AV has ‘cry’ as tr. of we. In the NT, in which ‘blind’ or ‘blindness’ is used 52 times, 36 literally and 16 metaphorically, the word is τυφλός or (verbal) τυφλόω. In four
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places where the word is πώρωσις or πωρόω RV has replaced ‘blindness’ or ‘ blinded’ by ‘ hardening’ or ‘hardened’ (Ro 117”, 2 Co 34, Eph 438) ; ef. con- fusion in MSS between πηροῦν and πωροῦν in Job 177.