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Wild Goat of Sinai.
In Deut. xiv, 5, "ipX, akho is translated "wild goat." Schultens {Origines IlebraicaP) conjectures that the name arose from its shyness, and Dr. Harris points out what he takes to be a confirmation of this conjecture in Shaw's travels, who, from the translations of the Sept. and Vulgate, makes it a goat-deer or tragela- phus, under a mistaken view of the classification and habitat of that animal. AJcko, therefore, if it be not a second name of the zemcr, which we refer to the kebsh, or wild sheep [see Chajiois], as the species must be sought among ruminants that were accessible for food to the Hebrews, we should be inclined to view as the name of one of the gazelles, proliably tlie ahu (.1 lit. Suhfjutiurnsd), unless the Abj-ssinian ibex (Copra Walie) had formerly extended into Arabia, and it could be shown that it is a distinct sijecies.- — Kitto. See Wild Goat.
From very remote antiquity goats have formed an im- portant part of pastoral wealth in the East. They are not mentioned bj^ name in the enumeration of Abram's possessions ((ien. xii, IC), nor in those of Job (Job i, 3 ; xlii, 12); liut perhaps they are included under the ge- neric term of " flocks," which Lot (Gen. xiii, 5), and, a fortiori, Abram possessed ; and a she-goat formed part of the sacrifice offered by Abi-am on the occasion of the promise of Isaac (Gen. xv, 9). In the account of the miraculous increase of Jacob's cattle (Gen. xxxi, 10, 1"2) we find goats conspicuously mentioned. Their milk has always constituted an important article of food in Palestine (Kitto, Pict. Palestine, ii, 304). — Fair- bairn. Goats were extensively reared among the Is- raelites (Lev. iii, 12 ; ix, 15 ; Exod. xii, 5, etc.) ; their milk was used as food (Prov. xxvii, 27); their flesh was eaten (Deut. xiv, 4 ; Gen. xxvii, 9) ; their hair wa.s used for the curtains of the tabernacle (Exod. xxvi, 7; xxxvi, 14) and for stuffing bolsters (1 Sam. xix, 13) ; their skins were sometimes used as clothing (Hel>. xi, 37). — Smith. Notwithstanding the offensive lasciviousness which causes it to be significantlj' sep-
arated from sheep, the goat was employed by the peo- ple of Israel in many respects as their representative. It was a pure animal for sacrifice (Exod. xii, 5), and a kid might be substituted as equivalent to a lamb : it formed a principal part of the Hebrew flocks, and both the milk and the young kids were daily articles of food. Among the poorer and more sober shepherd families, the slaughter of a kid was a token of hospitality to strangers, or of unusual festivity ; and the prohibition, thrice repeated in the Mosaic law, " not to seethe a kid in its mother's milk" (Exod. xxiii, 19 ; xxxiv, 26 ; and Deut. xiv, 21), may have originated partly in a desire to recommend abstemiousness, which the legislators and moralists of the East have since invariably en- forced v.'ith success, and partly with a view to discoun- tenance a practice which was connected with idola- trous festivals, and the rites they involved. It is from goatskins that the leathern bottles to contain wine and other liquids are made in the Levant. For this pur- pose, after the head and feet are cut away, the case or hide is drawn off the carcass over the neck, \\ ithout opening the belly; and the extremities being secured, it is dried with the hair in or outside, according to the use it is intended for. The old worn-out skins are lia- ble to burst : hence the obvious propriety of putting new wine into new bottles (Matt, ix, 17). Harmer {Ohs. iv, 1C2) appears to have rightly referred the al- lusion in Amos iii, 12 to the long-eared race of goats : " As the shepherd taketh out of the mouth of the lion two legs or a piece of ear, so shall the children of Is- rael be taken out that dwell in Samaria and Damas- cus."-— Kitto. The passage in Cant, iv, 1, which com- pares the hair of the beloved to "a flock of goats that eat of Mount Gilead," probabl}' alludes to the fine hair of the Angora breed. In Prov. xxx, 31, a he-goat is mentioned as one of the "four things which are comelj' in going ;" in allusion, probably, to the statel}' march of the leader of the flock, which was always associated in the minds of the Hebrews with the notion of digni- ty'. Hence the metaphor in Isa. xiv, 9, " all the chief ones (margin, "great goats") of the earth." So the Alexandrine version of the Sept. understands the allu- sion Kcd TpayoQ j'lyovpti'OQ citTroXiov (comp. Tlieocr. Id. viii, 49 ; Virgil, £cL vii, 7). — Smith. Goats, from their offensiveness, mischievous and libidinous dispo- sition, etc., are symbols of the wicked, who are, at the day of judgment, to be finallj' separated from the good (Matt. XXV, S3).- — Wemj'ss. See Sheep.
From Lev. xvii, 7, it appears that the rebellious He- brews, while in the desert, fell into the idolatrous wor- ship of the he-goat (rendered ^'■dcvi's," comp. 2 Chron. xi,15), after the example of the Egyptians, under whose influences thej- had grown up. Herodotus says (i, 40) that at Mendes, in Lower Egypt, both the male and female goat were worshipped ; that the god Pan had the face and thighs of a goat ; not that the}' believed him to be of this figure, but because it had I'een cus- tomary to represent him thus. They paid divine hon- ors, also, to real goats, as appears in the table of Isis. The Suirim ("wild beasts") of Isa. xiii, 21 were, ac- cording to the popular notion, supposed to be wild men [see Ape] in the form of he-goats, living in un- frequented, solitary places, and represented as dancing and calling to each other. — Calmet. See Spectre.