The Snail which melteth—Rendering of the Jewish Bible—Theory respecting the track of the Snail—The Hebrew word Shablul—Various Snails of Palestine.
THERE is a very remarkable and not very intelligible passage in Psa. 58:88As a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass away: like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun. (Psalm 58:8): “As a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass away." The Jewish Bible renders the passage in a way which explains the idea which evidently prevailed at the time when the Psalms were composed: “As a snail let him melt as he passeth on.”
The ancients had an idea that the slimy track made by a Snail as it crawled along was subtracted from the substance of its body, and that in consequence the farther it crept, the smaller it became, until at last it wasted entirely away. The commentators on the Talmud took this view of the case. The Hebrew word shablul, which undoubtedly does signify a Snail of some kind, is thus explained: "The Shablul is a creeping thing: when it comes out of its shell, saliva pours from itself, until it becomes liquid, and so dies.”
Other explanations of this passage have been offered, but there is no doubt that the view taken by these commentators is the correct one, and that the Psalmist, when he wrote the terrible series of denunciations in which the passage in question occurs, had in his mind the popular belief regarding the gradual wasting away of the Snail as it "passeth on.”
It is needless to say that no particular species of Snail is mentioned, and almost as needless to state that in Palestine there are many species of Snails, to any or all of which these words are equally applicable.