Passages in which the word Epheh occurs—El-effah—The Sand Viper, or Toxicoa —Its appearance and habits—The Acshub—Adder's, poison—The Spuugh Slange—The Cockatrice, or Tsepha—The Yellow Viper—Ancient ideas concerning the Cockatrice—Power of its venom.
WE now come to the species of snake which cannot be identified with any certainty, and will first take the word epheh, which is curiously like to the Greek ophis. From the context of the three passages in which it occurs, it is evidently a specific, and not a collective name, but we are left in Much doubt as to the precise species which is intended by it. The first of those passages occurs in Job 20:1616He shall suck the poison of asps: the viper's tongue shall slay him. (Job 20:16): “The viper's (epheh) tongue shall slay him." The second is found in Isa. 30:66The burden of the beasts of the south: into the land of trouble and anguish, from whence come the young and old lion, the viper and fiery flying serpent, they will carry their riches upon the shoulders of young asses, and their treasures upon the bunches of camels, to a people that shall not profit them. (Isaiah 30:6): "The burden of the beasts of the south: into the land of trouble and anguish, from whence come the young and old lion, the viper (epheh) and fiery flying serpent."The last of there passages occurs in ch. 59:5 of the same book: “That which is crushed breaketh out into a viper" (epheh).
The reader will see that in neither of those passages have we the least intimation as to the particular species which is signified by the word epheh, and the only collateral evidence which we have on the subject fails exactly in the most important point. We are told by Shaw that in Northern Africa there is a small snake, the most poisonous of its tribe, which is called by the name of El-effah, a word which is absolutely identical with the Epheh of the Old Testament. But, as he does not identify the effah, except by saying that it rarely exceeds a foot in length, we gain little by its discovery.
Mr Tristram believes that he has identified the Epheh of the Old Testament with the Sand-Viper, or Toxicoa (Echis ar enicola). This reptile, though very small, and scarcely exceeding a foot in length, is a dangerous one, though its bite is not so deadly as that of the cobra or cerastes. It is variable in color, but has angular white streaks on its body, and a row of whitish spots along the back. The top of the head is dark, and variegated with arrow-shaped white marks.
The Toxicoa is very plentiful in Northern Africa, Palestine, Syria, and the neighboring countries, and, as it is exceedingly active, is held in some dread by the natives. The Toxicoa is closely allied to the dreaded Horatta-pam snake of India (Echis carinata).
The old Hebraists can make nothing of the word, but it is not unlikely that a further and fuller investigation of the ophiology of Northern Africa may succeed where mere scholarship unallied with zoological knowledge, has failed.
THE next word is acshub (pronounced ăk-shoob). It only occurs in one passage, namely Psa. 140:33They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent; adders' poison is under their lips. Selah. (Psalm 140:3): “They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent (nachash,); adder's (acshub) poison is under their lips."The precise species representad by this word is unknown. Buxtorf, however, explains the word as the Spitter, “illud genus quod venenum procul exspuit." Now, if we accept this derivation, we must take the word acshub as a synonym for pethen. We have already identified the Pethen with the Naja haje, a snake which has the power of expelling the poison to some distance, when it is out of reach of its enemy. Whether the snake really intends to eject the poison, or whether it is merely flung from the hollow fangs by the force of the suddenly-checked stroke, is uncertain. That the Haje cobra can expel its poison is an acknowledged fact, and the Dutch colonists of the Cape have been so familiarly acquainted with this habit, that they have called this reptile by the name of Spuugh-Slange, or Spitting Snake, a name which, if we accept Buxtorf 's etymology, is precisely equivalent to the word acshub.
ANOTHER name of a poisonous snake occurs several times in the Old Testament. The word is tsepha, or tsiphôni, and it is sometimes translated as Adder, and sometimes as Cockatrice. The word is rendered as Adder in Prov. 23:3232At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. (Proverbs 23:32), where it is said that wine “biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder." Even in this case, however, the word is rendered as Cockatrice in the marginal translation.
It is found three times in the Book of Isaiah. Chapter 11:8: "The weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den." Also, ch. 14:29: "Rejoice not thou, whole Palestine, because the rod of him that smote thee is broken: for out of the serpent's (nachash) nest shall come forth a cockatrice (tsepha), and his fruit shell be a fiery flying serpent." The same word occurs again in ch. 59:5: "They hatch cockatrice' eggs." In the prophet Jeremiah we again find the word: "For, behold, I will send serpents, cockatrices among you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you, saith the Lord.”
This last passage gives us a little, but not much, assistance in identifying the Tsepha. We learn by it that the Tsepha was one of the serpents that were not subject to charmers, and so we are able to say that it was neither the cobra, which we have identified with the Pethen of Scripture, nor the Cerastes or Horned Snake, which has been shown to be the Shephiphon. Our evidence is therefore only of a negative character, and the only positive evidence is that which may be inferred from the passage in Isa. 14:2929Rejoice not thou, whole Palestina, because the rod of him that smote thee is broken: for out of the serpent's root shall come forth a cockatrice, and his fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent. (Isaiah 14:29), where the Tsepha is evidently thought to be more venomous than the ordinary serpent or Nachash.
Mr. Tristram suggests that the Tsepha of Scripture may possibly be the Yellow Viper (Daboia xanthica), which is one of the largest and most venomous of the poisonous serpents which are found in Palestine, and which is the more dangerous on account of its nocturnal habits. This snake is one of the Katukas, and is closely allied to the dreaded Tic-polonga of Ceylon, a serpent which is so deadly, and so given to infesting houses, that one of the judges was actually driven out of his official residence by it.
As to the old ideas respecting the origin of the Cockatrice, a very few words will suffice for them. This serpent was thought to be produced from an egg laid by a cock and hatched by a viper. "For they say," writes Topsel, "that when a cock groweth old, he layeth a certain egge without any shell, instead whereof it is covered with a very thick skin, which is able to withstand the greatest force of an easy blow or fall. They say moreover that this Egge is laid only in the summer time, about the beginning Dog days, being not so long as a Hen's Egge, but round and orbicular. Sometimes of a dirty, sometimes of a boxy, and sometimes of yellowish muddy color, which Egge, afterward sat upon by a Snake or a Toad, bringeth forth the Cockatrice, being half a foot in length, the hinder part like a Snake, the former part like a Cock, because of a treble combe on his forehead.
“But the vulgar opinion of Europe is, that the Egge is nourished by a Toad, and not by a Snake; howbeit in better experience it found that the Cock doth sit en that Egge himself: whereof Serianus Semnius in his twelfth book of the Hidden Animals of Nature hath this discourse, in the fourth chapter thereof. There happened,' saith he, within our memory, in the city of Pirizæa, that there were two old Cocks which had laid Egges, and the common people (because of opinion that those Egges would engender Cockatrices) labored by all means possible to keep the sane Cocks from sitting on those Egges, but they could not with clubs and staves drive them from the Egges, until they were forced to break the Egges in sunder, and strangle the Cocks.”
In this curious history it is easy to see the origin of the notion respecting the birth of the Cockatrice. It is well known that hens, after they have reached an advanced age, assume much of the plumage and voice of the male Bird. Still, that one of them should occasionally lay an egg is no great matter of wonder, and, as the egg would be naturally deposited in a retired and sheltered spot, such as would be the favored haunts of the warmth-loving snake, the ignorant public might easily put together a legend which, absurd in itself, is yet founded on facts. The small shell-less egg, so often laid by poultry, is familiar to everyone who has kept fowls.
Around this reptile a wonderful variety of legends have been accumulated. The Cockatrice was said to kill by its very look, "because the beams of the Cockatrice's eyes do corrupt the visible spirit of a man, which visible spirit corrupted all the other spirits coming from the brain and life of the heart, are thereby corrupted, and so the man dieth.”
The subtle poison of the Cockatrice infected everything near it, so that a man who killed a Cockatrice with a spear fell dead himself, by reason of the poison darting up the shaft of the spear and passing into his hand. Any living thing near which the Cockatrice passed was instantly slain by the fiery heat of its venom, which was exhaled not only from its mouth, but its sides. For the old writers, whose statements are here summarized, contrived to jumble together a number of miscellaneous facts in natural history, and so to produce a most extraordinary series of legends. We have already seen the real origin of the legend respecting the egg from which the Cockatrice was supposed to spring, and we may here see that some one of these old writers has in his mind some uncertain floating idea of the respiratory orifices of the lamprey, and has engrafted them on the Cockatrice.
“To conclude," writes Topsel, "this poison infecteth the air, and the air so infected killeth ah living things, and likewise all green things, fruits, and plants of the earth: it burneth up the grasse whereupon it goeth or creepeth, and the fowls of the air fall down dead when they come near his den or lodging. Some-times he biteth a Man or a Beast, and by that wound the bloud turneth into choler, and so the whole body becometh yellow as gold, presently killing all who touch it or come near it.”
I should not have given even this limited space to such puerile legends, but for the fact that such stories as these were fully believed in the days when the Authorized Version of the Bible was translated. The ludicrous tales which have been occasionally mentioned formed the staple of zoological knowledge, and an untraveled Englishman had no possible means of learning the history of foreign animals, except from such books which have been quoted, and which were in those days the standard works on Natural History. The translators of the Bible believed most heartily in the mysterious and baleful reptile, and, as they saw that the Tsepha of Scripture was an exceptionally venomous serpent, they naturally rendered it by the word Cockatrice.