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  • From: "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: RE: [b-hebrew] Offend/dealt corruptly - chet bet lamed (nehemiah 1:7)
  • Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 19:36:47 -0500

Dear Karl,

If I were a vitner, I would like to have foxes around. Foxes don’t ruin vineyards, but they do hunt and catch things like mice, rats, moles and other things that do ruin vineyards. If I remember correctly, they even like to eat caterpillars. Foxes are also small, so the only human crops they threaten are newborn lambs and fowl.

I see this verse calling for holding onto the little foxes connected to (tied to) the vineyard as a way to protect the vineyard and help it flourish.

HH: But do you really know that foxes don't ruin vineyards? Here is a statement about foxes from a government web site, the government of Tasmania, which considers foxes a threat to the nation's agriculture:
http://www.dpiwe.tas.gov.au/inter.nsf/WebPages/LBUN-5K43KE?open

Impacts to Agriculture and Horticulture

The fox has an enormous impact on Australian agriculture. . . .

Horticultural enterprises such as vineyards experience losses of fruit to foxes, either as fruit eaten directly, or damaged bunches which are then unsaleable. Foxes also have an unusual habit of chewing on irrigation emitters such as plastic drippers, destroying thousands of dollars of irrigation infrastructure in this manner.

Here is some valuable information about the danger of foxes to vineyards in Asia provided by ancient Romans who wrote in Latin:
http://latinlinks.users.btopenworld.com/index.html

The vine branches are either allowed to lay upon the ground, or are raised up on forked sticks when the grape clusters begin to develop. Varro notes that this is the most economical form of vine culture, but that the harvest may be damaged by foxes and mice:-

"In vineyards where clusters rest on the ground, as in many areas of Asia,
foxes and men compete for the harvest. If the area is populated by mice,
the harvest is smaller unless the whole vineyard is filled with traps, as in
the island of Pandateria."

Columella, De Re Rustica 4.12, 16-17 & 19, provides similar information . . .
.

Someone writes about the menace that foxes present to vineyards in Israel today:
http://web.odu.edu/webroot/instr/sci/plant.nsf/pages/grape

Foxes are common in the Middle East where at least three different species occur. One species is so secretive that its presence in Israel was discovered only a few years ago! These sly creatures are usually nocturnal in their behavior. In parts of Galilee it is possible to hear them at night--their haunting howls coming from the forests and vineyards. Foxes are slight animals about the size of a small dog. Their agility is mentioned in Nehemiah 3 where Tobiah with sarcasm suggests that the lightest animal would break down the wall. They can climb up even the smallest vines and are still considered a menace in vineyards by modern farmers. . . .

I visited the large vineyards of a friend at Mamre near Hebron. It was in August, just as the grapes were beginning to ripen. The rains had stopped in April so the surrounding hills were dry and brown. The dry hills set the deep green of vines in relief. Some of the vines we examined were more than a century old with large gnarled stems contrasting with the delicate, well tended branches. If left unprotected, they are subject to being ravaged by animals (eg, Psalm 80: 13, Song of Solomon 2:15).

HH: Someone writes about Song 2:15:
http://www.biblicalexaminer.org/m19990523.htm

At the time this was written, vineyards had protective walls around them. The purpose of the walls was to keep out the animals that would harm the grapes. Foxes is a generic term, and includes jackals. These animals would not eat the flowers nor the vines, but only the fruit, the grapes. If the vineyard was not closely watched as the fruit came on, these animals would destroy the fruit of the vine.

HH: Another web site about foxes writes:
http://www.furry.de/suran/fox_db/Dusicyon_culpaeus.html

-Colpeo foxes penetrate plantations, vineyards, an orchard to find a diverse vegetarian diet.

HH: Another site adds:
www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/ doi/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2004.00225.x/full/ -

Gray foxes were only detected and striped skunks were primarily found in vineyards adjacent to continuous natural habitat

HH: Someone else writes:

As little foxes can ruin the vineyards by gnawing at the tender shoots, so the little problems that inevitably show up in a growing love relationship can ruin that relationship.

HH: Is it possible that foxes could burrow in vineyards, uprooting vines?

In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for fox is (pronounced) shoo-awl; it means burrower, from the fox trait of living in dug-out burrows. In the New Testament, the Greek word for fox is (pronounced) al-oh-pakes and means cunning. The so-called Syrian fox is the only fox native to the land of Israel.

HH: Palestine seems to have had a lot of foxes in Bible times:

"And Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took firebrands, and turned tail to tail, and put a firebrand in the midst between 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."

HH: Anyway, foxes can ruin vineyards.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard




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