(2) Food. The goat 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 pro hibition, 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 orig inated partly in a desire to recommend abste miousness, which the legislators and moralists of the East have since invariably enforced with suc cess, and partly with a view to discountenance a practice which was connected with idolatrous fes tivals, and the rites they involved.
(3) Bottles. It is from goatskins that the leathern bottles to contain winc and other liquids are made in the Levant. For this purpose, after the head and feet are cut away, the case or hide is drawn off the carcass over the neck, without opening the belly; and the extremities being se cured, it is dried with the hair in or outside, ac cording to the use it is intended for. The old worn-out skins are liable to burst : hence the obvious propriety of putting new wine into new bottles (Matt. ix :r7).
Harmer appears to have rightly referred the allusion in Atnos :12 to the long-cared 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 Israel be taken out that dwell in Sa maria and Damascus.' C. H. S.
FiguratiVe. (1) Princes and great men are likened to he-goats (Jer. 1:8; Zech. x:3), (2) The Greeks, who were also called lEgeans— that is, goatish people—when banded under Alex ander the Great, are likened to a he-goat with one horn, that, without touching the earth, ran against, and trode down a pushing ram. Undcr their sovereign, they, with incredible speed, marched into Asia, and overthrew the Persian em pire (Dan. viii :5). (3) Devils and wicked men arc likened to goats (2 Chron. xi :15). (4) In Matt. xxv :32, 33, sheep and goats are used to rep resent the righteous and the wicked respectively. "The wicked are here conceived of under the fig ure of goats, not on account of the wantonness and stench of the latter (Grotius), or in conse quence of their stubbornness (Lange), but gener ally because these animals were considered to be comparatively worthless (Luke xv :29) ; and hence, in Matt. xxv :33, we have the diminutive ra Iplytna for the purpose of expressing contempt" (Meyer, COM., Matt. XXV :32, 33). •