KIPPOD (Icip-p&V),(Heb. tcp, kifi-fioa'e'). This name occurs but three times in Scripture ( Is. xiv: 23; xxxivoi; and Zeph. ii:14), and has been vari ously interpreted—owl, osprey, tortoise, porcupine, otter, and in the Arabic, bustard.
(1) Various Translations. Now, in Is. xiv: 23, 'I will make it a possession for the kippod (bittern), and pools of water,' etc., the words are plain and natural. Marshes and pools are not the habitation of hedgehogs, for they shun water.
(2) Bittern. In Is. xxxiv I, it is said, 'The cormorant (Sterna caspia) and kippod (bittern) shall possess it, the owl also and the raven shall dwell in it,' etc.; that is, in the ruins of Idumma. Here, again, the version is plain, and a hedgehog most surely would be out of place. Zeph. 'Both the cormorant (Sterna easpia) and the kip pod (bittern) shall lodge in the upper lintels of it ; and their voice shall sing in the windows,' etc. Surely here kippod cannot mean the hedgehog. a nocturnal, groveling, worm-eating animal, en tirely or nearly mute, and incapable of climbing up walls ; one that does not haunt ruins, but earthy banks in wooded regions, and .that is ab solutely solitary in its habits. The Arabian bustard, Otis houbara, might be selected, if it were not that bustards keep always in dry deserts and uplands, and that they never roost, their feet not admitting of perching, but rest on the ground.
(3) Heron. We think the term most applicable to the hcron tribes, whose beaks are formidable spikes that often kill hawks; a fact well known to Eastern hunters. Of these Nycticorax Eu roficrus, or common night heron, with its pencil of white feathers in the crest, is a species, not uncommon in the marshes of Wrestern Asia ; and of several species of bittern, Ardea (6otaitrus) stellaris has pointed long feathers on the neck and breast, freckled with black, and a strong pointed bill.
After the breeding season it migrates and passes the winter in the south, frequenting the marshes and rivers of Asia and Europe, where it then roosts high above ground, uttering a curious note before and after its evening flight, very distinct from the booming sound produced by it in the breeding season, and while it remains in the marshes. Though not building, like the stork, on the tops of houses, it resorts, like the heron, to ruined structures, and we have been informed that it has been seen on the summit of Tauk Kesra at Ctesiphon. (See BITTERN; HERON, etc.).
C. H. S.
KIR (kir), (Heb. keer, fortress), a people and country subject to the Assyrian empire, to which the conquered Damascenes were trans planted (2 Kings xvi:o; Is. xxii:6; Amos i:5), and whither also the Aramceans in the east of Syria once wandered (Amos ix:7).
This is supposed by Major Rennel to be the same country which still bears the name of distan or Kourdistan (Geog. of lierodot.39t). Objections. There are, however, objections to this view, which do not apply so strongly to the notion of Rosenmtiller and others, that it was a tract on the river Cyrus, or rather Kuros (Kipos and in Zend Koro, which rises in the mountains between the Euxine and Caspian Seas, and runs into the latter after being joined by the Araxes. Gurjistan, or Grusia (Grusiana), commonly called Georgia, seems also to have derived its name from this river Kur, which flows through it. Furrer's identification with the district Cyrrhestica, northwest of Antioch, lacks proof.