CHAZIR in Arabic chizron ; Sept. 5s). Occurs in Lev. xi. 7 ; Dent. xiv. 8 ; Ps. Lxxx. 13 ; Prov. xi. 22 ; Is. lxv. ¢ ; lxvi. 3, 17.
The Hebrew, Egyptian, Arabian, Phoenician, and other neighbouring nations abstained from hog's flesh, and consequently, excepting in Egypt, and (at a later period) beyond the Sea of Galilee, no domesticated swine were reared. In Egypt, where swineherds were treated as the lowest of men, even to a denial of admission into the temples, and where to have been touched by a swine defiled the person nearly as much as it did a Hebrew, it is difficult to conjecture for what purpose these animals were kept so abundantly, as it appears by the monumental pictures they were ; for the mere service of treading down seed in the deposited mud of the Nile when the inundation subsided, the only purpose alleged, cannot be admitted as a sufficient explanation of the fact. Although in Palestine, Syria, and Phoenicia, hogs were rarely domesticated, wild boars are often mentioned in the Scriptures, and they were frequent in the time of the Crusades; for Richard Cceur-de-Lion encountered one of vast size, ran it through with his lance, and while the animal was still endeavouring to gore his horse, he leaped over its back, and slew it with his sword.
At present wild boars frequent the marshes of the Delta, and are not uncommon on Mount Carmel, and in the valley of Ajalah. They are abun dant about the sources of the Jordan, and lower down, where the river enters the Dead Sea. The Koords and other wandering tribes of Mesopo tamia, and on the banks of both the great rivers, hunt and eat the wild boar, and it may be suspected that the half-human satyrs they pretend sometimes to kill in the chase, derive their cloven-footed hind quarters from wild boars, and offer a con venient mode of concealing from the women and public that the nutritive flesh they bring home is a luxury forbidden by their law.—C. H. S.