DEBORAH (Min, a bee). This insect be longs to the family apidre, order hymenoptera, species apis vrelli6ca, commonly called the honey bee, because this species has often yielded honey to man. The bee is one of the most generally diffused creatures on the globe, being found in every region. Its instincts, its industry, and the valuable product of its labours, have ob•. tanned for it universal attention from the remotest times. No nation upon earth has hail so many historians as this insect. The naturalist, agricul turist, and politician, have been led by a regard to science or interest to study its habits. Cicero and Pliny refer to one philosopher (Aristomachus) who devoted sixty years to it ; and another (Philiscus) is said to have retired to the desert to pursue his in quiries, and to have obtained, in consequence, the name of Agrius. [But what alone concerns us here is the place occupied by this insect in the Bible].
In proceeding to notice the principal passages of Scripture in which the bee is mentioned, we first pause at Deut. i. 44, where Moses alludes to the irresistible vengeance with which bees pursue their enemies: ' The Amorites came out against you and chased you as bees do, and destroyed you in Seir unto Hormah.' The powerlessness of man under the united attacks of these insects is well attested. Even in this country the stings of two exasperated hives have been known to kill a horse in a few minutes.
The reference to the bee contained in Judg. xiv. 8, has attracted the notice of most readers. It is related in the 5th and 6th verses that Sam son, aided by supernatural strength, rent a young lion, that warred against him, as he would have rent a kid, and that 'after a time,' as he returned to take his wife, he turned aside to see the carcase of the lion, 'and, behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcase of the lion.' It has been hastily concluded that this narrative favours the mistaken notion of the ancients, possibly derived from misunderstanding this very account, that bees might be engendered in the dead bodies of animals (Virgil, Georg. iv.); and ancient au
thors are quoted to testify to the aversion of bees to flesh, unpleasant smells, and filthy places. But it may readily be perceived that it is not said that .'he bees were bred in the body of the lion. Again, the frequently recurring phrase, 'after a time,' literally after days,' introduced into the text, proves that at least sufficient time had elapsed for all the flesh of the animal to have been removed by birds and beasts of prey, ants, etc. The Syriac version translates the bony carcase.' The learned Bochart remarks that the Hebrew phrase sometimes signifies a whole year, and in this passage it would seem likely to have this meaning, because such was the length of time which usually elapsed between espousal and marriage (see ver. 7). He refers to Gen. iv. 3 ; xxiv. 55 ; Lev. xxv. 29, 30 ; Juclg• xi. 4; comp. with ver. 40; I Sam. i. 3 ; comp. with vers. 7, 20 ; and I Sam. ii. ig ; and I Sam. xxvii. 7. The circumstance that honey' was found in the carcase as well as bees, chews that sufficient time had elapsed since their possession of it, for all the flesh to be removed. Nor is such an abode for bees, probably in the skull or thorax, more unsuitable than a hollow in a rock, or in a tree, or in the ground, in which we know they often reside, or those clay nests which they build for themselves in Brazil. Nor is the fact without parallel. Herodotus (v. 114) relates that a swarm of bees took up their abode in the skull of one Silius, an ancient invader of Cyprus, which they filled with honeycombs, after the inhabitants had suspended it over the gate of their city. A similar story is told by Aldrovandus (De Insectis, lib. 1. p. sso) of some bees that inhabited and built their combs in a human skeleton in a tomb in a church at Verona.
The phrase in Ps. cxviii. 12, They compassed me about like bees,' will be readily understood by those who know the manner in which bees attack the object of their fury.