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HUNTING
Practice of tracking and pursuing animals for food, animal products, or sport—a practice as old as man. In Bible times hunting was practiced all over the biblical world. Genesis 10:9 refers to a certain Nimrod who was “a mighty hunter in the Lord’s sight” (NLT); this was long before the patriarchs. In earliest human history hunting was an essential means of obtaining food, clothing, and tools, and even when civilization developed, hunting provided supplemental food for an agricultural diet.
In lands surrounding Israel, hunting is well represented in paintings and bas-reliefs. In ancient Egypt, hunting became a sport, and Egyptians hunted for game and birds often with the help of dogs and cats. Wild game was driven by dogs or humans into enclosures or toward pits and traps. Similarly, in Mesopotamia, hunting was widely practiced, as is evident from many bas-reliefs depicting stags and deer caught in nets. In Assyria wild animals, like lions, were commonly hunted. The bas-reliefs of Nineveh provide many fine pictures of the hunter’s skill.
Palestine was a land where hunting was practiced very early. This is clear from the bones of hunted animals found in the excavation of early sites. Certainly by the middle Bronze Age (c. 1800–1500 BC), which approximates the patriarchal age, hunting was widely practiced. The reference to Esau as a skillful hunter (Gn 25:27) would be typical of a time when both agricultural and hunting pursuits were followed. The Egyptian “Tale of Sinuhe”, from the 20th century BC, mentions hunting with hounds.
The Bible text gives a number of glimpses into the kinds of birds and animals that were hunted. Lists of animals that were “clean” are provided in Deuteronomy 14:4-6. An interesting variety of animals was available to the people of Israel; many were domestic, but there was a variety of wild animals to test the ingenuity of the hunter: the goat, the hare, the gazelle, the roebuck (cf. 1 Kgs 4:23), the wild goat, the ibex, the antelope, and the mountain sheep. In every case the blood of the animal had to be poured out. There was a proverb current in Israel about a slothful man who caught no prey—or if he catches it, doesn’t cook it (Prv 12:27).
Some passages in the OT record the killing of animals in self-protection (Jgs 14:6; 1 Sm 17:34-37; 2 Sm 23:20). Shepherds normally carried a club and a sling to protect their flocks from marauding beasts (1 Sm 17:40; Ps 23:4).
A variety of birds was hunted, as for example, the partridge referred to in 1 Samuel 26:20 (cf. Dt 14:11-18). There are references also to some of the devices used in hunting: bows and arrows (Gn 27:3), clubs (Jb 41:29), sling stones (1 Sm 17:40), nets (Jb 19:6), fowlers’ snares (Ps 91:3), camouflaged pits (Pss 7:15; 35:7; Prv 22:14; 26:27; Is 24:17-18). Of the traps mentioned in the Bible one seems to have been an automatic device (Am 3:5) that would spring up from the ground when an animal touched it (cf. Ps 69:22; Hos 9:8) or when the fowler pulled a cord (Ps 140:5; Jer 5:26). The method of driving animals into a trap seems to be referred to in Jeremiah 16:16 and Ezekiel 19:8.