Note 1009 — Chapter XXXVIII · ROD NOT EMPLOYED IN SPITE OF CLOSE INTERCOURSE WITH EGYPT— REASONS SUGGESTED FOR ABSENCE

After acknowledging (Notes and Queries, Dec. 2, 1916) that there is no mention in either Old or New Testament of a Rod, Mr. Breslar goes on, “Yet there are places such as Job xl. 31 (xli. 7) where the Hebrew words are translated barbed irons and fish spears, and in Job xl. 26 (xli. 2) a thorn. A fishing-rod in the modern sense no one could reasonably demand, though I opine that in agmoun (Isaiah lviii. 5), used in that sense in Job xl. 26, we have the nucleus of one.” Mr. Breslar is evidently not aware or does not realise that fish spears, bidents, etc., were of the earliest weapons of fishing, long anterior to the Rod, and that these are the weapons referred to in Job. A reference to the Jewish Encyclopædia edited by Isidore Singer, would have shown him that ẓilẓal dagim in Job xli. 7 was in all probability a harpoon. Then, “that this phrase (Klei metzooda) or a similar one is not found in the Bible is merely an accidental omission like, I believe, that of the name of Jehovah from the Book of Esther.” This is hardly helpful: let us grant that the omission of a name from a short book like Esther was an accident. How can this be “like” the omission of all mention of or allusion to the Rod in the vast literature of the Old and New Testaments and of the Talmud, especially when we find in all three numerous passages dealing with fishing and the tackle employed for fishing?