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•MOUSE Hebrews ‘akhbar, “swift digger”), properly the dormouse, the field-mouse (1 Samuel 6:4). In Leviticus 11:29, Isaiah 66:17 this word is used generically, and includes the jerboa (Mus jaculus), rat, hamster (Cricetus), which, though declared to be unclean animals, were eaten by the Arabs, and are still eaten by the Bedouins. It is said that no fewer than twenty-three species of this group (‘akhbar=Arab. ferah) of animals inhabit Palestine. God “laid waste” the people of Ashdod by the terrible visitation of field-mice, which are like locusts in their destructive effects (1 Samuel 6:4, 11, 18). Herodotus, the Greek historian, accounts for the destruction of the army of Sennacherib (2 Kings 19:35) by saying that in the night thousands of mice invaded the camp and gnawed through the bow-strings, quivers, and shields, and thus left the Assyrians helpless. (See SENNACHERIB.)
•MOWING (Hebrews gez), rendered in Psalm 72:6 “mown grass.” The expression “king’s mowings” (Amos 7:1) refers to some royal right of early pasturage, the first crop of grass for the cavalry (comp. 1 Kings 18:5).
•MOZA a going forth. (1.) One of the sons of Caleb (1 Chronicles 2:46).
(2.) The son of Zimri, of the posterity of Saul (1 Chronicles 8:36, 37; 9:42,
43).
•MOZAH an issuing of water, a city of Benjamin (Joshua 18:26).
•MUFFLERS (Isaiah 3:19), veils, light and tremulous. Margin, “spangled ornaments.”
•MULBERRY Hebrews bakah, “to weep;” rendered “Baca” (R.V., “weeping”) in Psalm 84:6. The plural form of the Hebrew bekaim is rendered “mulberry trees” in 2 Samuel 5:23, 24 and 1 Chronicles 14:14, 15. The tree here alluded to was probably the aspen or trembling poplar. “We know with certainty that the black poplar, the aspen, and the Lombardy poplar grew in Palestine. The aspen, whose long leaf-stalks cause the leaves to tremble with every breath of wind, unites with the willow and