Mouse; Mice

mous, mis (`akhbar; Septuagint mus, "mouse"; compare Arabic `akbar, "jerboa" not 'akbar, "greater"; compare also proper noun, `akhbor, "Achbor" (Ge 36:38 f; 1Ch 1:49; also 2Ki 22:12,14; Jer 26:22; 36:12)): The word occurs in the list of unclean "creeping things" (Le 11:29), in the account of the golden mice and tumors (the King James Version and the American Revised Version margin "emerods") sent by the Philistines (1Sa 6:4-18), and in the phrase, "eating swine's flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse" (Isa 66:17). The cosmopolitan housemouse, Mus musculus, is doubtless the species referred to. The jerboa or jumping mouse, Arabic yarbu, is eaten by the Arabs of the Syrian desert, Northeast of Damascus. Possibly allied to `akhbar is the Arabic `akbar (generally in plural, `akabir), used for the male of the jerboa.

Alfred Ely Day