Verse 16
16. The owl This is the ostrich, literally, the daughter of the howl, from its doleful cry. It is correctly translated in Lamentations 4:3. It is the largest of all known birds, and the swiftest of all cursorial animals. To capture one costs the lives of two horses. Its strength and voracity are enormous. From its habits of indiscriminately gulping down almost anything, even glass or stone, it is obviously unclean. Its cry by night, Tristram says, resembles the hoarse lowing of an ox in pain; others compare it to the roar of the lion.
The nighthawk The Hebrew tachmas, found only in Deuteronomy 14:15 and Isaiah 34:11, cannot with certainty be identified. The conjectures are, that it is the male ostrich, the swallow, and the owl. As the Seventy and the Vulgate agree in the last named bird, and since it is very common, with Tristram we adopt it as the true rendering.
The cuckoo There is no authority for this translation. The thachaph, leanness, is supposed to be a bird of the genus gull, probably the stormy petrel, commonly called Mother Carey’s chicken, which abounds in the Levant.
The hawk There are in Palestine several species of the falcon, most of which are summer visitors from the South. See Job 39:26. The smaller species are the kestrel and hobby. Of the larger kinds, the falco sacer is the most magnificent.
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