HKB
supported on two sticks, and, taking a lantern with them fastened to the top of a pole, they sally out at night to the places where the small birds sleep.
Raising the net on its sticks, they lift it to the requisite height, and hold the lantern exactly opposite to it, so as to place the net between the birds and the lantern. The roosting-places are then beaten with sticks or pelted with stones, so as to awaken the sleeping birds. Startled by the sudden noise, they dash from their roosts, instinctively make towards the light, and so fall into the net. Bird-catching with nets is several times mentioned in the Old Testament, but in the New the net is only alluded to as used for taking fish.
Beside the net, several other modes of bird-catching were used by the ancient Jews, just as is the case at the present day. Boys, for example, who catch birds for their own consumption, and not for the market, can do so by means of various traps, most of which are made on the principle of the noose, or snare. Sometimes a great number of hair-nooses are set in places to which the birds are decoyed, so that in hopping about many of them are sure to become entangled in the snares. Sometimes the noose is ingeniously suspended in a narrow passage which the birds are likely to traverse, and sometimes a simple fall-trap is employed.
We now pass to another division of the subject. In Ps. lxxxiv. 1-3, we come upon a passage in which the Sparrow is again mentioned: "How amiable are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts!
"My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.
"Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even Thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my King, and my God."
It is evident that we have in this passage a different bird from the Sparrow that sitteth alone upon the house-tops; and though the same word, tzippor, is used in both cases, it is clear that whereas the former bird was mentioned as an emblem of sorrow, solitude, and sadness, the latter is brought forward as an image of joy and happiness. "Blessed are they," proceeds the Psalmist, "that dwell in Thy house: they will be still praising Thee.... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness."
According to Mr. Tristram, this is probably one of the species to which allusion is made by the Psalmist. While inspecting the ruins in the neighbourhood of the Temple, he came upon an old wall. "Near this gate I climbed on to the top of the wall, and walked along for some time, enjoying the fine view at the gorge of the Kedron, with its harvest crop of little white tombs. In a chink I discovered a sparrow's nest (Passer cisalpinus, var.) of a species so closely allied to our own that it is difficult to distinguish it, one of the very kind of which the Psalmist sung.... The swallows had departed for the winter, but the sparrow has remained pertinaciously through all the sieges and changes of Jerusalem."