crane Summary and Overview

(Isa. 38:14; Jer. 8:7). In both of these passages the Authorized Version has reversed the Hebrew order of the words. "Crane or swallow" should be "swallow or crane," as in the Revised Version. The rendering is there correct. The Hebrew for crane is "'agur", the Grus cincerea, a bird well known in Israel. It is migratory, and is distinguished by its loud voice, its cry being hoarse and melancholy.

The crane (Grus cinerea) is a native of Europe and Asia. It stand about four feet high. Its color is ashen gray, with face and neck nearly black. It feeds on seeds, roots, insects and small quadrupeds. It retires in winter to the warmer climates. #Jer 8:7|

CRANE , next to the ostrich, the largest bird found in the Holy Land, measuring 4 feet in height and 7 feet from tip to tip of its extended wings. The crane (Grus cinerea) feeds upon frogs, fish, worms, insects, and sometimes vegetable substances. When upon the wing it is always noisy, and its cry is hoarse and melancholy; hence the allusion of Isa 38:14. These birds return in the spring with great regularity from their migrations, and flocks of thousands pass over Palestine. Jer 8:7.

Isaiah 38:14, "like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter" (rather "twitter"); rather "like a swallow or a crane": sus 'agur. A plaintive and migratory (Jeremiah 8:7) bird is implied by sus; Italian zisilla, "swallow." Gesenius takes gahur as an epithet, "like the circling swallow." Thirteen manuscripts of Kennicott read isis for sus or sis; that goddess having been, according to Egyptian fable, changed into a swallow; a fable transferred to the Greek mythology, in the story of Procne.