lice Summary and Overview

(Heb. kinnim), the creatures employed in the third plague sent upon Egypt (Ex. 8:16-18). They were miraculously produced from the dust of the land. "The entomologists Kirby and Spence place these minute but disgusting insects in the very front rank of those which inflict injury upon man. A terrible list of examples they have collected of the ravages of this and closely allied parasitic pests." The plague of lice is referred to in Ps. 105:31. Some have supposed that the word denotes not lice properly, but gnats. Others, with greater probability, take it to mean the "tick" which is much larger than lice.

(Heb. cinnam, cinnim). this word occurs in the Authorized Version only in #Ex 8:16-18| and in #Ps 105:31| both of which passages have reference to the third great plague of Egypt. The Hebrew word has given occasion to whole pages of discussion. Some commentators, and indeed modern writers generally, suppose that gnats are the animals intended by the original word; while, on the other hand, the Jewish rabbis, Josephus and others, are in favor of the translation of the Authorized Version. Upon the whole it appears that there is not sufficient authority for departing from this translation. Late travellers (e.g. Sir Samuel Baker) describe the visitation of vermin in very similar terms: --"It is as though the very dust were turned into lice." The lice which he describes are a sort of tick, not larger than a grain of sand, which when filled with blood expand to the size of a hazel nut. --Canon Cook.

LICE . Ex 8:16. These parasitic insects are still a pest in the Nile valley. Herodotus tells us that the ancient Egyptians peculiarly abhorred such vermin, and were taught by their priests that contact with lice rendered them ceremonially unclean. Some authorities have held that gnats were here intended, but there is less ground for this opinion than for that of Sir S. W. Baker (Nile Tributaries, p. 122), which the writer's own observation inclines him to favor: "The louse that infects the human body and hair has no connection whatever with 'dust,' and if subject to a few hours' exposure to the dry heat of the burning sand it would shrivel and die; but the tick is an inhabitant of the dust -- a dry, horny insect without any apparent moisture in its composition. It lives in hot sand and dust, where it cannot possibly obtain nourishment until some wretched animal should lie down upon the spot and become covered with these horrible vermin. I have frequently seen dry places so infested with these ticks that the ground was perfectly alive with them, and it would have been impossible to have rested on the earth; in such spots the passage in Exodus has frequently occurred to me as bearing reference to these vermin, which are the greatest enemies to man and beast." These ticks are much larger than lice. The body is ordinarily about the size of a small pea; the legs are long, and the creature runs rapidly.

kinnim. (See EXODUS; EGYPT.) Mosquitoes, troublesome in Egypt toward October, soon after the plague of frogs, not only giving pain, but entering the body through the nostrils and ears; so Septuagint, Philo, and Origen. But mosquitoes' larvae are deposited in stagnant waters, whereas Exodus (Exodus 8:17) states "all the dust became lice throughout all the land of Egypt." Sir S. Baker writes similarly from experience, "it is as though the very dust were turned into lice"; a tick no larger than a grain of sand becomes swollen with blood to the size of a hazel nut. The Egyptian chenems (related to kinnim)), "mosquito," retained in the Coptic, favors the former. The Egyptian ken, "force," "plague," may apply to either view.