Snail

1. Hebrew: homit

   among the unclean creeping things (Lev. 11:30). This was probably the sand-lizard, of which there are many species in the wilderness of Judea and the Sinai peninsula.

2. Hebrew: shablul

   (Ps. 58:8), the snail or slug proper

   Tristram explains the allusions of this passage by a reference to the heat and drought by which the moisture of the snail is evaporated.

   “We find,” he says, “in all parts of the Holy Land myriads of snail-shells in fissures still adhering by the calcareous exudation round their orifice to the surface of the rock, but the animal of which is utterly shrivelled and wasted, ‘melted away’.”