Mr.Gladstone and Genesis

It has been objected to my argument from Leviticus (suprà p. 170) that the Hebrew words translated by “creeping things” in Genesis i. 24 and Leviticus xi. 29, are different; namely, “reh-mes” in the former, “sheh-retz” in the latter. The obvious reply to this objection is that the question is not one of words but of the meaning of words. To borrow an illustration from our own language, if “crawling things” had been used by the translators in Genesis and “creeping things” in Leviticus, it would not have been necessarily implied that they intended to denote different groups of animals. “Sheh-retz” is employed in a wider sense than “reh-mes. ” There are “sheh-retz” of the waters of the earth, of the air, and of the land. Leviticus speaks of land reptiles, among other animals, as “sheh-retz”; Genesis speaks of all creeping land animals, among which land reptiles are necessarily included, as “reh-mes. ” Our translators, therefore, have given the true sense when they render both “sheh-retz” and “reh-mes” by “creeping things