Reference: Kite
American
A bird of prey, and therefore placed by Moses among the unclean birds,
Le 11:14. See BIRDS.
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Easton
an unclean and keen-sighted bird of prey (Le 11:14; De 14:13). The Hebrew word used, 'ayet, is rendered "vulture" in Job 28:7 in Authorized Version, "falcon" in Revised Version. It is probably the red kite (Milvus regalis), a bird of piercing sight and of soaring habits found all over Palestine.
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Fausets
ayyah (Le 11:14). The red kite, Milvus regalis, remarkable for its sharp sight (Job 28:7, where for "vulture" translated "kite," 'ayyah even its eye fails to penetrate the miner's hidden "path"; De 14:13). From an Arabic root "to turn," the kite sailing in circles guided by the rudder-like tail. The phrase "after its kind" implies that a genus or class of birds, not merely one individual, is meant. The bony orbits of the eye and the eye itself are especially large in proportion to the skull, in all the Raptores. The sclerotic plates enclose the eye as in a hoop, in the form of a goblet with a trumpet rim; by this the eye becomes a self-adjusting telescope to discern near or far objects. Hence, when a beast dies in a wilderness, in a very short time kites and vultures, invisible before to man, swoop in spiral circles from all quarters toward it.
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Morish
ayyah. There are several species of the kite which feed upon small birds, mice, reptiles, and fish. It was forbidden to the Israelites for food. Le 11:14; De 14:13. The same Hebrew word is translated 'vulture' in '/Job/28/7/type/am'>Job 28:7, 'falcon' in the R.V. It is only distinguished in scripture for its keenness of vision, but this characteristic would apply to many different birds. The common kite is the Milvus regalis.
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Smith
(Heb. ayyah), a rapacious and keen-sighted bird of prey belonging to the hawk family. The Hebrew word thus rendered occurs in three passages --
In the two former it is translated "kite" in the Authorized Version, in the latter "vulture." It is enumerated among the twenty names of birds mentioned in
De 14:1
... which were considered unclean by the Mosaic law and forbidden to be used as food by the Israelites.
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Watsons
KITE, ???, Le 11:14; De 14:13; Job 28:7. Bochart supposes this to be the bird which the Arabians call the ja-jao, from its note; and which the ancients named aesalon, "the merlin," a bird celebrated for its sharp-sightedness. This faculty is referred to in Job 28:7 where the word is rendered "vulture. As a noun masculine plural, ????, in Isa 13:22; 34:14; and Jer 50:30, Bochart says that jackals are intended; but, by the several contexts, particularly the last, it may well mean a kind of unclean bird, and so be the same with that mentioned above.