MOLE

MOLE , rodent. The only mole found in Israel is the mole rat (Spalax ehrenbergi), a small mammal belonging to the order Rodentia. It is blind, its rudimentary eyes being covered with a membrane. Inhabiting subterranean burrows which it digs, it throws up the ground in a continuous series of mounds. Sometimes it builds a nest in a small mound. Into these burrows, Isaiah prophesied (2:20) a man would cast away "his idols of silver, and his idols of gold… to the moles and to the bats," the biblical word here for "moles," ?afor perot, denoting a burrower in Aramaic (pina, i.e., "burrower"). According to another opinion ?afor perot refers to an animal which digs up fruits in the ground. In talmudic literature the mole rat is called eishut which, because of the damage it causes to crops, may be hunted also on the intermediate days of a festival (mk 1:4). The word eshet, which occurs in Psalms (58:9) in a reference to those "that have not seen the sun," has been identified by some with eishut, i.e., mole rats "which do not see the sun but burrow in the ground and live there" (Mid. Ps. to 58:9). In modern Hebrew the mole rat is called ?oled, mentioned among the unclean creeping things (Lev. 11:29). The biblical ?oled, however, is the *rat.

The identification of ?afor perot with the mole rat is most plausible. However, some scholars believe that it is a kind of bat (cf. Tur-Sinai, in: Leshonenu, no. 26, 77ff.), and S. Lieberman holds that it is the "flying fox" (which is not found in Israel) or the fruit bat (cf. Leshonenu, no. 29, 132f.).

bibliography:

Lewysohn, Zool, 101, no. 135; J. Feliks, The Animal World of the Bible (1962), 43; M. Dor, Leksikon Zo'ologi (1965), 121.

[Jehuda Feliks]