Roe or Gazelle
Jump to: SAAHebrewLibrarySubtopics
Scripture Alphabet Of Animals
Roe or Gazelle

The roe belongs to the class of antelopes-animals very much resembling the deer; they are equally innocent and beautiful, and are often mentioned together in the Bible. The form of the antelope is, if possible, still more graceful than that of the deer, and its limbs still more delicate; but the principal difference between them is in the horns. Those of the deer grow from the bone of the forehead, and are at first small; but they are renewed every spring-the old horns falling off, and being succeeded by larger ones which grow in their place. They are at first covered with a soft, downy substance, called "the velvet;" but this soon comes off in fragments, leaving the horn white and smooth. The antelope never sheds its horns.

The roe or gazelle is the smallest animal of the antelope kind; it is only about two feet in height, and not more than half the size of the fallow-deer. Its eyes are remarkably soft and expressive; so that the people of those countries sometimes say of a beautiful woman, "She has the eyes of a gazelle." Like the hart and hind, it is noted for its swiftness: so we read, in 1 Chronicles 12:8, of men who were "as swift as the roes upon the mountains." In 2 Samuel 2:18, it is said, "And Asahel was as light of foot as a wild roe;" and in the Song of Solomon, "The voice of my beloved! behold he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills: my beloved is like a roe or a young hart."

The gazelle is often pursued in the chase; so Solomon says, "Deliver thyself as a roe from the hand of the hunter." They go in very large companies, sometimes as many as two or three thousand; and they are still found in great numbers on the hills of Judea, the land where our Savior lived and died.

"The wild gazelle o'er Judah's hills
Exulting, still may bound,
And drink from all the living rills
That gush on holy ground."

Strong's Hebrew
6646. tsebiyyah -- female gazelle
... Word Origin fem. of tsebi Definition female gazelle NASB Word Usage gazelle (2).
roe. Feminine of tsbiy; a female gazelle -- roe. see HEBREW tsbiy. 6645, 6646 ...
/hebrew/6646.htm - 6k

6643. tsbiy -- beauty, honor
... From tsabah in the sense of prominence; splendor (as conspicuous); also a gazelle
(as beautiful) -- beautiful(-ty), glorious, goodly, pleasant, roe(-buck). ...
/hebrew/6643.htm - 5k

Library

Over the Mountains. "My Beloved is Mine, and I am His: He Feedeth ...
... The roe and the young hart, or, as you may read it, the gazelle and the ibex, live
among the crags of the mountains, and leap across the abyss with amazing ...
/.../spurgeon/till he come/over the mountains my beloved is.htm

Subtopics

Roe

Roe and Roebuck

Roe or Gazelle

The Roe: A Good Wife

The Roe: Cheerful

The Roe: Christ

The Roe: Clean and Fit for Food

The Roe: Inhabits the Mountains

The Roe: Male of, Called the Roebuck

The Roe: Often Hunted by Men

The Roe: Swift

The Roe: The Church

The Roe: The Swift of Foot

The Roe: Wild

Links
Bible ConcordanceBible DictionaryBible EncyclopediaTopical BibleBible Thesuarus
Rods
Top of Page
Top of Page