the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Encyclopedias
Cock
Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
or It is somewhat singular that this bird and poultry in general should not be distinctly noticed in the Hebrew Scriptures. They were, it may be surmised, unknown in Egypt when the Mosaic law was promulgated, and, though imported soon after, they always remained in an undetermined condition, neither clean nor unclean, but liable to be declared either, by decisions swayed by prejudice, or by fanciful analogies; perhaps chiefly the latter; because poultry are devourers of unclean animals, scorpions, scolopendra, small lizards, and young serpents of every kind.
But although rearing of common fowls was not encouraged by the Hebrew population, it is evidently drawing inferences beyond their proper bounds, when it is asserted that they were unknown in Jerusalem, where civil wars, and Greek and Roman dominion, had greatly affected the national manners. In the denials of Peter, described in the four Gospels, where the cock-crowing is mentioned by our Lord, the words are plain and direct, not we think admitting of cavil, or of being taken to signify anything but the real voice of the bird, in its literal acceptation, and not as denoting the sound of a trumpet, so called, because it proclaimed a watch in the night; for, to what else than a real hen and her brood does our Savior allude in , where the text is proof that the image of poultry was familiar to the disciples, and consequently that they were not rare in Judea? To the present time in the East, and on the Continent of Europe, this bird is still often kept, as amongst the Celtæ, not so much for food as for the purpose of announcing the approach and dawn of day.
Public Domain.
Kitto, John, ed. Entry for 'Cock'. "Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature". https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/kbe/c/cock.html.
