LEOPARD

LEOPARD (Heb. נָמֵר, namer), the strongest carnivorous animal in the Middle East. The leopard has a spotted coat, this being the meaning of its Hebrew name (Jer. 13:23). It is not to be confused with the tiger which, besides being striped, did not inhabit Ereẓ Israel (it is mentioned in Hul. 59b). Belonging to the feline family, the leopard, Felis pardus tullianus (= Pantherapardus), has a body which, excluding the tail, is 120–150 cm. (c. 4–5 ft.) long and a yellowish-fawn coat with black spots. Its bodily structure, with its short forelegs and extremely powerful hindlegs, is especially suited to lying in wait, this habit being referred to in the Bible (Hos. 13:7; cf. Jer. 5:6). In Isaiah's vision of the messianic age, in which he depicts the amity that will exist between the carnivorous animals and their prey, he declares that "the leopard shall lie down with the kid," the latter being the usual prey of the leopard, as the lamb is of the wolf and the calf of the young lion (Isa. 11:6). The leopard's speed and agility are stressed in the Bible (Hab. 1:8), while its strength is referred to in the Mishnah (Avot 5:20): "Be strong as a leopard, swift as an eagle, fleet as a gazelle, and brave as a lion to do the will of your Father in heaven," an aphorism that was illustrated in paintings and engravings in synagogues. In recent years leopards, like other wild animals, have decreased in the Middle East. Occasionally individual or pairs of leopards come down from the Lebanese mountains to Upper Galilee (cf. Song 4:8). In the neighborhood of En-Gedi a family of leopards was killed in the 1960s, and in the Arabah some members of the leopard family were hunted. The cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus), which is called bardelas in the Mishnah, is enumerated alongside the leopard among the carnivorous animals (BK 1:4). It is apparently included in the Bible under the term namer on account of its spotted coat, although in fact its bodily structure differs from that of the leopard, the cheetah having a small head and long legs which enable it to pursue its prey. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Lewysohn, Zool, 71f., no. 116; F.S. Bodenheimer, Animal and Man in Bible Lands (1960), 20–22, 26, 43; J. Feliks, The Animal World of the Bible (1962), 33. ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Feliks, Ha-Ẓome'aḥ, 253. (Jehuda Feliks)