23 NOVEMBER 1889, Page 15

ELIJAH'S MANTLE.

[To THE EDITOR. OF THE "SPECTATOR."' SIR,—Your reviewer asks how Mr. Gillies knows that Elijah's mantle was " a loose sheepskin." If he will turn to 2 Kings i., 8, he will read, "He was an hairy man, and girt with a girdle of leather about his loins." But the words translated "an hairy man" mean "wearing an hairy mantle" (Gesenius " Lex.," 793). Since, however, the word sa'eer generally, if not always, means a goat, I should be inclined to

[Neither the Authorised nor the Revised Version so trans- lates it, though the Revised Version gives in the margin, as an alternative translation, " girt with a garment of hair ;" whether loose or tight, it does not say.—En. Spectator.]