Smith's Bible Dictionary

Q

Quails — Quiver

Quails

Quails. There can be no doubt that the Hebrew word in the Pentateuch, Exodus 16:13; Numbers 11:31, Numbers 11:32, and in the Psalm 105, denotes the common quail, Coturnix dactylisonans. (The enormous quantity of quails taken by the Israelites has its parallel in modern times. Pliny states that they sometimes alight on vessels in the Mediterranean and sink them. Colonel Sykes states that 160,000 quails have been netted in one season on the island of Capri.—Ed.) The expression “as it were two cubits (high) upon the face of the earth,” Numbers 11:31, refers probably to the height at which the quails flew above the ground, in their exhausted condition from their long flight. As to the enormous quantities which the least-successful Israelite is said to have taken, viz., “ten homers” (i.e., eighty bushels) in the space of a night and two days, there is every reason for believing that the “homers” here spoken of do not denote strictly the measure of that name, but simply “a heap.” The Israelites would have had little difficulty in capturing large quantities of these birds, as they are known to arrive at places sometimes so completely exhausted by their flight as to be readily taken, not in nets only, but by the hand. They “spread the quails round about the camp”; this was for the purpose of drying them. The Egyptians similarly prepared these birds. The expression “quails from the sea,” Numbers 11:31, must not be restricted to denote that the birds came from the sea as their starting-point, but it must be taken to show the direction from which they were coming. The quails were, at the time of the event narrated in the sacred writings, on their spring journey of migration northward. It is interesting to note the time specified: “it was at even” that they began to arrive; and they no doubt continued to come all the night. Many observers have recorded that the quail migrates by night.

The Quail.

Quartus

Quar’tus (fourth), a Christian of Corinth, Romans 16:23, said to have been one of the seventy disciples, and afterward bishop of Berytus. (a.d. about 50.)

Quaternion

Quaternion, a military term signifying a guard of four soldiers, two of whom were attached to the person of a prisoner, while the other two kept watch outside the door of his cell. Acts 12:4.

Queen

Queen. This title is properly applied to the queen-mother, since in an Oriental household it is not the wife but the mother of the master who exercises the highest authority. Strange as such an arrangement at first sight appears, it is one of the inevitable results of polygamy. An illustration of the queen-mother’s influence is given in 1 Kings 2:19-21. The term is applied to Maachah, 1 Kings 15:13; 2 Chronicles 15:16, and to Jezebel, 2 Kings 10:13, and to the mother of Jehoiachin or Jeconiah, Jeremiah 13:18; compare 2 Kings 24:12; Jeremiah 29:2.

Queen of heaven

Queen of heaven, Jeremiah 7:18; Jeremiah 44:17, Jeremiah 44:18, Jeremiah 44:19, Jeremiah 44:25, is the moon, worshipped as Ashtaroth or Astarte, to whom the Hebrew women offered cakes in the streets of Jerusalem.

Quicksands The

Quicksands, The, more properly the Syrtis, Acts 27:17, the broad and deep bight on the north African coast between Carthage and Cyrene. There were properly two Syrtes—the eastern or larger, now called the Gulf of Sidra, and the western or smaller, now the Gulf of Cabes. It is the former to which our attention is directed in this passage of the Acts.

Quiver

Quiver, a box made for the purpose of holding arrows. Genesis 27:3. There is nothing in the Bible to indicate either its form or material, or in what way it was carried.

Assyrian and Egyptian Quivers and Bows.