Roe
(Heb. tsebi), properly the gazelle (Arab. ghazal), permitted for food (Deut 14:5; comp. Deut 12:15, Deut 12:22; Deut 15:22; 1 Kgs 4:23), noted for its swiftness and beauty and grace of form (2 Sam 2:18; 1 Chr 12:8; Song 2:9; Song 7:3; Song 8:14).
The gazelle (Gazella dorcas) is found in great numbers in Palestine. “Among the gray hills of Galilee it is still ‘the roe upon the mountains of Bether,’ and I have seen a little troop of gazelles feeding on the Mount of Olives close to Jerusalem itself” (Tristram).
The Hebrew word (‘ayyalah) in Prov 5:1–23: 19 thus rendered (R.V., “doe”), is properly the “wild she-goat,” the mountain goat, the ibex. (See 1 Sam 24:2; Ps 104:18; Job 39:1.)
From Easton’s Bible Dictionary (1897), by Matthew George Easton.
