When this word is used in opposition to man, as Psalm xxxvi, 5, any brute creature is signified; when to creeping things, as Lev. xi, 2, 7; xxix, 30, four-footed animals, from the size of the hare and upward, are intended; and when to wild creatures, as Gen. i, 25, cattle, or tame animals, are spoken of. In Isaiah xiii, 21, several wild animals are mentioned as dwelling among the ruins of Babylon: “Wild beasts of the desert,” ציים, those of the dry wilderness, as the root of the word implies, “shall dwell there. Their houses shall be full of doleful creatures,” אהים, _marsh animals_. “Owls shall dwell there,” ostriches, “and satyrs,” שעירים, _shaggy ones_, “shall dance there. And the wild beasts of the islands,” איים, _oases of the desert_, “shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons,” תנים, _crocodiles_, or amphibious animals, “shall be in their desolate places.” St. Paul, 1 Cor. xv, 32, speaks of fighting with beasts, &c: by which he does not mean his having been exposed in the amphitheatre to fight as a gladiator, as some have conjectured, but that he had to contend at Ephesus with the fierce uproar of Demetrius and his associates. Ignatius uses the same figure in his Epistle to the Romans: “From Syria even unto Rome I fight with wild beasts, both by sea and land, both night and day, being bound to ten leopards;” that is, to a band of soldiers. So Lucian, in like manner, says, “For I am not to fight with ordinary wild beasts, but with men, insolent and hard to be convinced.” In Rev. iv, v, vi, mention is made of four beasts, or rather, as the word ζῶα signifies, _living creatures_, as in Ezek. i; and so the word might have been less harshly translated. Wild beasts are used in Scripture as emblems of ...