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Summary
- Most English Bibles say Solomon’s ships brought “apes, and peacocks” every three years (1 Kings 10:22; 2 Chronicles 9:21), as part of the wealth that set him above other kings.
- The Hebrew word, tukkiyyim, occurs only in those two verses, and while the Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon translates it “peacocks,” the New International Version reads “baboons.”
- Which reading fits depends partly on whether Ophir lay in India, where the peafowl is native, or in Africa, as William F. Albright argued.
- The King James Version also has “peacocks” in Job 39:13, where modern translations describe the ostrich.
- Scripture gives the peacock no symbolic meaning, but early Christian art made it a symbol of the Eucharist, the resurrection and immortality.
- Augustine believed peacock flesh did not decay, and in The City of God 21.4 he used it to argue that bodies can burn without being consumed.
Bibliography (Click to show)
- Scripture quotations from the English Standard Version (1 Kings 9:26–28; 10:22–23; 2 Chronicles 9:21; Job 39:13–18), with the King James Version, New International Version, New American Standard Bible, New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, New Living Translation, New American Bible Revised Edition (with its note at 1 Kings 10:22) and Louis Segond for 1 Kings 10:22, 2 Chronicles 9:21 and Job 39:13. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Kings+10%3A22%3B2+Chronicles+9%3A21%3BJob+39%3A13&version=ESV
- Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew lexicon, tukkiyyim (H8500) and renanim (H7443), via Blue Letter Bible. https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h8500/kjv/wlc/0-1/ ; https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h7443/kjv/wlc/0-1/
- Claude Mariottini, “Peacocks or Baboons?” (December 3, 2013). https://claudemariottini.com/2013/12/03/peacocks-or-baboons/
- “Indian peafowl” and “Peafowl,” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_peafowl ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peafowl
- Augustine, The City of God, book 21, chapter 4, trans. Marcus Dods, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series, vol. 2. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120121.htm
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