Coney

The coney is a small rock-dwelling mammal that surfaces in two distinct strands of UPDV scripture: the Mosaic dietary lists, where it is named among the unclean beasts, and the Hebrew wisdom corpus, where its life among the rocks is held up as an image. The four references that anchor the topic are Lev 11:5, Deut 14:7, Ps 104:18, and Prov 30:26.

Among The Unclean Beasts

In the Sinai food law, the coney is grouped with creatures that chew the cud yet do not part the hoof, and on that ground is set apart from what Israel may eat. Leviticus places it directly after the camel in the list of disqualified ruminants: "And the coney, because he chews the cud but doesn't part the hoof, he is unclean to you⁺" (Lev 11:5). Deuteronomy repeats the same disqualification in a more compact triad, naming the camel, the hare, and the coney together: "Nevertheless these you⁺ will not eat of those that chew the cud, or of those that have the hoof cloven: the camel, and the hare, and the coney; because they chew the cud but part not the hoof, they are unclean to you⁺" (Deut 14:7). The two passages function in tandem — the Levitical version isolates the coney as one entry among many, while the Deuteronomic version bundles it with the other ruminants that fail the cloven-hoof test.

A Refuge In The Rocks

The other two references step away from the dietary frame and treat the coney as part of the created order rather than as a forbidden food. The psalmist's hymn on the works of Yahweh assigns the high country to its proper inhabitants and pairs the coney with the wild goat: "The high mountains are for the wild goats; The rocks are a refuge for the conies" (Ps 104:18). Here the coney's habitat — the rocks — is not incidental but the point: the rocks are where the creature finds its safety.

A Feeble Folk That Lodges Wisely

Proverbs takes up the same image and turns it into a wisdom observation. In the catalog of small but exceptional creatures in Prov 30, the coney is the second of four, named between the ants and the locusts: "The conies are but a feeble folk, Yet make they their houses in the rocks" (Prov 30:26). The contrast is between weakness and shelter. The coney's strength is not in itself but in where it lodges. Read alongside Ps 104:18, the wisdom note in Proverbs amounts to a moral reading of the same natural fact — the rocks that serve as refuge in the psalm are, in the proverb, the houses a feeble folk wisely chooses.