1 Samuel 26:20 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

A partridge— The Hebrew word קרא kore, a partridge, occurs only here and Jeremiah 17:11 and has its name, according to Parkhurst, from the note that it utters in calling its young or mate; which cannot be better expressed in articulate sounds, than by קרא quera. Whoever reads with tolerable attention the Hierozoicon of Bochart, or even the 19th chapter of the first book, De Nominibus Anim. ab Adamo impositis, cannot doubt that the Hebrew names given by Adam to the animals, were intended to express some remarkable and eminent quality in each. See Parkhurst on the word, and Scheuchzer's Physique Sacree, tom. 5: The account that Dr. Shaw gives us of the manner in which the Arabs hunt partridges, is a lively comment on the place. "The Arabs have another and more laborious method of catching these birds; for, observing that they become languid and fatigued after they have been hastily put up twice or thrice, they immediately run in upon them, and knock them down with their zerwattys, or bludgeons, as we should call them." It was precisely in this manner that Saul hunted David, coming hastily upon him, and putting him up from time to time, in hopes that he should at length, by frequent repetitions of it, be able to destroy him. Observations, p. 172.