Egg

EGG (Heb. bêtsâ, whiteness). This appears in the OT only in the plural form bêtsîm: birds’ eggs (Deut.22.6); ostrich eggs (Job.39.14); any kind of eggs (Isa.10.14); snake eggs (Isa.59.5). Another word, hallāmût (Job.6.6) is translated “egg,” but the meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain. An ASV marginal note has “purslain,” a plant whose juice had an insipid taste.

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915)

(betsah; oon; Latin ovum):

An oval or spheroid body produced by birds, fishes and reptiles, from which their young emerge when incubated or naturally developed. The fertile egg of a bird consists of the yolk, a small disk from which the embryo develops, the albuminous white, and a calcareous shell. The most ancient records prove that eggs have been used as an article of diet ever since the use of the flesh of fowl began. Chickens were unknown in Palestine in the days of Job, so that his query concerning the taste of the white of an egg might have referred to those of pigeons, ducks, eggs taken from the nests of geese or swans, game birds or ostriches. "Can that which hath no savor be eaten without salt? Or is there any taste in the white of an egg?" (Job 6:6, the Revised Version, margin "the juice of purslain"). In Lu 11:12 there is every possibility that the egg of our common domestic fowl is referred to as "chickens" (which see) had been imported and were numerous in Palestine at that time. "Or if he shall ask an egg, will he give him a scorpion?" The reference in Isa 59:5 is to the egg of a serpent, and is figurative of the schemes of evil men: "They hatch adders’ eggs, and weave the spider’s web: he that eateth of their eggs dieth; and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper."

Gene Stratton-Porter