The horseleach hath two daughters, crying, Give, give. There are three things that are never satisfied, yea, four things say not, It is enough:

The horseleech hath two daughters that say: Bring, bring. There are three things that never are satisfied, and the fourth never saith: It is enough.

The leech hath two daughters: Give, give. There are three things never satisfied; four which say not, It is enough:

The horse-leech hath two daughters, crying, Give, give. There are three things that are never satisfied, yes, four things say not, It is enough:

To the leech are two daughters, 'Give, give, Lo, three things are not satisfied, Four have not said 'Sufficiency;'

The horse leach has two daughters, crying, Give, give. There are three things that are never satisfied, yes, four things say not, It is enough:

The night-spirit has two daughters, Give, give. There are three things which are never full, even four which never say, Enough:

The horseleech hath two daughters: 'Give, give.' There are three things that are never satisfied, Yea, four that say not: 'Enough':

The leech has two daughters, who say, 'Bring, bring.' Three things are insatiable, and a fourth never says 'Enough':

Note the numeration mounting to a climax, the two, the three, the four (Amos 1:3 etc.). The word rendered "horseleach" is found nowhere else, and its etymology is doubtful; but there are good grounds for taking the word in its literal sense, as giving an example, in the natural world, of the insatiable greed of which the next verse gives other instances. Its voracious appetite is here represented, to express its intensity, as two daughters, uttering the same ceaseless cry for more.

The horseleech hath two daughters, crying, Give, give - "This horseleech," says Calmet, "is Covetousness, and her two daughters are Avarice and Ambition. They never say, It is enough; they are never satisfied; they are never contented."
Many explanations have been given of this verse; but as all the versions agree in render ing עלוקה alukah the horseleech or blood-sucker, the general meaning collected has been, "There are persons so excessively covetous and greedy, that they will scarcely let any live but themselves; and when they lay hold of any thing by which they may profit, they never let go their hold till they have extracted the last portion of good from it." Horace has well expressed this disposition, and by the same emblem, applied to a poor poet, who seizes on and extracts all he can from an author of repute, and obliges all to hear him read his wretched verses.
Quem vero arripuit, tenet, occiditque legendo,
Non missura cutem, nisi plena cruoris,
Hirudo. De arte poet., ver. 475.
"But if he seize you, then the torture dread;
He fastens on you till he reads you dead;
And like a leech, voracious of his food,
Quits not his cruel hold till gorged with blood."
Francis.
The word אלוקה alukah, which we here translate horseleech, is read in no other part of the Bible. May it not, like Agur, Jakeh, Ithiel, and Ucal, be a proper name, belonging to some well-known woman of his acquaintance, and well known to the public, who had two daughters notorious for their covetousness and lechery? And at first view the following verse may be thought to confirm this supposition: "There are three things that are never satisfied, yea, four things say not, It is enough." The grave, the barren womb the earth, the fire. What an astonishing simiiarity there is between this and the following institute, taken from the Code of Hindoo Laws, chapter 20, sec. i., p. 203.
"A woman is never satisfied with the copulation of man, no more than a fire is satisfied with burning fuel; or the main ocean is with receiving the rivers; or death, with the dying of men and animals." You can no more satisfy these two daughters of Alukah than you can the grave, etc.
Some of the rabbins have thought that alukah signifies destiny, or the necessity of dying, which they say has two daughters, Eden and Gehenna, paradise and hell. The former has never enough of righteous souls; the latter, of the wicked. Similar to them is the opinion of Bochart, who thinks alukah means destiny, and the two daughters, the grave and hell; into the first of which the body descends after death, and into the second, the soul.
The Septuagint gives it a curious turn, by connecting the fifteenth with the sixteenth verse: Τῃ Βδελλῃ θυγατερες ησαν αγαπησει αγαπωμεναι, και αἱ τρεις αὑται ουκ ενεπιμπλασαν αυτην, και ἡ τεταρτη ουκ ηρκεσθη ειπειν· Ἱκανον; "The horseleech had three well-beloved daughters; and these three were not able to satisfy her desire: and the fourth was not satisfied, so as to say, It is enough."
After all, I think my own conjecture the most probable. Alukah is a proper name, and the two daughters were of the description I have mentioned.

The horseleach hath two (h) daughters, [crying], Give, give. There are three [things that] are never satisfied, [yea], four [things] say not, [It is] enough:
(h) The leach has two forks in her tongue, which here he calls her two daughters, by which she sucks the blood, and is never satisfied: even so, the covetous extortioners are insatiable.

The horse leech hath two daughters, crying, Give, give,.... Or "the blood sucker" (l); so it began to be called in the times of Pliny (m), to which the last generation of men may well be compared; blood thirsty creatures, that never have enough, and are not satisfied with the flesh of men, nor with their blood; and such particularly the Papists are: and not only this generation of men, but there are three or four things besides, which resemble the horse leech for its insatiableness; for the horse leech has not two daughters only, but more. Some, by her two daughters, understand the two forks of its tongue, which some naturalists say it has; though later ones, and more diligent inquirers into those things, find it has not; but either with its three teeth, or by the compression of its mouth on all sides, sucks the blood, and will not let go until it is filled with it (n): others have proposed the two sorts of leeches as its daughters, the sea leech, and that which is found in fenny and marshy places. But it is best, by its daughters, to understand such that resemble it, and are like unto it; as those that are of like nature and quality, and do the same things as others, are called their children; see Matthew 23:31, 1-John 3:10; and so the number of its daughters, which are always craving and asking for more, and are never satisfied, are not only two, but more, as follows;
there are three things; or, "yea, there are three things"
that are never satiated: yea, four things say not, It is enough; not two only, but three, and even four, that are quite insatiable and are as follow. The Syriac version renders the whole thus,
"the horse leech hath three beloved daughters; three, "I say", they are, which are not satisfied; and the fourth says not, It is enough.''
Some, as Abendana observes, interpret it of hell, by a transposition of the letters; because everyone that perverts his ways descends thither. Bochart (o) interprets it of fate, and so Noldius (p): and Schultens renders the word, the most monstrous of evils; it signifying in the Arabic language, as he observes, anything monstrous and dreadful; such as wood demons, serpents, and dragons, which devour men and beasts. Suidas (q), by the "horse leech", understands sin, whose daughters are fornication, envy, and idolatry, which are never satisfied by evil actions, and the fourth is evil concupiscence.
(l) "sanguisugae", V. L. Pagninus, Tigurine version. Mercerus, Gejerus. (m) Nat. Hist. l. 8. c. 10. (n) "Non missura cutem nisi plena cruoris hirudo", Horat. de Arte Poet. fine. (o) Hierozoic. par. 2. l. 5. c. 19. col. 801. (p) Concord. Ebr. Par. p. 467. No. 1425. (q) In voce

Cruelty and covetousness are two daughters of the horseleech, that still cry, "Give, give," and they are continually uneasy to themselves. Four things never are satisfied, to which these devourers are compared. Those are never rich that are always coveting. And many who have come to a bad end, have owned that their wicked courses began by despising their parents' authority.

horse leech--supposed by some to be the vampire (a fabulous creature), as being literally insatiable; but the other subjects mentioned must be taken as this, comparatively insatiable. The use of a fabulous creature agreeably to popular notions is not inconsistent with inspiration.
There are three . . . yea, four--(Compare Proverbs 6:16).

With the characteristic of insatiableness Proverbs 30:11-14 closes, and there follows an apophthegma de quatuor insatiabilibus quae ideo comparantur cum sanguisuga (C. B. Michaelis). We translate the text here as it lies before us:
15 The ‛Alûka hath two daughters: Give! Give!
Three of these are never satisfied;
Four say not: Enough!
16 The under-world and the closing of the womb;
The earth is not satisfied with water;
And the fire saith not: Enough!
We begin with Masoretic externalities. The first ב in הב is Beth minusculum; probably it had accidentally this diminutive form in the original MSS, to which the Midrash (cf. Sepher Taghin ed. Bargs, 1866, p. 47) has added absurd conceits. This first הב has Pasek after it, which in this case is servant to the Olewejored going before, according to the rule Thorath Emeth, p. 24, here, as at Psalm 85:9, Mehuppach. The second הב, which of itself alone is the representative of Olewejored, has in Hutter, as in the Cod. Erfurt 2, and Cod. 2 of the Leipzig Public Library, the pausal punctuation הב (cf. קח, 1-Samuel 21:10), but which is not sufficiently attested. Instead of לא־אמרוּ, 15b, לא אמרוּ, and instead of לא־אמרה f, 16b, לא אמרה are to be written; the Zinnorith removes the Makkeph, according to Thorath Emeth, p. 9, Accentuationssystem, iv. 2. Instead of מים, 16a, only Jablonski, as Mhlau remarks, has מים; but incorrectly, since Athnach, after Olewejored, has no pausal force (vid., Thorath Emeth, p. 37). All that is without any weight as to the import of the words. But the punctuation affords some little service for the setting aside of a view of Rabbenu Tam (vid., Tosaphoth to Aboda zara 17a, and Erubin 19a), which has been lately advocated by Lwenstein. That view is, that ‛Alûka is the name of a wise man, not Solomon's, because the Pesikta does not reckon this among the names of Solomon, nor yet a name of hell, because it is not, in the Gemara, numbered among the names of Gehinnom. Thus לעלוּקה would be a superscription, like לדוד and לשׁלמה, Psalm 26:1; Psalm 72:1, provided with Asla Legarmeh. But this is not possible, for the Asla Legarmeh, at Psalm 26:1 and Psalm 72:1, is the transformation of Olewejored, inadmissible on the first word of the verse (Accentuationssystem, xix. 1); but no Olewejored can follow such an Asla Legarmeh, which has the force of an Olewejored, as after this לעלוקה, which the accentuation then does not regard as the author's name given as a superscription. עלוּקה is not the name of a person, and generally not a proper name, but a generic name of certain traditional signification. "One must drink no water" - says the Gemara Aboda zara 12b - "out of a river or pond, nor (immediately) with his mouth, nor by means of his hand; he who, nevertheless, does it, his blood comes on his own head, because of the danger. What danger? סכּנת עלוּקה," i.e., the danger of swallowing a leech. The Aram. also designates a leech by עלוּקא (cf. e.g., Targ. Ps. 12:9: hence the godless walk about like the leech, which sucks the blood of men), and the Arab. by 'alaḳ (n. unit. 'alaḳat), as the word is also rendered here by the Aram. and Arab. translators. Accordingly, all the Greeks render it by βδέλλη; Jerome, by sanguisuga (Rashi, sangsue); also Luther's Eigel is not the Igel erinaceus [hedgehog], but the Egel, i.e., as we now designate it, the Blutegel [leech], or (less correctly) Blutigel. עלוּקה is the fem. of the adj. עלוּק, attached to, which meaning, together with the whole verbal stem, the Arab. has preserved (vid., Mhlau's Mittheilung des Art. 'aluka aus dem Kamus, p. 42).
(Note: Nldeke has remarked, with reference to Mhlau's Monographie, that ‛aluḳa, in the sense of tenacious (tenax), is also found in Syr. (Geopon. xiii. 9, xli. 26), and that generally the stem עלק, to cleave, to adhere, is more common in Aram. than one would suppose. But this, however common in Arab., is by no means so in Syr.; and one may affirm that, among other Arabisms found in the Proverbs of Agur, the word ‛Alûka has decidedly an Arab. sound.)
But if, now, the ‛Alûka is the leech,
(Note: In Sanscrit the leech is called galaukas (masc.) or galaukâ (fem.), i.e., the inhabitant of the water (from gala, water, and ôkas, dwelling). Ewald regards this as a transformation of the Semitic name.)
which are then its two daughters, to which is here given the name הב הב, and which at the same time have this cry of desire in their mouths? Grotius and others understand, by the two daughters of the leech, the two branches of its tongue; more correctly: the double-membered overlip of its sucker. C. B. Michaelis thinks that the greedy cry, "Give! Give!" is personified: voces istae concipiuntur ut hirudinis filiae, quas ex se gignat et velut mater sobolem impense diligat. But since this does not satisfy, symbolical interpretations of ‛Aluka have been resorted to. The Talmud, Aboda zara 17a, regards it as a name of hell. In this sense it is used in the language of the Pijut (synagogue poetry).
(Note: So says e.g., Salomo ha-Babli, in a Zulath of the first Chanukka-Sabbats (beginning אין צוּר חלף): יקדוּ כּהבהבי עלק, they burn like the flames of hell.)
If ‛Alûka is hell, then fancy has the widest room for finding an answer to the question, What are the two daughters? The Talmud supposes that רשׁות (the worldly domination) and מינות (heresy) are meant. The Church-fathers also, understanding by ‛Alûka the power of the devil, expatiated in such interpretations. Of the same character are Calmet's interpretation, that sanguisuga is a figure of the mala cupiditas, and its twin-daughters are avaritia and ambitio. The truth lying in all these is this, that here there must be some kind of symbol. But if the poet meant, by the two daughters of the ‛Alûka, two beings or things which he does not name, then he kept the best of his symbol to himself. And could he use ‛Alûka, this common name for the leech, without further intimation, in any kind of symbolical sense? The most of modern interpreters do nothing to promote the understanding of the word, for they suppose that ‛Alûka, from its nearest signification, denotes a demoniacal spirit of the character of a vampire, like the Dakin of the Indians, which nourish themselves on human flesh; the ghouls of the Arabs and Persians, which inhabit graveyards, and kill and eat men, particularly wanderers in the desert; in regard to which it is to be remarked, that (Arab.) ‛awlaḳ is indeed a name for a demon, and that al‛aluwaḳ, according to the Kamus, is used in the sense of alghwal. Thus Dathe, Dderlein, Ziegler, Umbreit; thus also Hitzig, Ewald, and others. Mhlau, while he concurs in this understanding of the word, and now throwing open the question, Which, then, are the two daughters of the demoness ‛Alûka? finds no answer to it in the proverb itself, and therefore accepts of the view of Ewald, since 15b-16, taken by themselves, form a fully completed whole, that the line 'לעלוקה וגו is the beginning of a numerical proverb, the end of which is wanting. We acknowledge, because of the obscurity - not possibly aimed at by the author himself - in which the two daughters remain, the fragmentary characters of the proverb of the ‛Alûka; Stuart also does this, for he regards it as brought out of a connection in which it was intelligible - but we believe that the line 'שׁלושׁ וגו is an original formal part of this proverb. For the proverb forming, according to Mhlau's judgment, a whole rounded off:
שׁלושׁ הנה לא תשׂבענה
ארבע לא אמרו הון
שׁאול ועצר רחם
ארץ לא שׂבעה מים
ואשׁ לא אמרה הון
contains a mark which makes the original combination of these five lines improbable. Always where the third is exceeded by the fourth, the step from the third to the fourth is taken by the connecting Vav: Proverbs 30:18, וארבע; Proverbs 30:21, ותחת ארבע; Proverbs 30:29, וארבעה. We therefore conclude that 'ארבע לא וגו is the original commencement of independent proverb. This proverb is:
Four things say not: Enough!
The under-world and the closing of the womb [i.e., unfruitful womb] -
The earth is not satisfied with water,
And the fire says not: Enough!
a tetrastich more acceptable and appropriate than the Arab. proverb (Freytag, Provv. iii. p. 61, No. 347): "three things are not satisfied by three: the womb, and wood by fire, and the earth by rain;" and, on the other hand, it is remarkable to find it thus clothed in the Indian language,
(Note: That not only natural productions, but also ideas and literary productions (words, proverbs, knowledge), were conveyed from the Indians to the Semites, and from the Semites to the Indians, on the great highways by sea and land, is a fact abundantly verified. There is not in this, however, any means of determining the situation of Massa.)
as given in the Hitopadesa (p. 67 of Lassen's ed.), and in Pantschatantra, i. 153 (ed. of Kosegarten):
nâgnis tṛpjati kâshṭhânân nâpagânân mahôdadhih
nântakah sarvabhûtânân na punsân vâmalocanâh.
Fire is not sated with wood, nor the ocean with the streams,
Nor death with all the living, nor the beautiful-eyed with men.
As in the proverb of Agur the 4 falls into 2 + 2, so also in this Indian sloka. In both, fire and the realm of death (ântaka is death as the personified "end-maker") correspond; and as there the womb and the earth, so here feminarium cupiditas and the ocean. The parallelizing of ארץ and רחם is after passages such as Psalm 139:15; Job 1:21 (cf. also Proverbs 5:16; Numbers 24:7; Isaiah 48:1); that of שׁאול and אשׁ is to be judged of
(Note: The parallelizing of רחם and שׁאול, Berachoth 15b, is not directly aimed at by the poet.)
after passages such as Deuteronomy 32:22, Isaiah 56:1-12 :24. That לא אמרו הון repeats itself in לא אמרה הון is now, as we render the proverb independently, much more satisfactory than if it began with 'שׁלושׁ וגו: it rounds itself off, for the end returns into the beginning. Regarding הון, vid., Proverbs 1:13. From הוּן, to be light, it signifies living lightly; ease, superabundance, in that which renders life light or easy. "Used accusatively, and as an exclamation, it is equivalent to plenty! enough! It is used in the same sense in the North African Arab. brrakat (spreading out, fulness). Wetzstein remarks that in Damascus lahôn i.e., hitherto, is used in the sense of ḥajah, enough; and that, accordingly, we may attempt to explain הון of our Hebrews. language in the sense of (Arab.) hawn haddah, i.e., here the end of it!" (Mhlau).
But what do we now make of the two remaining lines of the proverb of the ‛Alûka? The proverb also in this division of two lines is a fragment. Ewald completes it, for to the one line, of which, according to his view, the fragment consists, he adds two:
The bloodsucker has two daughters, "Hither! hither!"
Three saying, "Hither, hither, hither the blood,
The blood of the wicked child."
A proverb of this kind may stand in the O.T. alone: it sounds as if quoted from Grimm's Mhrchen, and is a side-piece to Zappert's altdeutsch. Schlummerliede. Cannot the mutilation of the proverb be rectified in a less violent way without any self-made addition? If this is the case, that in Proverbs 30:15 and Proverbs 30:16, which now form one proverb, there are two melted together, only the first of which lies before us in a confused form, then this phenomenon is explained by supposing that the proverb of the ‛Alûka originally stood in this form:
The ‛Alûka has two daughters: Give! give! -
The under-world and the closing of the womb;
There are three that are never satisfied.
Thus completed, this tristich presents itself as the original side-piece of the lost tetrastich, beginning with ארבע. One might suppose that if שׁאול and עצר רחם have to be regarded as the daughters of the ‛Alûka, which Hitzig and also Zckler have recognised, then there exists no reason for dividing the one proverb into two. Yet the taking of them as separate is necessary, for this reason, because in the fourth, into which it expands, the ‛Alûka is altogether left out of account. But in the above tristich it is taken into account, as was to be expected, as the mother with her children. This, that sheol (שׁאול is for the most part fem.), and the womb (רחם = רחם, which is fem., Jeremiah 20:17) to which conception is denied, are called, on account of their greediness, the daughters of the ‛Alûka, is to be understood in the same way as when a mountain height is called, Isaiah 5:1, a horn of the son of oil. In the Arab., which is inexhaustibly rich in such figurative names, a man is called "a son of the clay (limi);" a thief, "a son of the night;" a nettle, "the daughter of fire." The under-world and a closed womb have the ‛Alûka nature; they are insatiable, like the leech. It is unnecessary to interpret, as Zckler at last does, ‛Alûka as the name of a female demon, and the לילית, "daughters," as her companions. It may be adduced in favour of this view that לעלוּקה is without the article, after the manner of a proper name. But is it really without the article? Such a doubtful case we had before us at Proverbs 27:23. As yet only Bttcher, 394, has entered on this difficulty of punctuation. We compare Genesis 29:27, בּעבדה; 1-Kings 12:32, לעגלים; 1-Chronicles 13:7, בּעגלה; and consequently also Psalm 146:7, לעשׁוּקים; thus the assimilating force of the Chateph appears here to have changed the syntactically required ל and בּ into ל and בּ. But also supposing that עלוּקה in לעלוּקה is treated as a proper name, this is explained from the circumstance that the leech is not meant here in the natural history sense of the word, but as embodied greediness, and is made a person, one individual being. Also the symbol of the two daughters is opposed to the mythological character of the ‛Alûka. The imper. הב, from יהב, occurs only here and at Daniel 7:17 (= תּן), and in the bibl. Hebrews. only with the intentional āh, and in inflection forms. The insatiableness of sheol (Proverbs 27:20) is described by Isaiah; Isaiah 5:14; and Rachel, Genesis 30:1, with her "Give me children," is an example of the greediness of the "closed-up womb" (Genesis 20:18). The womb of a childless wife is meant, which, because she would have children, the nuptiae never satisfy; or also of one who, because she does not fear to become pregnant, invites to her many men, and always burns anew with lust. "In Arab. 'aluwaḳ means not only one fast bound to her husband, but, according to Wetzstein, in the whole of Syria and Palestine, the prostitute, as well as the κίναιδοι, are called 'ulak (plur. 'alwak), because they obtrude themselves and hold fast to their victim" (Mhlau). In the third line, the three: the leech, hell, and the shut womb, are summarized: tira sunt quae non satiantur. Thus it is to be translated with Fleischer, not with Mhlau and others, tira haec non satiantur. "These three" is expressed in Hebrews. by שׁלשׁ־אלּה, Exodus 21:11, or אלּה(ה) שׁלשׁת, 2-Samuel 21:22; הנּה (which, besides, does not signify haec, but illa) is here, taken correctly, the pred., and represents in general the verb of being (Isaiah 51:19), vid., at Proverbs 6:16. Zckler finds the point of the proverb in the greediness of the unfruitful womb, and is of opinion that the poet purposely somewhat concealed this point, and gave to his proverb thereby the enhanced attraction of the ingenious. But the tetrastich 'אברע וגו shows that hell, which is compared to fire, and the unfruitful womb, to which the parched and thirsty earth is compared, were placed by the poet on one and the same line; it is otherwise with Proverbs 30:18-20, but where that point is nothing less than concealed.

The horse - leach - An insatiable creature, sucking blood 'till it is ready to burst. Two daughters - The following things resemble the horse - leach in its insatiableness; nothing being more ordinary than to call those persons or things the sons or daughters of those whose examples they imitate. Three - Though he begins with two, yet he proceeds from thence to three, and four, all which are said to be the daughters of the horse - leach.