Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible (1898)
HAWK, a general name for a well known group of fierce and rapacious birds, unclean by the Levitical law, Lev 11:16; Deut 14:15, but so sacred among the Greeks and Egyptians that to kill one, even unintentionally, was a capital crime. Of the ten or twelve species of these falcons found in Palestine most are migratory, Job 39:26. Kestrel, or Hawk. (Tinnunculus alaudarius.