Snail

(Ps. 58:8)—the psalmist prays that the wicked may pass away “like a snail that melteth.” The Hebrew term is commonly understood as a snail or slug, and the image probably reflects the moist trail and apparent wasting of the creature as it moves. The source’s claim that snails literally exhaust and dissolve themselves by losing bodily slime is obsolete zoology; the verse is forceful poetic imagery, not a scientific description.