(שָׁרִק, sharak', to whistle), a term usually expressing insult and contempt (Job 27:23); so in the denunciation of the destruction of the Temple (1 Kings 9:8; comp. Jeremiah 19:8; Jeremiah 49:17, etc.). To call any one with hissing is a mark of power and authority (Isaiah 5:26), and the prophet Zechariah (Zechariah 10:8), speaking of the return from Babylon, says that the Lord will gather the house of Judah, as it were with a hiss, and bring them back into their own country: an image familiar to his readers, as Theodoret and Cyril of Alexandria remark that, in Syria and Palestine, those who looked after bees drew them out of their hives, carried them into the fields, and brought them back again, with the sound of a flute and the noise of hissing (Isaiah 7:18). (See BEE).