Hemlock

VIEW:38 DATA:01-04-2020

HEMLOCK.—See Gall, Wormwood.
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
Edited by James Hastings, D.D. Published in 1909

So Celsius and the learned Ben Melech explain rosh (Hos_10:4; Amo_6:12). (See GALL.) Gesenius explains, from the etymology, "poppy heads." Possibly many plants of bitter juice are meant. Rosh grew in grainfields rankly, and bore a berry or fruit. Deu_29:18; Jer_9:15; Jer_23:15; Lam_3:19. Not necessarily poisonous.
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
By Andrew Robert Fausset, co-Author of Jamieson, Fausset and Brown's 1888.

Hemlock. The common ground or dwarf hemlock, a bitter, poisonous plant. The Hebrew, rosh is rendered "hemlock" in two passages, Hos_10:4; Amo_6:12, but elsewhere "gall." See Gall. (It is possible that the plant is rather the poppy than a hemlock. ? Cook).
Smith's Bible Dictionary
By Dr. William Smith.Published in 1863

רוש and ראש , Deu_29:18; Deu_32:32; Psa_69:21; Jer_8:14; Jer_9:15; Jer_23:15; Lam_3:5; Lam_3:19; Hos_10:4; Amo_6:12. In the two latter places our translators have rendered the word hemlock, in the others gall. Hiller supposes it the centaureum, described by Pliny; but Celsius shows it to be the hemlock. It is evident, from Deu_29:18, that some herb or plant is meant of a malignant or nauseous kind, being there joined with wormwood, and in the margin of our Bibles explained to be “a poisonful herb.” In like manner see Jer_8:14; Jer_9:15; and Jer_23:15. In Hos_10:4, the comparison is to a bitter herb, which, growing among grain, overpowers the useful vegetable, and substitutes a pernicious weed. “If,” says the author of “Scripture Illustrated,” “the comparison be to a plant growing in the furrows of the field, strictly speaking, then we are much restricted in our plants, likely to answer this character; but if we may take the ditches around, or the moist or sunken places within the field also, which I partly suspect, then we may include other plants; and I do not see why hemlock may not be intended. Scheuchzer inclines to this rather than wormwood or agrostes, as the LXX have rendered it. The prophet appears to mean a vegetable which should appear wholesome, and resemble those known to be salutary, as judgment, when just, properly is; but experience would demonstrate its malignity, as unjust judgment is when enforced. Hemlock is poisonous, and water-hemlock especially; yet either of these may be mistaken, and some of their parts, the root particularly, may deceive but too fatally.”
Biblical and Theological Dictionary by Richard Watson
PRINTER 1849.

hem?lock. See GALL.

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
PRINTER 1915.

Hos_10:4 (a) This tree is bitter and poisonous and causes damage to those who drink the extract from it. So. Israel had made judgment an unrighteous, unholy, and wretched procedure in the land. The judges took bribes and were not honest in their decisions. (See also Amo_6:12).
Wilson's Dictionary of Bible Types
press 1957.

Hemlock
appears in the Auth. Vers. as the rendering of two Heb. words in some of the passages where they occur.
1. ROSH ( ראֹשׁand רוֹשׁ) is thought originally to signify “poison,” and is therefore supposed to indicate a poisonous, or, at least, a bitter plant. This we may infer from its being frequently mentioned along with laanah or “wormwood,” as in Deu_29:18, “Lest there should be among you a root that beareth gall (rosh) and wormwood (laanah);” so also in Jer_9:15; Jer_23:15; and in Lam_3:19, “Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the worm-wood and the gall.” That it was a berry bearing plant has been inferred from Deu_32:32, “For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and their grapes are grapes of gall (rosh); their clusters are bitter.” In Jer_8:14; Jer_9:15; Jer_23:15, “water of gall” (rosh) is mentioned, which may be either the expressed juice of the fruit or of the plant, or a bitter infusion made from it. That it was a plant is very evident from Hos_10:4, where it is said “their judgment springeth up as hemlock (rosh) in the furrows of the field;” also in Amo_6:12, “For ye have turned judgment into gall (laanah, ‘wormwood'), aiff the fruit of righteousness into hemlock (rosh).” The only other passages where it occurs are in speaking of the “poison” (Job_20:16) or “venom” of asps (Deuteronomy 22:33), or “gall” in a figurative sense for sorrow (Lam_3:5), or as food (Psa_69:21). SEE GALT; SEE POISON.
Though rosh is generally acknowledged to indicate some plant, yet a variety of opinions have been entertained respecting its identification: some, as the Auth. Vers. in Hos_10:4, and Amo_6:12, consider cicuta or hemlock to be the plant intended. Tremellius adopts this as the meaning of rosh in all the passages, and is followed by Celsius (Hierobot. 2, 49). The cuta of the Romans, the ρχιᾷΕτΟῃ of the Greeks, is generally acknowledged to have been what we now call hemlock, the conium maculatum of botanists. There can be no doubt of its poisonous nature (Pliny, Hist. Nat. 25:13). Celsius quotes the description of Linnaeus in support of its growing in the furrows of fields, but it does not appear to be so common in Syria. Celsius, however, adduces Ben-Melech, the most learned of Rabbins, as being of opinion that rosh was conium or hemlock. But there does not appear any necessity for our considering rosh to have been more poisonous than lacnah or wormwood, with which it is associated so frequently as to appear like a proverbial expression (Deu_29:18; Jer_9:15; Jer_23:15; Lam_3:19; Amo_6:12). The Sept. translators render it agrostis, intending some species of grass. Hence some have concluded that it must be loliumn tenulentum, or darnel, the zizanium of the ancients while others have thought that some of the solaneae or luridae of Linnaeus, as the belladonna or the solanun nigrum, common nightshade, or still, again, the henbane, is intended. But no proof appears in favor of any of this tribe, and their sensine properties are not so remarkably disagreeable as to have led to their being employed in what appears to be a proverbial expression. Hiller, in his Hierophyticon (ii, 54), adduces the centaury as a bitter plant, which, like others of the tribe of gentians, might answer all the passages in which rosh is mentioned, with the exception of that (Deu_32:32) where it is supposed to have a berried fruit. Dr. Harris, quoting Blayney on Jer_8:14, says, “In Psa_69:21, which is justly considered as a prophecy of our Savior's sufferings, it is said, They gave me rosh to eat,' which the Sept. have rendered χολήν, gall. Accordingly, it is recorded in the history, Mat_27:34, They gave him vinegar to drink, mingled with gall,' ὄξος μετὰ χλῆς. But in the parallel passage (Mar_15:23) it is said to be ‘wine mingled with myrrh,' a very bitter ingredient. From whence I am induced to think that χολή, and perhaps rosh, may be used as a general name for whatever is exceedingly bitter: and, consequently, when the sense requires, it may be put specially for any bitter herb or plant, the infusion of which may be called ‘waters of rosh.' SEE MYRRH.
2. LAANAH' (לֲעִנָה) occurs in the passages above cited and in a few others, where it is translated “wormwood” (Deu_29:18; Pro_5:4; Jer_9:15; Jer_23:15; Lam_3:15; Lam_3:19; Amo_5:7); and only in a single passage is it rendered “hemlock” (Amo_6:12). SEE WORMWOOD.

CYCLOPEDIA OF BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL
press 1895.

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