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it can be translated (comp. צלמות, Jer 2:6), “the evening darkness (gloominess) of the waste and wilderness” (אמשׁ as regens, Ew. §286, a). The Targ. also translated similarly, but take אמשׁ as a special attribute: חשׁוכא היך רוּמשׁא, “darkness like the late evening.” Olshausen's conjecture of ארץ makes it easier, but puts a word that affirms nothing in the place of an expressive one.
Job 30:4 tells what the scanty nourishment is which the chill, desolate, and gloomy desert, with its steppes and gorges, furnishes them. מלּוּח (also Talmudic, Syriac, and Arabic) is the orach, and indeed the tall shrubby orach, the so-called sea-purslain, the buds and young leaves of which are gathered and eaten by the poor. That it is not merely a coast plant, but grows also in the desert, is manifest from the narrative b. Kidduschin, 66a: “King Jannai approached כוחלית in the desert, and conquered sixty towns there Ges. translates wrongly, captis LX talentis; and on his return with great joy, he called all the orphans of Israel to him, and said: Our fathers ate מלוחים in their time when they were engaged with the building of the temple (according to Raschi: the second temple; according to Aruch: the tabernacle in the wilderness);