xix, 4 and 5, where Elijah slept under a juniper tree; Job, xxx, 4, speaks of certain men so poor that they cut up mallows by the bushes, and juniper roots for their meat; and Psalm cxx, 4, "Sharp arrows of the mighty with coals of juniper." The tree alluded to was almost certainly the Broom, and it is so rendered in the Revised Version either in the text or in the margin in all the instances. The Arabic name for the broom is ratam, evidently a descendant of rothem. The Genista roetam is said to be the largest and most conspicuous shrub in the deserts of Palestine, and would be readily chosen for its shade by a weary traveller. The mallows in the Book of Job are translated salt wort in the Revised Version. Renan gives "They gather their salads from the bushes." Salads were regarded as indispensable by the poorest Jews. The coals of juniper (or broom) are supposed to have reference to the lasting fire which this wood furnishes, but other translations suggest as the proper reading of the verse "The arrows of a warrior are the tongues of the people of the tents of Misram."
Jonah's Gourd.
The Gourd, of which we read in Jonah, iv, 6-10, is Kikaion in Hebrew, and there has been some doubt what the plant could have been which grew so rapidly and was so quickly destroyed. It is stated that the Lord made this grow over the booth which the prophet had erected in a single night, and provide a shade of which Jonah was "exceedingly glad." The next morning, however, a worm attacked it, and it withered.
The author of "Harris's Natural History of the Bible,"
