Job 6

Some hunters and warriors in ancient times dipped their arrows in some kind of toxin. A few examples: rotted snake, rotted human blood, viper venom, toxic plant juices, and excrement.

The mysterious Hebrew word is hallamut, often interpreted as egg whites or a mallow plant. A mallow plant is almost tasteless, with a flavor described as “neutral.” It has dark green leaves shaped in a circle or sometimes like a kidney, and it produces purple flowers. Nicknames include cheese weed and buttonweed. A hearty plant, it can grow in compacted ground and survive freezing as a perennial, which leaves us wondering why tasty food can’t do that. Mallow grows throughout Europe, Asia, and parts of the Middle East. Mallow is edible: leaves, shoots, flowers, seedpods. Cooks use it as a thickening agent for stews and soup.

Job’s point seems to be that God has done this to him. And it’s as though God is serving Job a plate full of crud to eat. Job doesn’t what any part of it.

This is a difficult phrase to translate, which is why it shows up in different forms in the various Bible translations. A more traditional Jewish translation: “Any friend who does not show me some kindness in this situation is a friend who no longer respects the Almighty God.”

A wadi is usually a dry riverbed in the often dry Middle East. When rain comes, a wadi can fill very quickly and wash away anyone using the wadi as a natural trail. Added to the danger is that the rainstorm can be far away at a higher altitude. And a person walking on the pathway far from the storm will suddenly feel its effects when the water hits them like the deluge from a busted dam.

Job seems to compare himself to the disappointed caravan. They find no water. Job finds no kindness.

Teman was a major city in Edom, in what is now the country of Jordan. Teman is named after Esau’s grandson.

No one seems to know where the land of Sheba was. A popular guess is Yemen, in southern Arabia, parked at the corner of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Another common guess is across the Red Sea, somewhere on the Horn of Africa, in Somalia, Ethiopia, or another neighboring nation.

As in “Daddy needs a new baby boy.” The idea of enslaving an orphan, one of God’s most cherished groups of vulnerable souls, would have been quite the insult to a Jew who knew the laws of Moses. See the note to Job 5:11 about widows, orphans, and immigrants.