HEMLOCK

רוש and ראש , Deut. xxix, 18; xxxii, 32; Psalm lxix, 21; Jer. viii, 14; ix, 15; xxiii, 15; Lam. iii, 5, 19; Hosea x, 4; Amos vi, 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 Deut. xxix, 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. viii, 14; ix, 15; and xxiii, 15. In Hosea x, 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.”