Ho PLANTS IN SCRIPTURE 



mighty, with coals of juniper." Though juniper be 

 left out in the last translation, yet may there be an 

 emphatical sense from that word ; since juniper abounds 

 with a piercing oil, and makes a smart fire. And the 

 rather, if that quality be half true, which Pliny affirmeth, 

 that the coals of juniper raked up will keep a glowing 

 fire for the space of a year. For so the expression 

 will emphatically imply, not only the " smart burning 

 but the lasting fire of their malice." 



That passage of Job, 1 wherein he complains that 

 poor and half-famished fellows despise him, is of 

 greater difficulty ; " For want and famine they were 

 solitary, they cut up mallows by the bushes, and 

 juniper roots for meat." Wherein we might at first 

 doubt the translation, not only from the Greek text, 

 but the assertion of Dioscorides, who affirmeth that 

 the roots of juniper are of a venomous quality. But 

 Scaliger hath disproved the same from the practice 

 of the African physicians, who use the decoction of 

 juniper roots against the venereal disease. The Chaldee 

 reads it genista, or some kind of broom, which will be 

 also unusual and hard diet, except thereby we under- 

 stand the orobanche, or broom rape, which groweth 

 from the roots of broom ; and which, according to 

 1 Job xxx. 3, 4, 



