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Thistles
THISTLES (דַּרְדַּר, H1998, חוֹחַ, H2560; τρίβολος, G5560). The Heb. word dardar is “thistle” or “bramble,” and hôah is “thorn,” “bramble” or “thicket.” Tribolos is undoubtedly “thistle” in
Adam was promised the competition of weeds (thistles) after he was put out of the Garden of Eden for sin (
Job 31:42 “Let thorns grow instead of wheat,” could mean “a thicket of weeds,” say, the “darnel” of the parable of the wheat and tares again.
Is the Job thistle the Notobasis syriaca, the true Syrian thistle, which was a common weed on Job’s farms? If so, then the plant is one that grows three ft. high and is erect and branched. The leaves are smooth above and hairy below; they are prickly.
Thistles are, however, very common in Pal., and the Israeli Agricultural experts claim that there are over 120 species found in Israel today. Some kinds grow to a height of six ft. like the Onopordon arabicum of Great Britain.
Moffatt trs. the word dardar uniformly as “thistle,” but when the word ḥôaḥ occurs, as in
The thistles of
The most common thistle of all is claimed to be Centaurea iberica, often called the Iberian thistle. It could be that the Heb. word “dardar” is used generically to cover a number of different kinds of thistles, and if so, one should undoubtedly include Centaurea calcitropa, the Star thistle; Silybum marianum, the Lady’s Thistle; and Centaurea verutum, the Dwarf Thistle. All of these are common weeds in Pal.
In the reference to thistles in
Probably the only time that the word dardar should read “bramble” is in the story of the Tree of Lebanon and the “upstart” in