Job 8:11

b. The luxuriant water-reeds that tower above the marshes of the Nile, and quickly wither when its waters are suddenly withdrawn, image forth the short-lived prosperity of the wicked, whose roots take hold upon worldly slime and mire rather than upon God, Job 8:11-13.

11. The rush גמא , gome, unquestionably the papyrus; thus in the Septuagint. This plant flourishes in pools of still water, reaching from ten to fifteen feet above, and descending two or three feet beneath, the surface. The plant had a diameter at the bottom of about three inches, tapered upward, was without leaves, and was crowned with a graceful tuft, not unlike the broom. The ark in which the infant Moses was placed was made of this plant. Exodus 2:3. See Isaiah 18:2; Isaiah 35:7, where the word rush is also used. The papyrus (hence our word paper) was of great renown, because it furnished the material from which the ancients made their paper. The process was so simple that it may be briefly described. The stalk, having been pared, was split lengthwise into thin slices, two courses of which were laid one above the other, crosswise and at right angles, and glued together, probably by the juice of the plant. The plant formerly abounded along the Nile, springing up from its mire, but now is wholly extinct in Egypt. It is still found in two places in Palestine. It grows luxuriously in a swamp at the north end of the plain of Gennesaret; it also covers many acres in the inaccessible marshes of the Huleh, the ancient Merom. Tristram thus describes his experiences in the papyrus marsh of the Huleh: “A false step off its roots will take the intruder over head in suffocating peat mud… In fact, the whole is simply a floating bog of several miles square a very thin crust of vegetation over an unknown depth of water; and if the weight of the explorer breaks through this, suffocation is imminent. Some of the Arabs, who were tilling the plain for cotton, assured us that even a wild boar never got through it. We shot two bitterns, but, in endeavouring to retrieve them, I slipped from the root on which I was standing, and was drawn down in a moment, only saving myself from drowning by my gun, which had providentially caught across a papyrus stem.” Land of Israel, p. 587.

Flag אחו , ( ahhu,) including reeds, grass, particularly Nile grass. (Furst.) The use of the word in Genesis 41:2, where it is translated “meadow,” points to some specific plant eaten by cattle. But little more is known about the word now than in the times of Jerome, who, having inquired of the learned as to what it signified, “heard from the Egyptians that it meant every green herb which grew in a marsh.” Peyron, in his Coptic Lexicon, defines the word in the exact language of Jerome. “The edible rush, and the beautiful flowering rush, would either meet the requirements of the sacred text.” TRISTRAM, Nat. History of the Bible, p. 435.

Without water What mire is to the papyrus, and water to the Nile grass, such is the grace of God to the soul. For want of oil the lamps of the five foolish virgins went out.