Poisonous Hemlock

Zohary suggests that the Hebrew word ro’sh /rosh probably started out as the name of a specific poisonous plant and then was generalized to cover many kinds of plants producing poison. Ro’sh /rosh is often translated “poison” and could have referred to poison conine, derived from Poison Hemlock Conium maculatum. This plant is a member of the carrot family and has no relation to the evergreen tree with the same name. Hepper says that the word ro’sh in HOS 10:4 (“… like poisonous weeds in the furrows of the field”) probably does not refer to hemlock, since hemlock does not normally grow in cultivated ground. According to him, this passage refers more likely to Veined Henbane Hyoscyamus reticulatus. Of the ten Old Testament references to ro’sh /rosh, five are translated with the Greek word cholē (“gall”) in the Septuagint. This suggests that ro’sh/rosh was taken as a generic word referring to a bitter, poisonous substance, not necessarily of botanical origin. The ro’sh mentioned in DEU 32:33 is from a snake, the the cholē of Tobit is from a fish (TOB 6:4; TOB 6:5; TOB 6:7, TOB 6:9; TOB 11:4, TOB 11:8, TOB 11:11).