the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Dictionaries
Spider
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
or 'akabish . Job 8:14, "the hypocrite's trust shall be a spider's web," namely, frail and transitory, notwithstanding its ingenuity; the spider's web sustains it, the hypocrite's trust will not sustain him. Hypocrisy is as easily swept away as the spider's web by the wind; it is as flimsy, and is woven out of its own inventions, as the spider's web out of its own bowels. Isaiah 59:5, "they weave the spider's web ... their webs shall not become garments"; the point is the thinness of the garment, as contrasted with what is substantial (Proverbs 11:18). When a spider attacks a fly it plunges its two fangs into its victim, and through them (being tubular) injects poison. In Proverbs 30:28 translated semamith , "the gecko ('lizard") taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings' palaces." it can run over smooth surfaces noiselessly in an inverted position, as flies on a ceiling. But the spider's characteristic is not this, but to weave a web; it is in cottages rather than "palaces." The gecko teaches, as much as the spider taught Robert Bruce, the irresistible power of perseverance. The spider's spinning organs serve as both hands and eyes (Kirby, Bridgwater Treatise, 2:186).
These files are public domain.
Fausset, Andrew R. Entry for 'Spider'. Fausset's Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/fbd/s/spider.html. 1949.
