the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Encyclopedias
Spider
Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
or Spider occurs in; . In the first of these passages, the reference seems clear to the spider's web, or literally, house, whose fragility is alluded to as a fit representation of the hope of a profane, ungodly, or profligate person; for so the original word really means, and not 'hypocrite,' as in our version. The object of such a person's trust or confidence, who is always really in imminent danger of ruin, may be compared for its uncertainty to the spider's web. 'He shall lean upon his house (i.e. to keep it steady when it is shaken); he shall hold it fast (i.e. when it is about to be destroyed); nevertheless it shall not endure (). In the second passage () it is said, 'The wicked weave the spider's web' (literally, 'thin threads'); but it is added, 'their thin threads shall not become garments, neither shall they cover themselves with their works;' that is, their artifices shall neither succeed, nor conceal themselves, as does the spider's web. This allusion intimates no antipathy to the spider itself, or to its habits when directed towards its own purposes; but simply to the adoption of those habits by man towards his fellow-creatures. There has long been a popular prejudice against spiders, and the poet Thomson has stigmatized them as
'Cunning and fierce—
but these epithets are in reality as unjustly applied to them (at least with reference to the mode by which they procure necessary subsistence), as to the patient sportsman, who lays snares for the birds that are to serve for the dinner of his family: while it can be further pleaded in behalf of spiders, that they are actively serviceable to the human race, in checking the superfecundity of other insects, and afford in their various procedures the most astonishing displays of that Supreme Intelligence by which they are directed.
Public Domain.
Kitto, John, ed. Entry for 'Spider'. "Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature". https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/kbe/s/spider.html.
