spider Summary and Overview

The trust of the hypocrite is compared to the spider's web or house (Job 8:14). It is said of the wicked by Isaiah that they "weave the spider's web" (59:5), i.e., their works and designs are, like the spider's web, vain and useless. The Hebrew word here used is "'akkabish", "a swift weaver." In Prov. 30:28 a different Hebrew word (semamith) is used. It is rendered in the Vulgate by stellio, and in the Revised Version by "lizard." It may, however, represent the spider, of which there are, it is said, about seven hundred species in Israel.

The Hebrew word 'accabish in #Job 8:24, Isa 59:5| is correctly rendered "spider." Put semamith is wrongly translated "spider" in #Pr 30:28| it refers probably to some kind of lizard. (But "there are many species of spider in Israel: some which spin webs, like the common garden spider; some which dig subterranean cells and make doors in them, like the well-known trap-door spider of southern Europe; and some which have no web, but chase their prey upon the ground, like the hunting-and the wolf-spider." --Wood's Bible Animals.)

SPI'DER , a well-known little creature of very singular structure and habits. The thinness and frailty of its web are made emblematic of a false hope and of the schemes of wicked men. Job 8:14; Isa 59:5. Another word thus rendered in Prov 30:28 has been thought by some of the best authorities to refer to the gecko, a kind of lizard which is able to run on perpendicular walls, or even on an inverted surface. See Ferret. But so skilfully does the spider use her feet in making her web and climbing upon it and upon walls that they may well be termed hands, and thus our present translation is rendered very plausible. The spider's spinning-organs serve as both hands and eyes. Spiders are abundant in Palestine, as elsewhere in the world.

'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).