רֹ֫תֶם

From the study of 1 Kings 19:4

Range of meaning

The white broom, Retama raetam. It is a leafless or nearly leafless desert shrub of the pea family, with long whip-like green branches and small white flowers. It grows in wadis and sandy ground across the Negev, Sinai and Arabia and can reach the size of a small tree. It is the source of the Arabic name ratam. The word appears only four times in the Bible: here, in 19:5, in Job 30:4 (outcasts eating broom roots, or perhaps using them for fuel) and in Ps 120:4 ('glowing coals of broom', since its charcoal burned long and hot).

Against the English

KJV and WEB say 'juniper tree'. BSB, ESV and NIV say 'broom tree / broom bush'. YLT keeps the Hebrew as 'retem-tree'.

How it drifted

Jerome's Latin Vulgate rendered the word iuniperus, and English Bibles in the Latin tradition, KJV included, inherited 'juniper'. True junipers are conifers, which grow in the mountains of Edom and Lebanon, not in the Negev lowland. Modern plant studies of the region (e.g. Zohary) identify rōtem as Retama.

Used elsewhere in the period

Hebrew Bible: 1 Kgs 19:4–5; Job 30:4; Ps 120:4. The place name Rithmah (Num 33:18–19), a camp in the wilderness wanderings, is built on the same word, probably 'place of broom'. The Greek Septuagint does not translate it but simply writes the Hebrew word in Greek letters, which suggests the translators had no Greek equivalent.

From the study of Psalm 120:4

Range of meaning

The white broom, Retama raetam: a leafy, nearly bare desert shrub, sometimes growing to small-tree size, common in the Negev, Sinai and Arabian wilderness. It gave scant shade (Elijah sat under one, 1 Kgs 19:4). Its roots are mentioned as something the destitute gather (Job 30:4), and its wood was valued for charcoal.

Against the English

KJV/WEB "juniper" is a botanical mistake. Juniper is a conifer and is not the plant meant. Modern versions rightly have "broom" (BSB, ESV, NASB, YLT).

How it drifted

The 'juniper' rendering goes back to Jerome's Latin (iuniperus, used both here in his translation from the Hebrew and at 1 Kgs 19:4). It passed into older English Bibles and from there to the KJV.

Used elsewhere in the period

Desert peoples to this day make charcoal from broom, which burns very hot. A later rabbinic story (Genesis Rabbah 98:19) tells of travellers who cooked over broom wood and found the coals still glowing a year later, and adds that broom coals keep burning inside even when they look dead outside. That is a later tradition, but it shows how the plant's coals were regarded.