Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>]

> First, what in the world does "all small talk in the fields was not [no
> more]" mean to you?  To me it is meaningless unless perhaps you're
> talking about gossiping in the fields.

Workers in the field very characteristically chat, or at least the situation 
is so idealized by poets. It is a persistent topic, for example, of 
Ukrainian poetry; agriculture was a major occupation in that country.

> Second, the fact that even drought-resistant plants can't grow with
> absolutely no moisture is precisely the point:  There was neither rain
> nor a man to "work", i.e. irrigate, the ground.

It seems more likely that ancients did not relate desert shrubs with 
underground water. They rather imagined that shrubs grow without water.

Vadim Cherny