Hemlock

A poisonous, bitter plant — used twice in the Twelve as a figure for what the covenant people produce when justice is corrupted. The UPDV keeps "hemlock" in one passage and renders the second with the parallel bitter-plant terms "gall" and "wormwood."

Judgment Sprouting Like Hemlock

Hosea pictures false oaths and broken covenants as a soil that yields a noxious crop: "They speak [vain] words, swearing falsely in making covenants: therefore judgment springs up as hemlock in the furrows of the field" (Hos 10:4). The figure is agricultural and inevitable — the furrows have been plowed, and what comes up out of them is the very judgment Israel has earned. Hemlock is the fitting weed because it grows where wheat should and is poisonous to whoever consumes it.

Justice Turned to Gall and Wormwood

Amos uses the same register of bitter, useless plants for the same charge — that the covenant people have inverted righteousness into something poisonous: "Will horses run on the rock? Will one plow [there] with oxen? For you⁺ have turned justice into gall, and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood" (Amos 6:12). The rhetorical questions set up an absurdity (horses on bare rock, oxen plowing stone), and the indictment pairs "gall" with "wormwood" to name the bitter substitute Israel has produced where justice and righteousness should have grown.