“The leech has two daughters. ‘Give! Give!’ they cry.
“There are three things that are never satisfied, four that never say, ‘Enough!’: the grave, the barren womb, land, which is never satisfied with water, and fire, which never says, ‘Enough!’ ”
Thinking probably of Agur’s prayer in verses 8 and 9 and the implied warnings of verses 13 and 14, the always insightful Kidner writes: “The man of measureless ambition loses whatever luster remains to him after verse 14, in this hungry company [vv 15,16]. The implied comparison is first comic [v 15], then tragic [v 16]… [revealing] this craving as at once menacing (Sheol and fire) and pathetic (the childless and the parched), and the reader of the two verses is left with mingled repulsion, fear and pity for human cupidity [greed].”
The second of the six tetrads describes four insatiable things, things that are never satisfied with what has been given them. Even after they have received their ‘gifts’, they have nothing productive to show in return:
- The grave in the universal sense, which is never full, but can always find room for one more corpse.
- The barren womb, which may receive fertile seed time after time, but never produces fruit.
- Barren, parched desert land, which, even when it receives water from heaven, cannot produce crops.
- Fire, the most insatiable of all: when it has consumed what it has been given, it can always consume more, reducing all that comes within its power ashes.
There are actually five such things in this list, the two daughters of the leech being first, and most graphically illustrating the insatiable quality of the other four things. These bloodsuckers are never filled, but continually search for more victims which they can suck dry of their lifeblood. They take and take, only to consume, and then they want to take more; they take and take but never give back.
Some Bible scholars have noted links between these two verses and an ancient Sanskrit proverb: “Fire is never satisfied with fuel; nor the ocean with rivers; nor death with all creatures; nor bright-eyed women with men.”
The etymology of the Hebrew word “alukah” (“leech” in the NIV and RSV, “horse-leach” in the KJV) is doubtful, and understandably so because it only occurs this one time in the Old Testament. This may nevertheless be an accurate translation, for earlier Jews and later linguists alike have accepted it. Besides this, the leech is just about the best imaginable symbol of voracious, rapacious, and all-encompassing lust and greed — outside the world of humans at least (cp Eccl 5:10; Jer 5:8).
Because of its obscurity, some have thought “alukah” might be a proper name, either of a place or a person. In The Land and the Book, written in the 1850s, the minister and explorer W.M. Thomson writes of visiting “the ruined villages of Em el’ Aluk and Muallukah”, and says that both names are suggestive of the Hebrew word for “horseleach” (“alukah”). According to him, leeches abounded in that area — the marshes of Zoar, on the south side of the Dead Sea.
Some early Jewish traditions picture “Alukah” as a mysterious figure, a bloodthirsty ghost or demon. We may laugh at the gullible foolishness of an earlier age, until we realize that — even today — many are fascinated with legends of Dracula and other vampires, and read books, watch television programs, and flock to movies about them.
According to the rabbis, the leech sucks blood through its two suckers (called its “two daughters”), one at each end of its body. These suckers are like greedy children, clamoring: “Give! Give! [‘hab hab’]”. They are never satisfied (“saba”: filled or satiated).
“There may be some fascination for us,” writes Schultz, “in the picture of a shark or a tiger, but the leech only invokes revulsion in us.” He may be correct in general, although the previously mentioned vampire books, and movies suggest this isn’t altogether true.
Schultz continues: “The insatiable hunger and thirst depicted in these verses is ‘hell’ at its worst. Yet, these verses give a description of human greed, not of demons. They depict what man, the crown of God’s creation, has become in his separation from God.”
“Give! Give!”: The Hebrew word here is quite common, but the repetition — without any ‘please’ or equivalent preamble — suggests the intensity of a demand rather than a polite request. The Bible has other occurrences of this same root word as a command, with the same apparent intensity:
- Rachel begging for children from her husband Jacob (Gen 30:1);
- the starving people of Egypt, begging Joseph and Pharaoh for food (Gen 47:15,16); and
- Caleb’s daughter Achsah begging her father for springs of water (Jdgs 1:15).
Kidner suggests that “Give! Give!” may be read as the names of the two “daughters” or suckers, more than simply as their cries. In other words, they are identical twins, made of the same stuff as their mother, that is, other people’s blood.
Bridges quotes an old preacher, Sanderson: “The horseleach has but two daughters. But we have, I know not how many craving lusts, no less importunately clamorous than they; till they be served, incessantly crying, ‘Give, give’; but much more unsatisfied than they. For the horseleaches will be filled in time, and when they are filled, they tumble off, and there is an end. But our lusts will never be satisfied. Like Pharaoh’s cattle, when they have eaten up all the fat ones, they are still as hungry and as whining as they were before [Gen 41:21].”
To this Bridges adds his own comment: “How blessed then is the state, to which the gospel brings us: ‘Having food and raiment, let us be therewith content!’ What a merciful deliverance from that ‘destruction and perdition’ which is the certain end of lawless lust (1Tim 6:6-10).”
#1. The grave: The grave is all-consuming but never full. In Ecclesiastes the Preacher echoes this: “All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full” (Eccl 1:7). He sees a wearisome sameness and monotony about the world: “The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing” (v 8). Birth finds its way to death, rain to the sea and back again to the clouds. Men accumulate wealth, they die, the wealth passes to others who also die, and the cycle continues. Never do these cycles reach their conclusions.
Likewise, Agur notes that all people eventually make their way into the grave, yet after untold generations the grave is not full, and still the bodies keep coming. Shakespeare captures this point in the words of Macbeth:
“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time. And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death.”
Altogether too dismal a topic for polite company, but indisputably true nonetheless.
The Hebrew “sheol” is generally translated “hell” in the KJV, but “grave” in the NIV, which is a great improvement. Literally, it means “the hidden, or covered place”, and refers to the place where the dead are hidden away (e.g., Prov 1:12; 5:5; 7:27; 9:18).
Twice in Proverbs and once in Job, “sheol” is coupled with “abaddon” or its variant “abbadoh”; these words signify destruction (Prov 15:11; 27:20; Job 26:6). “Destruction” (“abaddon”) and “death” (“maveth”, or “muwth”) occur together in Job 28:22 and Psalm 88:10,11. In all these cases the intention is the same: to picture the death-state, a place where the dead are hidden away, and destroyed (cp Psa 88:10).
In this tetrad, the grave is paired with fire, the symbol of destruction. In effect they are, respectively, the Old Testament “sheol” (the grave) and the New Testament “gehenna” (the “everlasting fire” of judgment, symbolized by the garbage dump in Gehenna (Matt 5:22,29,30; Mark 9:43,45,47; etc), or the valley of Hinnom (Jer 7:31,32; 19:6; 32:35; cp Isa 66:24). The cold grave and the burning fire are two like symbols of the same never-ending destruction. One turns what it is given into dust quite slowly, and the other into ashes very quickly, but the final result is exactly the same.
Like the leech’s “daughters” craving their victims’ blood, the grave (“sheol”) is pictured as craving the whole corpses of its victims. What is actually a place of darkness and nothingness (cp Job 14:20-22; 17:13; 18:17,18) is here personified as a ravenous beast, with an insatiable hunger to be fed, over and over again. Some commentators point out similar imagery in Canaanite mythology, where Death is deified as one who opens wide the mouth to swallow its victims (J.C.L. Gibson, Canaanite Myths and Legends, pp 68,69). It may well be that God’s inspired prophets consciously echo this language, to the extent it states the truth about the grave. On the other hand, it may be that even ancient Canaanite legends echo Bible teachings.
To these references to “sheol” we add Proverbs 27:20:
“Sheol and abaddon [the grave and destruction] are never satisfied [‘saba’, the same word as in Prov 30:15,16], and neither are the eyes of man.”
We also add Isaiah 5:14:
“The grave [‘sheol’] enlarges its appetite and opens its mouth without limit.”
And finally there is Habakkuk 2:5, where the greedy, power-mad man, like “the grave [‘sheol’ again] and like death, is never satisfied [‘saba’ again].” Also compare Psalms 49:14; 89:48; 141:7; and Proverbs 1:12.
A few names will suffice to illustrate the worst of the human element symbolized by the insatiable grave — those greedy, ruthless, and seemingly amoral consumers of human life: Alexander the Great, Herod the Great (why are such men called “great”?), Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein. The relentless Sennacherib. The harlot of Revelation, drunken with the blood of saints and martyrs. Where to stop?
- The barren womb: Literally, the womb that is closed. The grave, the barren land, and fire are all metaphors for the woman with the barren womb. Like the leech, she has an insatiable desire; her desire to have children burns within her like a fire, but is never extinguished. She always wants what she cannot have. Her desires inevitably end in more feelings of frustration; she is pursuing a mirage across a desert. Her womb is as dead as the grave itself.
It must be noted here that, in Israel (and in the Jewish culture), a married woman who could not have children was an object of pity, and quite possibly felt her own quiet or outspoken desperation for the fulfillment of motherhood. Rachel, Hannah and Elizabeth come to mind (cf Gen 30:1,2; Ruth 1:11-13,20,21; 1Sam 1:6,10,11; 2Kgs 4:14; Luke 1:25). This is understandable to us because we believe in the Hope of Israel. Thus we appreciate the great promises of a Seed to come, and the hope for future generations who will fulfill God’s will, which lies at the heart of Old Testament revelation.
In the same Scriptures, it is invariably the LORD, and not a medical condition, which causes the opening and closing of the womb (Gen 16:2; 20:17,18; 30:1,2; Deut 7:13,14; 1Sam 1:5,6; Isa 66:9). While rational minds may look for scientific explanations, which are certainly true on one level, the most profound truth behind all human experience is that God is in control. However unsatisfying to our pride, it is He who decides ultimately what will happen and what will not happen with and to His creation. It must be added, also, that it is the LORD alone who can bring blessing out of what seems the most grievous chastening or deprivation (Heb 12:5-13; Prov 3:11,12).
- Land, which is never satisfied with water: Desert lands — dry, parched lands — and those with certain soils may receive rain from heaven but be unable to put it to productive use. The water soaks in and accumulates in underground reservoirs while not fertilizing the earth above, or it runs off rapidly into streams and rivers. Jesus describes such land in his parable of the sower and the good seed (Matt 13; Mark 4): rocky places, where there is not much earth, and the beaten-down, well-packed earth of paths and roads, from which rain simply runs off. In such land, nothing useful can take root and grow; the land itself remains impervious, or barren, to the life-giving influences of seed and rain and sun.
In the same way, as Jesus says, there are types of minds which cannot receive (or which choose not to receive) the seed of life. These minds shrug off the divine gifts that fall upon them, and remain crusted over, hard and unyielding to the potential that comes their way. Never satisfied with the water, or the implanted seed, of life, such minds remain “barren and unfruitful” (2Pet 1:8, KJV), or “ineffective and unproductive” (NIV). In other words, the word of life cannot penetrate the surface and take root, and can never produce the “fruit of the Spirit… love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance” (Gal 5:22,23).
#4. And fire, which never says, “Enough!”: Fire is the strongest figure of speech for absolute and complete destruction. The prophet Isaiah (in Isa 9:18-21) speaks of wickedness burning like a fire:
“[Wickedness] consumes briers and thorns, it sets the forest thickets ablaze, so that it rolls upward in a column of smoke.”
Such fire, Isaiah adds, may have been set in motion, or at least allowed, by the LORD Himself: by His wrath, Isaiah says:
“The land will be scorched and the people will be fuel for the fire; no one will spare his brother. On the right they will devour, but still be hungry; on the left they will eat, but not be satisfied. Each will feed on the flesh of his own offspring [or ‘the flesh of his own arm’].”
Indeed, the people of Israel will turn against their brothers, burning and devouring one another:
“Manasseh will feed on Ephraim, and Ephraim on Manasseh; together they will turn against Judah”.
The lesson here is twofold: Firstly, man may be consumed by his own wickedness while he in turn goes about consuming others on the altar of his greed, his sexual desires, or his hatred. It is certain he will never be satisfied with one more questionable business deal, one more lover, or one more cruel act. For him, the burning fires have no end so long as he seeks to satisfy them.
Secondly, God’s vengeance upon those who indulge their natural appetites, and can never turn from them, will also burn like a fire: “The mighty man will become tinder and his work a spark; both will burn together, with no one to quench the fire” (Isa 1:31). “Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and that day that is coming will set them on fire,” says the LORD Almighty. “Not a root or a branch will be left to them” (Mal 4:1). Likewise, James says that the evil tongue that spreads the fire of hatred and vengeance will burn without remorse until it is itself consumed by Gehenna (James 3:6).
Gehenna, the fire of divine judgment which the LORD starts burning, will have a satisfying conclusion, but not before all its available fuel is consumed. God’s fire is a fire of justice, a righteous fire that will destroy wickedness in all its aspects. When its work is finished, then the LORD Himself will be able to say, “Enough!” Then His glory will fill the earth, which will then have been finally purged of its sinful, destructive elements.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One