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(2.) Hebrews tzaphtzaphah (Ezekiel 17:5), called by the Arabs the safsaf, the general name for the willow. This may be the Salix AEgyptica of naturalists.
Tristram thinks that by the “willow by the water-courses,” the Nerium oleander, the rose-bay oleander, is meant. He says, “It fringes the Upper Jordan, dipping its wavy crown of red into the spray in the rapids under Hermon, and is nutured by the oozy marshes in the Lower Jordan nearly as far as to Jericho...On the Arnon, on the Jabbok, and the Yarmuk it forms a continuous fringe. In many of the streams of Moab it forms a complete screen, which the sun’s rays can never penetrate to evaporate the precious moisture. The wild boar lies safely ensconced under its impervious cover.”
•WIMPLE Isaiah 3:22, (R.V., “shawls”), a wrap or veil. The same Hebrew word is rendered “vail” (R.V., “mantle”) in Ruth 3:15.
•WINDOW properly only an opening in a house for the admission of light and air, covered with lattice-work, which might be opened or closed (2 Kings 1:2; Acts 20:9). The spies in Jericho and Paul at Damascus were let down from the windows of houses abutting on the town wall (Joshua 2:15; 2 Corinthians 11:33). The clouds are metaphorically called the “windows of heaven” (Genesis 7:11; Malachi 3:10). The word thus rendered in Isaiah 54:12 ought rather to be rendered “battlements” (LXX., “bulwarks;” R.V., “pinnacles”), or as Gesenius renders it, “notched battlements, i.e., suns or rays of the sun”= having a radiated appearance like the sun.
•WINDS blowing from the four quarters of heaven (Jeremiah 49:36; Ezekiel 37:9; Daniel 8:8; Zechariah 2:6). The east wind was parching (Ezekiel 17:10; 19:12), and is sometimes mentioned as simply denoting a strong wind (Job 27:21; Isaiah 27:8). This wind prevails in Palestine from