Spider

The trust of the hypocrite is compared to the spider's web or house (Job 8:14). It is said of the wicked by Isaiah that they "weave the spider's web" (59:5), i.e., their works and designs are, like the spider's web, vain and useless. The Hebrew word here used is 'akkabish, "a swift weaver." In Prov. 30:28 a different Hebrew word (semamith) is used. It is rendered in the Vulgate by stellio, and in the Revised Version by "lizard." It may, however, represent the spider, of which there are, it is said, about seven hundred species in Palestine.

עכביש, Job viii, 14; Isa. lix, 5. An insect well known, remarkable for the thread which it spins, with which it forms a web of curious texture, but so frail that it is exposed to be broken and destroyed by the slightest accident. To the slenderness of this filmy workmanship, Job compares the hope of the wicked. This, says Dr. Good, was “doubtless a proverbial allusion; and so exquisite, that it is impossible to conceive any figure that can more fully describe the utter vanity of the hopes and prosperity of the wicked.” “Deceiving bliss! in bitter shame it ends, His prop a cobweb, which an insect rends.” So Isaiah says, “They weave the web of the spider; of their webs no garment shall be made; neither shall they cover themselves with their works.”