ROLLING THING (rolling thing), (Heb. VN.• gal-gal'), translated " wheel " in Ps. lxxxiii:13; Is. v:28; Ezek. x:2, 6.
It is rendered in R. V. "whirlwind" in Ps. lxxvii :18. In Is. xvii :13 it is translated "like a rolling thing before the whirlwind." Thomson, Land and Book, p. 357-358, says : "I have long suspected that this wild artichoke is the galgal, which, in Ps. lxxxiii:13, is rendered wheel, and in Isaiah xvii:13, a rolling thing. Evidently our translators knew not what to call it. The first passage reads thus: "0 my God, make them like a wheel—galgal—as the stubble before the wind"; and the second, "Rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like a roll ing thing—gulgo/—before the whirlwind." Now from the nature of the parallelism, the galgal cannot be a "wheel," but something correspond ing to chaff. It must also be something that does not fly like the chaff, but, in a striking manner, rolls before the wind. The signification of gal gal in Hebrew, and its equivalent in other She mitic dialects, requires this, and this rolling arti choke meets the case most emphatically, and es pecially when it rolls before the whirlwind. *
* * * The extraordinary behavior of this "rolling thing" riveted my attention. Hundreds of these globes, all bounding like gazelles in one direction over the desert. would suddenly wheel short round at the bidding of a counter-blast, and dash away with equal speed on their new course. An Arab proverb addresses this "rolling thing" thus: "Ho! 'akkiib, where do you put up to-night ?" to which it answers as it flies, "Where the wind puts up." They also derive one of their many forms of cursing from this plant : "May you be whirled, like the 'akkilb. before the wind. until you are caught in the thorns, or plunged into the sea." If this is not the "wheel" of David and the "rolling thing" of Isaiah. from which they also borrowed their imprecations upon the wicked, I have seen nothing in the country to suggest the comparison.