Flag

Flag in the Authorized Version translates the Hebrew achu (also spelled ahu), an Egyptian loanword referring to aquatic vegetation — specifically reeds, rushes, or sedge grass that grow in marshy ground near water. It appears in Job 8:11 ("Can the rush grow up without mire? can the flag grow without water?") and in Genesis 41:2, 18, where it describes the lush reed-grass of the Nile banks in Pharaoh's dream.

Exodus 2:3, 5 uses the same or similar term (suf) for the reeds among which Moses's basket was hidden on the Nile — the same "Red Sea" (yam suf, "sea of reeds") that Israel crossed. The flag or papyrus is the Cyperus papyrus, a tall sedge that once grew abundantly in Egyptian and Palestinian marshes. In Job 8:11's botanical metaphor, the impossibility of rushes growing without water parallels the impossibility of the godless prospering without God — the point being that apparent security without a proper foundation cannot endure.