Mallows

Mallows in the King James Version of Job 30:4 translates the Hebrew malluah (plural), a plant the destitute and despised people Job describes were reduced to eating: "Who cut up mallows by the bushes, and juniper roots for their meat." Most modern translations render malluah as "saltwort" (Revised Version) or "salt herbs" rather than mallows, since the word appears to derive from the Hebrew root for salt (melah). Saltwort (Salsola kali and related species) is a plant that grows in salty, arid desert soils and was indeed eaten in extremity by the poor of the ancient Near East as a bitter, nutritionally minimal food.

The verse illustrates the depth of degradation Job perceived in the contempt directed at him: the people who now mock him are themselves the most destitute of society, gathering bitter desert plants for survival. This context within Job 30's lament over social humiliation makes the plants function as a marker of absolute social marginality.