They will be like a shrub ¹  in the desert. They will not experience good things even when they happen. It will be as though they were growing in the desert, in a salt land where no one can live.

They will hear, ‘Run! Save yourselves! Even if you must be like a lonely shrub in the desert!’ ¹ 

When the water in the skin was gone, she shoved ¹  the child under one of the shrubs.

By the brush ¹  they would gather ²  herbs from the salt marshes, ³  and the root of the broom tree was their food.

Now ¹  no shrub of the field had yet grown on the earth, and no plant of the field ²  had yet sprouted, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground. ³ 

He stretched out ¹  and fell asleep under the shrub. All of a sudden an angelic messenger ²  touched him and said, “Get up and eat.”

while he went a day’s journey into the desert. He went and sat down under a shrub ¹  and asked the Lord to take his life: ²  “I’ve had enough! Now, O Lord, take my life. After all, I’m no better than my ancestors.” ³