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Michael W. Holmes points out that early Christian writers justified their use of this myth because the word appears in Psalm 92: 12 ( LXX Psalm 91: 13 ), but in that passage it actually refers to a palm tree, not a mythological bird.

However, it was the flourishing of Christian Hebraist interpretations of Job 29: 18 that brought the Joban phoenix to life for Christian readers of the seventeenth century.

At the heart of these interpretations is the proliferation of richly complementary meanings that turn upon three translations of the word chol ( חול ) – as phoenix, palm tree, or sand – in Job 29: 18.