SEVEN SPECIES (Shavuot)

The Seven Species are called “Bikkurim” (First Fruits) and were taken to the Temple at Shavuot (Pentecost). There were two grains and five other fruits.

BARLEY

COMMON NAME: Barley

BOTANICAL NAME: Hordeum distichon

HEBREW/GREEK NAME: Seorah Gk. Krithe

DESCRIPTION:  There are two kinds of barley, one producing six and the other two rows of grain. Barley is sown in Israel in the autumn and gathered in spring. A second sowing is done when the winter is past.

USES:  A bread was made from barley, which was the staple diet of the poor people. It was given as a fodder to animals. It was used in a drink and in stews.

INFORMATION: Barley was found in the Egyptian tombs of Thebes, and in the dwellings of the stone age.  The artificers of the Temple of Solomon were given twenty thousand measures of barley as their food ration. It is also mentioned in the N.T. JOHN 6:9  "There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what are they among so many?"

BIBLICAL REFERENCE: DEUT. 8:8 "A land of wheat, and barley,......."

DATE - Palm: Song of Songs 7:7-8

Phoenix dactylifera - Hebrew Name: Tamar

DESCRIPTION: When fully grown the Palm can be 24 metres high, its shape is quite distinctive and beautiful. One single upright trunk rises from the ground to the topmost leaves. It has no branches, but grows compound leaves six feet in length and arranged like a coronet at the top of the rugged trunk. The fruit of the palm is the date, which hangs in clusters below the leaves.

The term "palm tree" refers to the date palm tree (Phoenix dactyliferia). It flourished in warm moist areas and oases from Egypt to India. Ancient Iraq was the leading grower of date palms and dates in the ancient world, as today (Pope, Song of Songs, 633). There is also a hint of eroticism in this palm tree metaphor because the palm tree was often associated with fertility in the ancient world. The point of comparison is that she is a tall, slender, fertile young woman. The comparison of a tall and slender lady to a palm tree is not uncommon in love literature: "O you, whose height is that of a palm tree in a serail" (Homer, Odyssey vi 162-63). Selected Bibliography: S. H. Stephan, "Modern Palestinian Parallels to the Song of Songs," JPOS 2 (1922): 76; H. Ringgren, "Die Volksdichtung und das Hohe Lied," UUA 5 (1952): 92-97; W. Wittekindt, Das Hohelied und seine Beziehungen zum Istarkult (Hannover: Heinz Lafaire, 1935), 49-53.

USES:  Uses - Salt, meal, sweetner, wine (powerful), soft drink, rope, oil, medicines, animal food, ornamentation beads, baskets, roofing, poles. Fibres provide rigging for boats. Used in the lulav at the "Feast of Tabernacles". Indians say that there is a use for every day of the year.

INFORMATION:

     a. Tall and stately, when waving in the wind they look like Kadin's dancing.

     b. Ornamentation of Temple.

     c. Source of strength - roots go far down.

     d. Bear until late in life (200 years).

     e. Arab tradition says, The Palm was made from the leftover dust from Adam).

     f. Grow in groups around Oasis.

     g. Life is in the head - remove head tree dies. (Christ Head - us body)

     h. The emblem on some Israeli coins.

     i. Clean - the wind blowing on them allows no dust to settle. (Holy Spirit)

     j. Jericho was known as the city of Palms. (Legends)

     k. Phoenicia was known as the "Land of the Palms".

     l. Naturalists from Herodotus to Linaeus have agreed that the Palm is

        the most remarkable of all trees.

BIBLICAL REFERENCES: Numbers 33:9  And they set out from Marah, and came to Elim; at Elim there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, and they encamped there.

2 Chron. 28:15  And the men who have been mentioned by name rose and took the captives, and with the spoil they clothed all that were naked among them; they clothed them, gave them sandals, provided them with food and drink, and anointed them; and carrying all the feeble among them on asses, they brought them to their kinsfolk at Jericho, the city of palm trees. Then they returned to Samaria. 

Rev 7:9  After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no man could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands,

John 12:13  So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying, "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!"

FIGS

USES:

a.     Fruit - wholesome, contains sugar, iron, calcium, Vitamins. They can be eaten fresh, preserved, rolled, sweetmeats, bars, stuffed with Ginger, nuts, cottage cheese. Stilton and Dolcelatte, creamed by mashing with a fork and with a little wine added. In Italy and in Italian restaurants figs are sometimes served on their own as an antipasta, sometimes with thinly sliced prosciutto in the same way as melons. Figs are good with freshly ground black pepper. They are made into puddings, breads, cakes and biscuits. Fig jam and preserves are a constant favourite.

b.    Drink - In Israel a coffee substitute called "Chico" is made from malt, wheat, chicory and figs. Cold and Fermented drinks are also made from figs.

c.     Medicine - for internal use (Syrup of Figs). External (poultices) 2 Kings 20:7  And Isaiah said, Take a lump of figs. And they took and laid it on the boil, and he recovered.

d.    Fig leaves are still sewn together, and are used to carry fresh fruits to market.

e.     Cords from bark - Cords can be made from the bark of the fig, but unless one takes great care in the removal of the bark. The tree could be killed by ring-barking. Israel drawn to God with cords. Hosea 11:4  "I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love: and I was to them as they that take off the yoke on their jaws, and I laid meat unto them."

f.     Fig wood was used on the Temple Altar for Sacrifice (Talmud).

INFORMATION:

a.     Fig tree - Ficus Carica, The vine and the fig tree are attributes of a peaceful homestead. 1 Kings 4:25 "And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under his fig tree, from Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon." 

b.    Many Rabbi's consider the fig to be the forbidden fruit of Eden. Making coverings of Fig leaves speak of Self effort - aprons of fig leaves. God provided a Sacrifice - skins were the evidence of death and covering.

c.     Egyptian or Sycamore fig (Zacchaeus). This tree bears seven crops a year - 7 speaks of Fullness, perfection, and completeness.

d.    Pliny reports that trees were scratched with iron hooks to make the fruit ripen.

e.     Fertilization (Caprification) Some figs are fertilized when a Wasp lays eggs in young fruit, as the fruit grows and the larva hatch, become wasps that go to other figs helping cross pollination to take place. It's like the work of grace, as the Holy Spirit brings the soul to repentance. Working with each one individually.

f.     Flower - the fruit is the flower - Inward beauty. It is only when you open a fig that you see the stamens.

g.    Green figs = speak of the Stirrings of Grace, glimmering of light.

h.     There is a "Black fig" and it is called the sister of the vine. The two are coupled together elsewhere in scripture: Psalm 105:33 He smote their vines also and their fig trees; and brake the trees of their coasts."

GRAPE - RAISIN

COMMON NAME: Vine (grape)

BOTANICAL NAME: Vitis vinifera

HEBREW/GREEK NAME: gephen

DESCRIPTION: The vine was cultivated before the flood, so that when Noah left the ark and stepped onto dry ground, he was able to plant a vineyard.

This type of agriculture became one of the most important occupations in the Mediterranean world. The vine could be trained over a trellis, or supported on poles, though in most cases it was allowed to trail over the ground at will, or even to the tops of trees.

USES: Raisins are made from the grapes. They can be pressed into clusters.

Wine and Grape juice are popular drinks made from the grape. The Persians make "Dushab" a sweet paste made from boiling wine until reduced by six parts, it becomes hard and can be carried as a dry commodity, cut and dissolved as required. It can also be mixed with flour and almonds (Helwa) the counterpart of the Greek or Israeli Halva.

INFORMATION:

David gave the people bread, meat and raisin cakes: 2 Samuel 6:19  And he dealt among all the people, even among the whole multitude of Israel, as well to the women as men, to every one a cake of bread, and a good piece of flesh, and a flagon of wine. So all the people departed every one to his house." The Grape harvest began by cutting the bunches with a sickle in July, and continuing through to October. These bunches of grapes were thrown into a winepress, which was sometimes as large as a room and constructed underground, then trodden underfoot by labourers. The juice of the squeezed grapes was made into wine and vinegar: this vinegar was poor or sour wine, chiefly the drink of the Roman soldiers. Egyptian grapes were small, so that one can visualise the astonishment of the Israelites at their first view of the enormous clusters that the spies brought back from Eschol. Numbers 13:23  And they came to the Valley of Eschol, and cut down from there a branch with a single cluster of grapes, and they carried it on a pole between two of them; they brought also some pomegranates and figs.

Numbers 13:24 That place was called the Valley of Eschol, because of the cluster which the men of Israel cut down from there. Song of Songs 1:20 that you would kiss me with the kisses of your mouth! For your love is better than wine," The bride in this verse desires her beloveds kisses saying that they were better than wine. In what way could they be better than wine? Wine is a natural drink. Grapes are crushed, and the blush on the grapes, called "must" begins to work on the sugar, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide gas. The gas escapes and the resultant liquid is a natural wine. When one looks at this verse in the light of Christ being

the groom, we find something very precious. Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, the crushing begins, in the judgement hall it continues. On the cross it culminates in the final drops being crushed from His blessed body. Resulting, later, in a wine, so delectable and of such vintage, that it has never been surpassed.

BIBLICAL REFERENCES: Micah 4:3  He shall judge between many peoples, and shall decide for strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; Micah 4:4  "But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig

tree, and none shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken. 

John 15:1  "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser".

COMMON NAME: Olive

BOTANICAL NAME: Olea europaea

HEBREW/GREEK NAME: zayit

DESCRIPTION: The flowers of the Olive tree are of a pale yellow with a deeper yellow centre, they are small but enlarge as they open. The leaves of this evergreen are gray-green, long, slender and of shimmering beauty.

Hosea 14:6  His shoots shall spread out; his beauty shall be like the olive, and his fragrance like Lebanon. 

The unripened green fruit is about an inch long, and is eaten with course brown bread. Harvest time is October, when long poles are used to beat the olives down from the branches.

USES: Olives are used for eating, they can be pickled in a brine, or preserved in their own olive oil. The oil is used in medicines. The oil is also used in lamps for illumination. The oil is used on bread instead of butter. Crushed ripe olives are used to make poultices to treat boils and abscesses. The leaves are classified as one of the best for treating diabetes and hypertension, due to the fact that they contain heterosids and mineral trace-elements. The bark, which contains eculinol, when dried and powdered, can be taken internally to expel worms; at the same time, it can be applied externally to reduce varicose veins and their ulcers.

INFORMATION: One Olive tree could supply a family with olive oil, and fats for a year. The olives, which turn black when ripe, are gathered into baskets, then crushed by a large upright wheel made of stone, the oil thus obtained being carried off through a spout into a sunken vat. Small quantities are pounded separately in a mortar to prepare the oil for the lamps of the Temple: Exo. 27:20 "And you shall command the people of Israel that they bring to you pure beaten olive oil for the light, that a lamp may be set up to burn continually. 

A full sized tree yields half a ton of oil yearly. It is the most frequent mentioned tree in the Roman classics. Jesus spent his last night of freedom on earth in the Garden of Gethsemane, which translated means "garden with the olive press." If neglected, the Olive tree ceases to bear fruit. The Olive tree is a symbol of Spiritual Israel, and a symbol of peace.

BIBLICAL REFERENCES: Gen. 8:10  He waited another seven days, and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark;  Gen. 8:11  And the dove came back to him in the evening, and lo, in her mouth a freshly plucked olive leaf; so Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth.

Deut. 28:40  You shall have olive trees throughout all your territory, but you shall not anoint yourself with the oil; for your olives shall drop off.

POMEGRANATE: Deuteronomy 8:8

This fruit, Punica granatum, known also as Malum punicum, 'the apple of Carthage', as we might say, has been cultivated in the Holy Land for more than five thousand unbroken years. Its Hebrew name is 'rimon'; it is called by much the same syllables in most Semitic or near-Semitic languages: in Arabic 'ruman', in Aramaic 'rumana', in Coptic 'harman'; in old Egyptian 'r'himan'. In early Spanish it is 'romana', in Portuguese 'roma' or 'roman', wishfully, no doubt, linking the pedigree with all-powerful Rome. Hesychius, the Greek historian, speaks of large pomegranates as 'rimbai'.

There is a theory that the Hebrew name may be semantically akin to the second part of the Hadadrimmon mentioned in Zechariah, 12, 11: this Semitic divinity was apparently a sun-god and a god of fertility and the multitude of grains within the pomegranate led the ancients to regard it, likewise, and so to speak of it, as a namesake symbol of the prolific. 'Pomegranate' itself is the Latin pomum granatum, seeded or grained fruit; the name of Moorish Granada and the belligerent 'grenadier' carry half of it.

The wild or semi-wild growth still exists in the north of Syria, in Gilead and upon Mount Carmel, where Alphonse de Lamartine saw a wild specimen in 1832. The Russian botanist, N.Vavilov, holds the birth-place to be the Near East; for De Candolle it is Iran and that vicinity, and that view is currently accepted.

Rinds of pomegranates were found in Gezer in layers of the Bronze Age ; fragments of the pericarp, at least eighteen hundred years old, in caves of the Judaean Desert near Ein Gedi on the western shore of the Dead Sea, and, latterly, whole fruits in excavations at Ein Gedi it self (going back to the 2nd century CE. The pomegranate was introduced into Egypt from Syria and Israel before the Eighteenth Dynasty, probably during the hegemony of the Hyksos (about 1600 BCE); at Saqqara, a dagger has been unearthed with a hunting scene engraved upon it and the inscription 'n'himan'. Better varieties were brought to Egypt from the Holy Land during the reign of Thutmosis III, and the walls of Karnak record them in the famous panels of his 'Syrian Garden', where pomegranates figure numerously among the plants imported by him from Canaan.

An el-Amarna relic shows a pomegranate upon the table of Queen Tiy as she banquets with the king. In the corridor of columns at Karnak, in a portrayal of the ceremonial feast of Opet, of the period of Tutankhamen, about 13 50 BCE, appear baskets decorated with pomegranates; a fragment of a feast-relief from the Temple of Mut at Luxor rehearses the theme. According to the Harris Papyrus, of the time of Rameses III, the Egyptians imported pomegranates together with carobs, raisins and apples from the Holy Land.

Another thirteenth-century Egyptian papyrus describes the preparations for a reception of the Pharaoh: 'Flour in great quantity and much cornflour, beans, figs from Syria, pomegranates and apples. . .'; a third praises the Pharaonic residence in the Delta (Pi-Rameses) for its rich supply of fruits, specifying pomegranates and apples, olives and figs; Pi-rameses was in the neighbourhood of Pelusium, and the source of this richness, in all likelihood, was near-by Canaan. As we shall sec, the Egyptians were importing much the same delicacies from Canaan millennia later.

In ancient Egypt, a juice called 'schedou' was concocted from the pomegranate and a spirituous wine as well, a humanly inescapable development with which, as we shall also see, Bible and commentary were frankly familiar. The rind was prized as a specific against intestinal worms. Nor was that the end of its virtues there: the flowers were crushed to make a red dye, besides the yellow tint for staining leather which the versatile rind also yielded and which is still so used in modern Egypt.

Zenon, shipmaster of the fleet of Apollonius (about 200 BCE), writes of bringing back from Israel and Syria, among other things, readily-marketed wine, olive-oil and honey, nuts, figs and pomegranates. This authentic 'bill-of-lading' demonstrates how long the commerce in foreign pomegranates endured in Egypt; the local harvest was, we may infer, either too little or less good.

In the period of the Bible, just as the lotus flower was the symbol of the Nilotic peoples, so was the pomegranate adopted by Hebrews and Canaanites. Unlike the olive and its oil, unlike the grape and its wine, unlike the fig, which were, all of their, staples of existence, the essential drink and foodstuffs of the Hebrews, the very basis, almost, of their age-long survival-the pomegranate, companion and peer though it was of olive, grape and fig in the scriptural enumeration of the seven species of earth's benison, was not an indispensable article of diet. If it figured in that eclectic category, as, for instance, in Deuteronomy, 8:8 it was, we aver, because of the beauty of its shrub, flower and fruit, and because of a threefold symbolism-sanctity, fertility, abundance. The folk valued it, matter-of-factly, not only for that green arboreal splendour, or the rainbow pink and red of the flower, or the purple, crimson, outward loveliness-a deep, spectroscopic range, with dominant gold-of the ripe fruit, or, finally, for the ruby symmetry of the seeds. What also counted was that it ripened, opportunely, at the end of summer so that its juice might quench mortal thirst on hot, dry days.

The bell-like blossoms and the delicious, deeply-hued and coronate fruit were transferred emblematically, by common instinct and accord, to the adornment of holy appurtenances and of monumental buildings, to the fringes of sacerdotal vestments, lamps of oil, and diadems, and, in the course of time, began to figure upon the silver ornaments of the Scrolls of the Law. In culmination, the pomegranate's tufted crest was a model for the kingly crown.

The robes of Jewish kings and the regalia of Jewish priesthood were hemmed with an embroidery of pomegranates and with golden bells; the Temple of Solomon was embellished with pomegranate designs; the pomegranate is struck upon the sovereign coinage of Jewish princes of antiquity - all betokening its special Hebraic 'image' and metaphorical purport, its national and ritualistic significance. In such applications and usages, it is conceivable that there was the influence of practices known among Israel's neighbours and of old legends which saw in the pomegranate the very 'Tree of Life'. There, indeed, may be the origin of the figurative appearance of the pomegranate in early Christian art, to typify the hope of life everlasting.

Therapeutically - and the Jews, as, indeed, all early mankind, were quick to discern and exploit the medicinal attributes of all of Nature's gifts - flesh and rind alike were popular nostrums against respiratory ailments, stomach troubles and-as in Egypt -intestinal worms, and the blossoms were steeped in wine and the infusion was administered to allay dyspepsia. St. Jerome knew that the pomegranate was used to 'make a kind of wine elixir for fevers of the stomach', and Shabtai Donolo, a famous Jewish physician of Italy, writes: 'Pomegranate juice is a remedy for laryngitis ; the patient should drink pomegranate wine before meals and make himself a gargle of it.' Donolo also recommends the rind for the earache known as, foeniculum vulgaris: 'And pomegranate rinds, dried and ground, should be mixed well with water and warmed and poured into the painful ear.'

Let the Bible now speak further for the fruit. Exodus, 39:24-26

And they made upon the hems of the robe pomegranates of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and twined linen. And they made bells of pure gold, and put the bells between the pomegranates upon the hem of the robe, round about between the pomegranates: A bell and a pomegranate, a bell and a pomegranate, round about the heal of the robe to minister in; 2 Chronicles 4:13 And four hundred pomegranates on the two wreaths; two rows of pomegranates on each wreath, to cover the two pommels of the chapiters which were upon the pillars; 1 Kings, 7:18 And he made the pillars, and two rows round about upon the one network, to cover the chapiters that were upon the top, with pomegranates; Jeremiah 52:22-23, describing the House of the Lord, and the brasses of it which were taken away to Babylon:

And a chapiter of brass was upon it ; and the height of one chapiter was five cubits, with network and pomegranates upon the chapiters round about, all of brass. The second pillar also and the pomegranates were like unto these. And there were ninety and six pomegranates on a side; and all the pomegranates upon the network were a hundred round about.

But, aside from artistry and aesthetics, there are the sober aspects of nourishment and refreshment and the gay of simile as well. When the Children of Israel wandered in the wilderness and hunger and thirst afflicted them, they grumbled to Moses.

St. Jerome knew that the pomegranate was used to 'make a kind of wine elixir for fevers of the stomach', and Shabtai Donolo, a famous Jewish physician of Italy, writes: 'Pomegranate juice is a remedy for laryngitis; the patient should drink pomegranate wine before meals and make himself a gargle of it.' Donolo also recommends the rind for the earache known as ~foenicuium vulgaris: 'And pomegranate rinds, dried and ground, should be mixed well with water and warmed and poured into the painful ear.' Let the Bible now speak further for the fruit. Exodus 39:24-26

And they made upon the heals of the robe pomegranates of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and twined linen. And they made bells* of pure gold, and put the bells between the pomegranates upon the hem of the robe, round about between the pomegranates: A bell and a pomegranate, a bell and a pomegranate, round about the hem of the robe to minister in; II Chronicles, 4, 31.

And four hundred pomegranates on the two wreaths; two rows of pomegranates on each wreath, to cover the two pommels of the chapiters which were upon the pillars; I Kings, 7, 18:

And he made the pillars, and two rows round about upon the one network, to cover the chapiters that were upon the top, with pomegranates; Jeremiah, 52, 22-23, describing the House of the Lord, and the brasses of it which were taken away to Babylon:

And a chapiter of brass was upon it; and the height of one chapiter was five cubits, with network and pomegranates upon the chapiters round about, all of brass. The second pillar also and the pomegranates were like unto these. And there were ninety and six pomegranates on a side; and all the pomegranates upon the network were a hundred round about.

But, aside from artistry and aesthetics, there are the sober aspects of nourishment and refreshment and the gay use of simile as well. When the Children of Israel wandered in the wilderness and hunger and thirst afflicted them, they grumbled to Moses, saying:

Bells were in themselves a symbol of the campanile, the pomegranate flower (male). There is a secondary significance, then, in the artistry: a conjunction of the flower, the bell, and the fertilized female, giving birth to the fruit itself. It is no place of seed, or figs, or of vines, or of pomegranates (Numbers 20:5).

And the spies, returning from the Holy Land, '...brought of the pomegranates, and of the figs' (ibid., 13:23). Monarchs, no less than their subjects, enjoyed the shade of the tree:

And Saul tarried. . .under a pomegranate tree (1 Samuel 14:2) the sweetheart of kings tended it:

I went down into the garden of nuts to see the fruits of the valley, and to see whether the vine flourished, and the pomegranates budded (Song of Songs 6:11) and, for a young girl, to be compared to a segment of a pomegranate was the hallmark of her beauty:

As a piece of pomegranate are thy temples [cheeks] (ibid. 6:7)

In that same treasury of Hebrew lore, another, and unsuspected, quality of the fruit is extolled:

. . .I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate (8:2)

In the Babylonian Talmud, Aboda Zara, 30b, we find 'the pomegranate of the face', and it is again the blushing cheeks that not the minstrel but the scholar has there in mind.

The pomegranate, all in all, was a central element in the plantation of the Hebrew farmer and deservedly it was grouped with the paramount olive, vine and fig in passages of outstanding prophetical import, which reiteration cannot spoil: The vine is dried up, and the fig tree languisheth; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all the trees of the field, are withered; because joy is withered away front the sons of men (Joel 1:12)

Is the seed yet in the barn? yea, as yet the vine, and the fig tree, and the pomegranate, and the olive tree, hath not brought forth: froth this day will I bless you (Haggai 2:19);

And he saw that the land was good, extensive and very fertile, and everything grew thereon - wine, figs, pomegranates...(Book of Jubilees 13:6)

And the tithes of the grain, wine, olive-oil, pomegranates and figs and all other fruits of the trees gave to the Levites who serve in Jerusalem (Tobias 1:7).

Once back in the Holy Land under Joshua, the Hebrews multiplied the pomegranate exceedingly. Many habitations are called in the Bible by its name: Rimmon-parez (Numbers 33:19), Rimmon (the Pomegranate) Joshua, 15:32, and 19:7; Zechariah 14:10), Ein-Rimmon (Spring of the Pomegranate) (Nehemiah 11:29), Gath-Rimmon (Pomegranate Press) Joshua, 21, 24), Sela Rimmon (Rock of the Pomegranate) Judges, 20:45), and Beth Rimmon (House of the Pomegranate) (2 Kings 5:18).

In mishnaic and talmudic times, we find Geva Rimmon (Hill of the Pomegranate) (Tosefta Sota, II, 14), Biq'ath Rimmon (Pomegranate Valley) Jerusalem Talmud, Hagiga, Chapter 3), and, variantly, Biq'ath Beth Rimmon (Valley of the House of the Pomegranate) (Midrash, Bereshit Raba, 64:10). Men, too, took 'clan' or family titles from this source, as Bnei Rimmon (Sons of Rimmon the Beerothite) (2 Samuel, 4:2 and 5), and Hadadrimmon we have met already.

Now the era of the Second Temple has its chronicle to add, and Rome and Byzantium, in evanescent overlordship of the Holy Land, take up the tale. No less than olive, grape and fig, so often mentioned in the same fragrant breath with it, the pomegranate was thought worthy to offer its first-fruits to the Temple:

...a man goes down to his plantation and sees...a pomegranate that is ripe. He ties a strip of papyrus around. . and says: 'These are the first-fruits'. (Mishna, Bikkurim 3:1).

They used to bring first-fruits. . olives . . dates . . and on top of them were pomegranates . . . (Tosefta, Bikkurim 2:8).

The fruit of the lowlands was most seemly for the Sanctuary:

Rabbi Simon says: They bring the pomegranate of the valleys and they bless them (ibid. loc. cit., 1:5).

It goes almost without saying that the loveliness of the pomegranate would enliven booths on the Feast of Tabernacles:

The householder hangs up walnuts in it and pomegranates, cakes and bunches of grapes and ribbons or lace (Tosefta Sukka 1:7).

The householder. . hangs up walnuts, almonds, peaches and pomegranates (Babylonian Talmud, Beitza, 30b);

The sukka [booth] is beautiful with walnuts, peaches, almonds, pomegranates. .. (ibid., Sukka, 45a and 22a).

There was a distinction between the sweet fruit and the sour, for Tosefta, Terumot 5:10 explains: 'Rabbi Yehuda says that sweet pomegranates are forbidden (for a particular ritual use)'; these were but a brace of the numerous varieties that were cultivated, and the following passages affirm that the Badan variety was among the superior ones:

And these are soft-shelled walnuts and Badan pomegranates (Mishna, Orla, 3:7);

The pomegranate of which they said it was neither large nor small nor in-between and therefore they were spoken of as Badan pomegranates (ibid., Kelim 17:5);

Rabbi Meir used to say: Everyone whose way it is to enumerate what is holy and the Sages say : you sanctify these seven things alone: soft-shelled walnuts, Badan pomegranates. . . (Babylonian Talmud Beitza 3b).

Nomenclature of fruit and flower, the anatomy and physiology of their parts, and fiscal liability are discussed with easy knowledge: in Mishna, Okzim, 2:3, for example, crown, stamens and style are named, and Rabbi Obadiah of Bertinoro explains long after:

The style of the pomegranate is like a nipple emerging at the top of the fruit.

Around the style are threadlike filaments, the stainers, and all around the stamens is a kind of cup whose top is crested and which is known as the comb, because it has teeth like a comb. The style, if it is destroyed down to its root, will reveal the grain and will then not bear.

The Babylonian Talmud, Berahot, 36b, adds to this:

If you remove the stamens, the pomegranate will dry up.

Peah and tithes were collected:

Amongst the trees, sumach [Rhus (oriaria] and carob and walnuts and almonds and vines and pomegranates and olives and figs, all must pay peah (Mishna, Peah, 1:5; see also Jerusalem Talmud, Peah, 1:4).

From when are fruits liable to tithe. . . ? The pomegranates when they soften and become juicy (Mishna Maasarot 1:2)

The fruit was either eaten fresh, or taken as juice, which, as the words of the Song of Songs hint, and the Talmud corroborates, could be turned into a heady wine, or it was dried, in that third form known in Hebrew as pered or praga. Youngsters were naturally partial to it:

The pomegranate fruit was very much liked by children: they said of Huni, the magician, that all that he asked for from the Almighty the Lord did for him as a son whom his father spoilt, and he would say: Father, give me walnuts, almonds, peaches and pomegranates. And he would give them to him (Babylonian Talmud, Taanit, 23a).

Huni will appear again in these pages.

The end of the fast on the Day of Atonement was a traditional occasion for the tart, blushing, seeds:

If the day of Atonement fell on a weekday they used to crack walnuts and break open pomegranates front mincha [afternoon prayer] onwards (ibid., Shabbat, 11 5 a).

Mulberries from which he extracted juice, and pomegranates front which he pressed wine [juice] and offered them to his guests, were permissible (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat, 143 b);

the beverage illustrates a midrashic parable which we shall have occasion to re-introduce:

And the Almighty said to them: From the wine of apples do you wish to drink or from the wine (juice] of pomegranates or front the wine of grapes? And the righteous used to say: The privilege is yours to choose whichever You 'wish (Midrash Eliahu).

Be it added, out of chronological place, that today, in Israel, kiosks purvey a fresh pomegranate juice which is gaining popular acceptance.

Then as to the dried fruit:

The pered and raisins and carobs were heaped up (Mishna, Maasarot, 1, 6;

".. if (a person] brings pomegranates to the market and fails to sell them, he is likely to make praga from them (ibid., Terumot, 3, 16), a very businesslike observation.

The rind, as in ancient Egypt, and the stamen roots were used for colouring fabrics (Mishna, Shabbat, 9, 5), and in tanning. Hence rind and blossom, possessing commercial worth, are subject to the shevi'it (Mishna, Shevi'it, 7, 3). Ink, too, or nara-water, as it was called (Babylonian Talmud, Gittin, I9b), was manufactured from the rind, and even the dry husks came into their own in children's games or, frugally, as the platters of home-made scales:

The pomegranate fruit, the oak acorns and walnuts- which children have hollowed out to measure sand therewith, or which they fashion scales out of, are impure (Mishna, Kelini, 17, 51 Tosefta, Kelini, Baba Metzia, 7, 71 Babylonian Talmud, Hullin, 12b); A game with dice. . -and with the rind of pomegranates (Tosefta, Sanhedrin, 1, 2).

The Mishna gives the pomegranate-branch an important culinary task to perform:

How do they roast the paschal offering? They bring a skewer of a pomegranate branch and they spear the paschal offering with it right through front mouth to belly.

The fruit was a yardstick of size:

All the utensils of households are compared to pomegranates (larger or smaller than, or as big as, one.

Peah, 8, 4, suggests that pomegranates were fairly expensive:

Ten walnuts, five peaches, two pomegranates, and one citron.. -[all cost the same]; A man's tithe must be no less than a quantity of ten walnuts, five peaches, two pomegranates or one etrog.

These equations, if in a slightly different context, were substantially unaltered long, long, afterwards, as witness a later quotation taken from Rabbi David of Beth Hillel, who wrote in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Among its most rife diseases, the pomegranate suffered from 'splitting':

The nuts crack open and the pomegranates split (Mishna, (Orla, 3, 8);

The pomegranates gaped open (Tosefta, Terumot, 5:10);

It is the habit of pomegranates that, when they remain on the tree after their ripening is complete, they split open of themselves (Rashi)

Today, with historic unchangeability, the local red loufani, a late-ripening variety of vinous and sourish taste, retains this unrewarding propensity to fission. But some varieties were spared the frailty:

Like the kind of pomegranates whose mouths are never open (Babylonian Talmud, Zevahim, 88b).

The Babylonian Talmud twice refers to a well-known pest:

... the pomegranate butterfly [Virachola livia], a menace (Shabbat, 90a), and one day he was cutting a pomegranate when a worm fell out of it (Sanhedrin 108b).

Let us return, for a moment, to the pomegranate's allusiveness in metaphor and in the imagery of abundance. The literature is as forthcoming and as self-congratulatory as we would expect:

Even the empty-headed ones are full of good deeds as a pomegranate is of seeds (Babylonian Talmud, Berahot, 57a);

Both Abiya and Raba dreamt about a ripening pomegranate. Abiya solved the dream-Thy transactions shall flourish like a pomegranate [be as multitudinous as its seeds ]. But Raba solved it- They shall hate thy transactions like a pomegranate [like its rind's bitter taste] Your goods will be high-priced like a pomegranate, your goods will be stale like a spoiled pomegranate (56a) and

If one sees pomegranates in a dream: if it is a small one it means that the fruits of one's transaction shall flourish as a pomegranate, but, if it be a big one, then one's affairs will grow great as a pomegranate. [The first signifies that the transaction will give profit and success, the second that business will be plentiful but unprofitable.] If one sees but a slice of pomegranate, if one be a scholar, then one may look to the Torah, and, if one be an ignoramus, let one look to good deeds (57a)

The Midrash cites other parallelism's:

When Solomon speaks of "the juice of my pomegranate" it means that the legends have a taste of pomegranate (Song of Songs Raba 8) and Thus were Israel in Egypt as a heap of stones...once they went out they became like a grove of pomegranates. All through the ages, when mankind looked upon Israel, they were praised. (Shemot Raba 20:3).

Even if the entry is calendar-wise discordant here, let the ingenuous and intransigently curious Herodotus in his 'Persian Wars' be quoted in proof of the universality with which the pomegranate's plethora of appetizing content became a standard of enviable comparisons:

Darius was about to eat one of the fruits and had already opened it, when he was asked by an onlooker what he would like to possess in as great a plenty as were the seeds within. And he answered-Had I as many men like [naming one of his favourite generals] as there are seeds in this, it would please me better than the Land of Greece.

Herodotus also makes incidental mention of golden pomegranates adorning the spears of warriors in the Persian phalanx.

Our first source for the Crusader interlude in the Holy Land is Albertus Aquensis. In his 'Gesta Dei', he speaks of those knightly times:

They used to import pomegranates and wine and other things front Cyprus; as  pomegranates must have been known to the Crusaders in the neighbourhood of Jaffa, it may be presumed that shipments were from baronial orchards of their own in the Island. Geoffrey de Vinsauf says of Jaffa:

The army remained outside the walls of Jaffa and refreshed themselves with abundance of fruits, figs, grapes, pomegranates, citrons, produced by the country round about.

Al-Idrisi writes of Jebel as a region very rich in olives, almonds, figs, vines and pomegranates, Yaqut extols the area of Shechem [Nablus] for its pomegranates, and Obadiah the Convert, in the 13th century, says:

And what do you [the Jews of the Holy Land] eat and drink? And Solomon answered: Pomegranates, figs, almonds, walnuts, sycamore figs, dates and apples. . .

Jacopo da Verona winds up the reports:

Between the Dead Sea and Jericho there is a holy monastery of St. Jerome

[Hieronymus] known as Sancti Jeronimi, and nearby is a spring which waters the garden wherein grow citrons, lemons, pomegranates, figs and dates. . and I ate very good fruits.

All down the generations, the Arabs prized the pomegranate greatly and were persuaded that, whosoever ate it, his heart was filled with faith; Muhammad said 'Eat the pomegranate, for it purges the system of envy and hatred.' The Arab habit is to eat all the seeds, in the belief that in every pomegranate there is one from the Garden of Eden, and it is a sacred duty to swallow it ; we have recalled an early Middle Eastern tradition that the 'Tree of Life' in Paradise was in truth the pomegranate.

Al-Kalkashandi counts, as fruits of 'Syria', figs, grapes, pomegranates, cherries, plums, apricots, peaches and mulberries.

Felix Fabri makes a far-flung itinerary of the Land, and his annotations are sound and simple:

The valley below the village [of Bittir, near Jerusalem] is planted with many fruit trees: vines, walnuts, oranges, pomegranates, figs, olives, mulberries, almonds and apples. This orchard was planted by Solomon; Here [of Ramla] we found the sweetest grapes, pomegranates, apples, oranges, lemons, figs both large and small, almonds and dates; For there are upon it [the Mount of Olives] gardens of olives, fig trees, pomegranates and other fruits; Victor Guerin, like travellers before and after him, found many pomegranates in Jericho ; he praises exceptionally, among other fruit-trees in the neighbourhood, the pomegranates at the Pools of Solomon, and Dr. Lortet, also referring to the Artas fruit, makes much of exports from Jaffa, exclusively to Egypt, of oranges, sought after for their size and sweetness, figs, pomegranates and raisins.

And now the twentieth century. In 1920, there were close on 1,000 dunams in the Holy Land planted to pomegranates. In 1930, the figure was 1,500 dunams, yielding 600 tons of fruit. In 1948, as the British Mandate came to its end, it had risen to 3,000 dunams. With the re-establishment of the State of Israel, the acreage diminished, for the State was much smaller than Mandated Palestine and many groves had suffered in the troublous times. But new orchards began to be planted, especially in the Beisan region, and by 1966 the Jewish area was 450 dunams, with a yield of a thousand tons, out of an all-in cultivation of 2,500 dunams with a yield of 2,500 tons.

So far as Jewish farming is concerned, cultivation is virtually confined to the villages in the Beisan Valley-Ein Harod district, and most Arab groves are in the Nazareth hills, although small plots may be found in almost every other part of Israel, for countrywide conditions of soil and climate favour the fruit. Yields to the dunam on un-irrigated land are from three-quarters of a ton to a ton. On irrigated land, they range from two to three tons, and can be higher if irrigation is intensive -from ten to twelve watering's a season-a total of 1,200 cubic metres to the dunam. Brackish water is also feasible, but too much moisture around the crown of the trees may bring on root-rot. Insect pests can still plague tree and fruit: the tree is victim of a trunk-boring beetle, the leopard-moth; red-mite is responsible for leaf-drop and scale; and the Babylonian Talmud has forewarned us of the pomegranate butterfly, in archaic Hebrew 'Ha-Derimoni', and still, unhappily, with us.

So, one way and another, any considerable expansion of this branch of Israel fruit-growing is unlikely: there is the bother of peeling and separating out the seeds, and, just when the pomegranate is in season, competitor fruits, which the public still prefers on the whole, are also in free supply; moreover, exports prospects are restricted and ways and means of processing the by-products commercially are yet to be discovered.

WHEAT 

COMMON NAME: Wheat

BOTANICAL NAME: Triticum compositum

HEBREW/GREEK NAME: chittah

DESCRIPTION: Wheat is the most universally used of all grains, and is sown in almost every part of the earth. Its origin is so remote in time that the record of its beginning is lost. The harvesting is done in June by cutting the wheat down with sharp sickles. In Bible times a watchman always slept beside his mounds of winnowed wheat to protect them from thieves.

USES: Used mainly as a flour for baking.

BIBLICAL REFERENCES:

Song of Solomon 7:2  Your navel is a rounded bowl that never lacks mixed wine. Your belly is a heap of wheat, encircled with lilies."

Wheat was one of the most wholesome and sought after grains, prolific producers with golden heads. Archaeologists have found carbonized kernels of wheat at least 6,700 years old, in Eastern Iraq.

According to Arab tradition, when Adam and Eve were driven out of Eden, they took Dates, Myrtle, and an ear of Wheat, with them.

Wheat speaks of:

a.     Fruitfulness - At Jewish weddings long ago it was customary to throw wheat on the heads of the bride and groom three times, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply".

b.    Wheat speaks of life from death.  John 12:24  "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain."

c.     Weiss tells us that when the wheat harvest was threshed and winnowed, it was divided into ten equal parts, the best part was then separated as the tithe consecrated to the Levites, and was then decorated with flowers. The Red Anemones that grew in wild profusion. (That which was consecrated was made beautiful - glorified).

d.    Wheat was sown on the Nile as the river was about to burst its banks. The sowing was in faith. "Cast thy bread upon the waters.."