CUCUMBER

[Heb., plural, quish·shu·ʼimʹ; miq·shahʹ, cucumber field].

Among the foods of Egypt for which the complaining Israelites and mixed crowd, now tired of the daily diet of manna, expressed great longing were the cucumbers, along with watermelons, leeks, onions and garlic. (Num. 11:5) Some scholars, viewing the cucumber as too ordinary a food to provoke such longing, prefer to render the Hebrew term as “melon” (JB), suggesting the muskmelon (Cucumis melo) as a likely identification. However, the evidence from languages that are cognate with Hebrew, as well as that from early translations, points to the cucumber, and its popularity to the present time among people of the Near East would likewise seem to substantiate such identification.

The cucumber grows as a long trailing vine bearing yellow or whitish flowers. The fruit of the common cucumber (Cucumis sativus) has a smooth, green to blue-green rind, and greenish-white seedy pulp inside. Another variety, Cucumis chate, is particularly associated with Egypt and produces a fruit that is much longer and more slender than the common cucumber but often less juicy; the rind is hairy and of a mottled or striped green color. While the latter type of cucumber is more hardy, both kinds flourish best in warm climate and with ample moisture. The well-watered banks of the Nile and the dew-moistened land of Palestine, combined with the heat of the sun, provide ideal growing conditions for the plant, and both varieties mentioned are extensively cultivated in these countries.

It was customary to erect a booth or hut in vegetable gardens or in vineyards as a shelter for the watchman who guarded the products of the fields against thieves and marauding animals. If like those used in recent times, the hut was a rather frail structure formed of four upright poles driven into the earth, with crosspieces to connect them. Branches were used to form the roof and sides, these sometimes being wattled (that is, the twigs and slender branches were interwoven), while the main joints of the structure were tied together with withes (flexible twigs used as rope). Once the growing season ends, these huts are deserted and, as the autumn winds and rain begin, they may sag or even collapse. Thus, in describing the desolation due to come upon the apostate people of Judah, Isaiah graphically depicted them as “left remaining like a booth in a vineyard, like a lookout hut in a field of cucumbers.”—Isa. 1:8.

Pillars of stones, or poles, or other devices were also placed in the cultivated fields to scare off the animals, and to such a mute inanimate “scarecrow of a cucumber field” the prophet Jeremiah likened the images made by the idolatrous nations.—Jer. 10:5.