-
CucumberInsight on the Scriptures, Volume 1
-
-
CUCUMBER
[Heb., qish·shu·ʼahʹ].
Among the foods of Egypt for which the complaining Israelites and mixed crowd expressed great longing were the cucumbers, along with watermelons, leeks, onions, and garlic. (Nu 11:5) Some scholars, viewing the cucumber as too ordinary a food to provoke such longing, suggest the muskmelon (Cucumis melo) as a likely identification. However, the evidence from cognate languages, as well as that from early translations, points to the cucumber.
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. 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 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 the midst of desolation, Zion is graphically depicted as “left remaining like a booth in a vineyard, like a lookout hut in a field of cucumbers.”—Isa 1:8.
Pillars, 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.
-
-
CudInsight on the Scriptures, Volume 1
-
-
CUD
The food brought up from the digestive system of an animal to be chewed again. Under the Mosaic Law, animals that chewed the cud and in addition had split or cleft hooves were considered clean for eating. “Clean,” cud-chewing animals included the stag, gazelle, roebuck, antelope, chamois, domestic and wild cattle, sheep, and goats. This classification excluded the camel, rock badger, and hare or rabbit, for though they chewed the cud, their hooves were not split. (Le 11:1-8, 26; De 14:4-8) Some commentators claim that clawless, cud-chewing animals are usually cleaner in their eating habits and that their twice-chewed food is digested more thoroughly, so that if poisonous plants are eaten, much of the poison is neutralized or removed by the complex chemistry involved in the longer digestive process.
The process of cud chewing is one of the interesting marvels of creation. The majority of cud-chewing animals have three or four compartments in their stomach and generally cycle their food in a similar pattern. Most of the food they eat passes only partially chewed into the first cavity, and from there into the second, where it is softened and shaped into round cuds. When the animal has stopped grazing and is resting, muscular contraction forces the cuds back into the mouth for rechewing and further mixing with saliva. When swallowed the second time, the food goes through the first and second compartments into the third, and finally it goes into the fourth to complete digestion.
Why does the Bible classify the hare as a cud chewer?
The Scriptural reference to the hare as a cud chewer has frequently been doubted by some critics of the Bible. (Le 11:4, 6; De 14:7) It should not be overlooked, however, that the modern, scientific classification of what constitutes chewing of the cud provides no basis for judging what the Bible says, as such classification did not exist in the time of Moses. Even in the 18th century, English poet William Cowper, who had at length observed his domestic hares, commented that they “chewed the cud all day till evening.” Linnaeus, famed naturalist of the same century, believed that rabbits chewed the cud. But it remained for others to supply more scientific data. Frenchman Morot discovered in 1882 that rabbits reingest up to 90 percent of their daily intake. Concerning the hare, Ivan T. Sanderson in a recent publication remarks: “One of the most extraordinary [habits], to our way of thinking, is their method of digestion. This is not unique to Leporids [hares, rabbits] and is now known to occur in many Rodents. When fresh green food, as opposed to desiccated [dried] winter forage, is available, the animals gobble it up voraciously and then excrete it around their home lairs in a semi-digested form. After some time this is then re-eaten, and the process may be repeated more than once. In the Common Rabbit, it appears that only the fully grown adults indulge this practice.”—Living Mammals of the World, 1955, p. 114.
Certain British scientists made close observations of the rabbits’ habits under careful controls, and the results they obtained were published in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 1940, Vol. 110, pp. 159-163. Briefly this is the way the hare reingests its food: If a rabbit eats a breakfast of fresh food, it passes through the stomach into the small intestine, leaving behind in the cardiac end of the stomach some 40 or 50 grams of pellets that were already present when the fresh food was eaten. From the small intestine the morning meal enters the caecum or blind end of the large intestine and there remains for a period of time. During the day the pellets descend, and in the intestines the bacterial protein in them is digested. When they reach the large intestine they bypass the material in the caecum and go on into the colon where the excess moisture is absorbed to produce the familiar dry beans or droppings that are cast away. This phase of the cycle completed, the material stored in the dead end of the caecum next enters the colon, but instead of having all the moisture absorbed it reaches the anus in a rather soft condition. It is in pellet form with each coated with a tough layer of mucus to prevent them from sticking together. Now when these pellets reach the anus, instead of being cast away, the rabbit doubles up and takes them into the mouth and stores them away in the cardiac end of the stomach until another meal has been eaten. In this way the special rhythmic cycle is completed and most of the food has passed a second time through the digestive tract.
Dr. Waldo L. Schmitt, Head Curator, Department of Zoology of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., in commenting on these findings, wrote: “There seems to be no reason to doubt the authenticity of the reports of various workers that rabbits customarily store semi-digested food in the caecum and that this is later reingested and passes a second time through the digestive tract.” He also observed that here is an explanation for “the phenomenally large caecum of rabbits as compared with most other mammals.”—Awake!, April 22, 1951, pp. 27, 28.
-
-
CuminInsight on the Scriptures, Volume 1
-
-
CUMIN
[Heb., kam·monʹ, Gr., kyʹmi·non], Black Cumin [Heb., qeʹtsach].
The cumin plant (Cuminum cyminum) is of the carrot or parsley family, growing about 0.3 m to 0.6 m (1 to 2 ft) high, with long, slender leaves and umbels (bouquetlike clusters) of small pink or white flowers growing at the ends of the upward-rising branches. The plant is best known for its pungently aromatic seeds, used in Middle Eastern and other countries as a spice for flavoring bread, cakes, stews, and even liquors. Caraway seeds, which the cumin seeds resemble in flavor and appearance, have since become more commonly used than cumin because of being milder and of greater nutritive value.
Mentioned along with the cumin at Isaiah 28:25, 27 is the plant described by the Hebrew word qeʹtsach. It has been variously identified by translators as “fitches” (KJ), “fennel” (Mo), and “dill” (AT; RS); but “black cumin” (JP; NW) seems to be favored by the context and also by the corresponding name in Arabic (qazha). Despite its English name, black cumin (Nigella sativa) is not classified botanically with the cumin plant, and though known as “the nutmeg flower,” it likewise differs from the cultivated nutmeg. It is of the Ranunculaceae (buttercup) family, grows to about the same height as the cumin, has similar feathery leaves, but blossoms with individual, attractive flowers with white to blue petals. The seed vessels have interior compartments, and the tiny black seeds, smaller than the cumin, are acrid as well as aromatic and are used on foods as a rather peppery seasoning. It was a favorite spice of the ancient Greeks and Romans.—PICTURE, Vol. 1, p. 543.
Though neither the cumin nor the black cumin is widely cultivated in the region of Palestine today, in Bible times they both were more popular there. Jehovah through the prophet Isaiah describes the Israelite farmer’s scattering seeds broadcast over the plowed land, while giving greater care to the sowing of the more valuable grains, such as wheat, millet, and barley. He likewise shows that after harvesting, the threshing of the seeds of the cumin and black cumin plants was not done with heavy wheels or rollers of threshing instruments, but was accomplished by beating the seed capsules with a staff or, for the stouter pods of the black cumin, a rod so the small tender seeds would not be damaged. Coming, as it does, after Jehovah’s exhortation to the people of Israel to cease scoffing in view of the imminent extermination facing the northern kingdom, this illustration apparently was given to show that the people had the option either of responding to the disciplinary beating by Jehovah’s rod or of being subjected to severe and incessant threshing as under the crushing weight of a heavy rollered wagon.—Isa 28:22-29.
-