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CudAid to Bible Understanding
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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 into the fourth to complete digestion.
THE HARE A CUD CHEWER
The Scriptural reference to the hare as a cud chewer has frequently been doubted and severely attacked by some critics of the Bible. However, in the eighteenth century, English poet William Cowper, who had at length observed his domestic rabbits, 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 re-ingest 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 dessicated [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, p. 114.
Certain British scientists of this century 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 re-ingests 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.”—Awake!, April 22, 1951, pp. 27, 28.
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 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.”
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CumminAid to Bible Understanding
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CUMMIN
[Heb., kam·monʹ, Gr., kyʹmi·non]; Black Cummin [Heb., qeʹtsahh].
The English word “cummin” is derived from the Hebrew through Greek and Latin. The cummin plant (Cuminum cyminum, L.) is of the carrot family, growing about one to two feet (.3 to .6 meter) 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 Near Eastern and other countries as a spice for flavoring bread, cakes, stews, and even liquors. Caraway seeds, which the cummin seeds resemble in flavor and appearance, have since become more commonly used than cummin due to being milder and of greater nutritive value.
Mentioned along with the cummin at Isaiah 28:25, 27 is the plant described by the Hebrew word qeʹtsahh. It has been variously identified by translators as “fitches” (AV), “fennel” (Mo), and “dill” (AT; RS); but the “black cummin” (JP; NW) seems to be favored by the context and also by the corresponding name in Arabic (qazha). Despite its English name, black cummin (Nigella sativa, L.) is not classified botanically with the cummin plant, and though known as “the nutmeg flower,” it likewise differs from the cultivated nutmeg. It is of the buttercup family, grows about the same height as the cummin, has similar feathery leaves, but blossoms with individual attractive white to blue petaled flowers. The seed vessels have interior compartments, and the tiny black seeds, smaller than the cummin, are acrid as well as aromatic, and are used on foods as a rather peppery seasoning. They were a favorite spice of the ancient Greeks and Romans.
Though neither the cummin nor the black cummin are widely cultivated in the Palestine region today, in Bible times they 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 cummin and black cummin 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 cummin, a rod so as not to damage the small tender seeds.
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 of either 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.
Under the Mosaic law, the Israelites were to pay the tithe or tenth “of all the produce of your seed,” which would seem to include all cultivated crops. (Deut. 14:22; Lev. 27:30) In Jesus’ day the Pharisees were scrupulously careful to pay the tenth of such small products as mint, dill and cummin (all marketable commodities), but were guilty of passing over the more serious obligations. (Matt. 23:23; compare Luke 11:42.) It is of interest to note the ancient Greeks’ use of the word ky·mi·no·priʹstes (literally, “cummin-splitter”) to mean a “skinflint.”
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