can be answered only after having ascertained the nature of the products, which yield a liquor similar to the Hebrew shechar to those nations which use it. Under Numbers vi. 3 the words of xxviii. 7 are quoted to show that the ancient beverage, "strong wine," included liquors obtained from very different substances. Does the glowing promise of Zechariah regarding the fruits of the renewed favour of God, and the return to him of a backsliding people, point to corn (dāgān) as one substance from which the shechār was obtained? "The Lord of hosts shall defend them; and they shall devour, and subdue with sling-stones; and they shall drink, and make a noise as through wine; and they shall be filled like bowls, and as the corners of the altar. And the Lord their God shall save them in that day as the flock of his people; for they shall be as the stones of a crown, lifted up as an ensign upon his land. For how great is his goodness, and how great is his beauty! Corn shall make the young men cheerful, and new wine the maids" (Zech. ix. 15-17). The imagery employed by the prophet is suggestive of a preparation from the "corn." The people were "to drink," "to make a noise as through wine," and the young men were to be made "cheerful" with the corn, as the maids. were to be with the new wine. "Cheerful" (noov) indicates a disposition to happy talk. There is the strongest likelihood that the ancient "strong drink" -shechar and sikera-was similar to the modern arráck or raki, the form of strong drink chiefly in use in eastern lands. Indeed one kind of arráck is still known as sakar-a word which plainly points to a similarity between the ancient and modern liquors. The use of this beverage can be traced from Russia in Europe over the whole of the Asiatic continent, and in all the islands on the south-east and south of Asia. In Africa it is a favourite beverage; it is largely used in South America, and was found among the natives of the South Sea islands when first discovered by modern voyagers. Two principal sources from which it is obtained are different species of palm-trees and rice. The cocoa nut, the apple, &c., readily yield it likewise. The palm-honey described by Shaw is a form of shechar. He says, "It is usual with persons of better fashion, upon a marriage, at the birth or circumcision of a child, or upon any other feast or good day, to entertain their guests with the honey, or dipse as they call it, of the palm-tree. This they procure by cutting off the head or crown (the epikope of Theophrastus, to which the Hazazon Tamar is supposed to relate) of one of the more vigorous plants, and scooping the top of the trunk into the shape of a basin, where the sap in ascending lodges itself, at the rate of three or four quarts a day during the first week or fortnight; after which the quantity daily diminishes, and at the end of six weeks, or two months, the juices are entirely consumed, the tree becomes dry, and serves only for timber or firewood. This liquor, which has a more luscious sweetness than honey, is of the consistence of a thin syrup, but quickly grows tart and ropy, acquiring an intoxicating quality, and giving by distillation an agreeable spirit or arâky, according to the general name of these people for all hot liquors extracted by the alembick."-("Travels," vol. i., 262.) All the sorts are, either when first made or in a very short time, highly intoxicating. will yield from four to a hundred pints in twenty-four hours. One palm The people against whom the preceding threatenings had been uttered, sought to comfort themselves by two considerations. On the one hand, they believed that delay in their fulfilment warranted the hope that they would not come at all; and, on the other hand, they thought themselves justified in their low thoughts of God by being able to point to what they held to be arbitrary proceedings on his part, in his dealings with men. The prophet is sent to set God's dealings with them in their true light :- "Give ye ear, and hear my voice; hearken, and hear my speech. Doth the plowman plow all day to sow? doth he open and break the clods of his ground? When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin, and cast in the principal wheat, and the appointed barley, and the rye, in their place? For his God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him. For the fitches are not thrashed with a thrashing-instrument, neither is a cart-wheel turned about upon the cummin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod. Bread-corn is bruised; because he will not ever be thrashing it, nor break it with the wheel of his cart, nor bruise it with his horsemen. This also cometh forth from the Lord of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working" (ver. 23-29). As if he had said, The delay of judgment no more proves that it will never come, than the patience of the husbandman, and his preparatory labours, prove that he expects no harvest; and the difference of God's dealings with different men is no more inconsistent with his general purposes of wrath or mercy, than the husbandman's treatment of the different grains is inconsistent with his general purpose of securing and enjoying them. The husbandman plows with the intention of sowing different grains in their proper But he sows also that he might reap, and he treats the ripened season. ears in the way best suited to get the corn out of them. The knowledge which leads to this distinguishing of different plants, and to variety in their mode of treatment, is God's gift to men, whether it be acknowledged or no. "God doth instruct him to discretion and doth teach him." Much difference of opinion has existed as to the plant which our translators have named "fitches." Two Hebrew words are thus translated, namely, ketsach, as in this passage, and kūsēmeth, used in Ezekiel iv. 9. By comparing the expressions of the two prophets, in the light of the context, it appears that ketsach is used to denote a seed employed for purposes corresponding to those for which the cummin associated with it is, and that kūsēmeth formed an ingredient of the mixed bread which Ezekiel was commanded to eat :-"Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentiles, and millet, and fitches, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof, according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon thy side; three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof. And thy meat which thou shalt eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day: from time to time shalt thou eat it." Equally with the flour of the wheat and barley, that of the "fitches" was baked into this bread. This fact determines that the fitches of Ezekiel were not seeds used as a condiment, as those of the cummin were. Our translators have suggested "spelt," in the margin, as an alternative rendering. This has been generally accepted by recent interpreters; but not on good grounds. "Spelt" (Triticum spelta of Linnæus) is a species of wheat-spelter wheat—and was not at all likely to be used along with the common wheat (T. vulgare) in making bread. The grain translated "fitches," would differ as much from the other kinds mentioned, as barley would do from wheat, or lentiles from millet. We may be almost certain that the true fitch, or vetch (Vicia sativa), is the grain referred to by Ezekiel. It may, no doubt, be objected to this inference, that the "bean" which is closely related to the "vetch," is also named by the prophet. But the relation is far more distant than that which obtains between the spelter wheat and the common wheat. In the former case the difference is generic. The bean is ranged among the natural order Leguminacea, or pod-bearers, under the genus Faba; the vetch under that of Vicia. In Exodus ix. 32, and also in the passage before us (ver. 25), kūsēmeth is rendered "rye" (Secale cereale); but, as in Ezekiel, “vetch" is the appropriate term. Vetches are cultivated for the sake of their grain in several countries. A large white variety is ground into meal in some parts of Germany. They are plentiful in Egypt, where they have been used for bread, and are abundant in Palestine. Pigeons are exceedingly fond of them, and a suggestion, not to be overlooked, has been made, that among other reasons for their cultivation among the Jews one may have been, that they might supply food for the turtledoves which the poor of the people offered to the Lord. In the famine of 1555, multitudes of the people in Britain went out into the woodlands in search of wild vetches, and supported themselves on their fruit. Twelve species occur in Britain, and eight species of a closely related form the vetchling (Lathyrus)—are to be met with. Most wanderers in the woods and fields must have admired, and loved to linger in the spots "Where profuse the wood-vetch clings In the Septuagint version kētsach is rendered melanthion, or black grain, the Nigella sativa, or black poppy, of botanists-one of the natural order Ranunculacea, or crow-foot family of plants, ranged with a few others with the hellebores under the sub-order Helleborec. This is a native of the north of Africa and of the East. It is sometimes used as a condiment for food, and for the adulteration of pepper. The only reason for identifying this with the "fitches" of the text, is the rendering of the LXX. But its association with cummin, and the description of the mode in which it is threshed, leads us to identify it with the common dill (Anethum graveolens). See under Matt. xxiii, 23. "Cummin," Heb. kamon, is the only representative of the genus Cuminum (C. cyminum) of botanists. It belongs to the natural order Umbelliferæ. Like the dill, caraway, &c., it is used as a spice, and in medicine for its stomachic and carminative qualities. It is still cultivated in Egypt and Palestine, but chiefly in Malta, as an article of commerce. When threshed, it is beaten out as described here-not with the heavy waggon-wheel, but with the rod or the slight switch. This plant is only twice mentioned, here and in Matt. xxiii. 23. The mode of preparing "bread-corn" is different. The paraphrase of the passage will run thus:- Dill and cummin must be threshed out with the flail; wheat and barley may be more severely dealt with; , they will bear the wheel, but not the hoofs of horses. The "breadcorn" is chiefly obtained from the wheat (Triticum vulgare), and the barley (Hordeum vulgare). The variety in the ways of treating all these is again traced to God's teaching-"This also cometh forth from Jehovah of Hosts; he is wonderful in counsel, and great in wisdom." Chapter xxxiv. The threatenings of this chapter are directed (1) against the nations in general by whom Israel had been oppressed; and (2) specially against Edom. The divine foreknowledge of coming events is indicated by the highly poetical expressions of verse 5-"My sword shall be bathed in heaven: behold it shall come down on Idumea, and upon the people of my curse, to judgment." The judgments are then likened to a general slaughter:-"The sword of the Lord is filled with blood; it is made fat with fatness, and with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams: for the Lord hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Idumea. And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness. For it is the day of the Lord's vengeance, and the year of recompences for the controversy of Zion" (ver. 6-8). The complete desolation of the land is then described:-"And the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch. It shall not be quenched night nor day; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever: from generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it for ever and ever" (ver. 9-10). Thus swept by the terrible curse of Jehovah, the whole land was to become the habitation of beasts and birds which loved the solitude of desert places:-"The cormorant and the bittern shall possess it; the owl also and the raven shall dwell in it: and he shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion, and the stones of emptiness. They shall call the nobles thereof to the kingdom, but none shall be there, and all her princes shall be nothing. And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof; and it shall be an habitation of dragons, and a court for owls. The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; the screech-owl also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest" (ver. 11-14). 66 'Cormorant," Heb. kāath. This word occurs in other four passages, in which it is translated "pelican," the meaning to be assigned to it here. See under Ps. cii. 6. "Bittern," Heb. kippōd. See under Zeph. ii. 14. Owl," Heb. yansuph, a term rendered "great owl" in Lev. ii. 17; Deut. xiv. 16-which see. It has been proposed to translate Yansuph VOL. II. 3 P |