A further post in my series republishing The Folklore of Herbs (1946), a book by Katherine Oldmeadow, who was a significant figure in the British pagan revival.

CHAPTER VIII.
HERBS IN THE BIBLE.

“And one went out into the field to gather herbs” – 2 Kings, V. 39.

A whole book, and a very interesting one, could be written about the trees, flowers and herbs of the Bible, but in this one short chapter it is possible to mention only a few.

The Egyptians knew the value of herbs as medicine, and like all people of the east they made constant use of the aromatic ones, and they were fond of stimulating the appetite with rich condiments and hot spices.

Perfumes, too, were used in great quantities in Biblical days for perfuming the houses and garments, embalming the dead, and in the making of holy oils and precious ointments.

When Eastern Kings and Queens paid royal visits they carried costly gifts of spices and perfumes, and merchants with their long strings of camels were constantly bringing in such merchandise from Arabia, Ceylon and India. It was a caravan of these spice merchants, coming from Gilead with their camels “bearing spicery and balm and myrrh going to carry it down into Egypt,” who rescued Joseph from the pit and carried him into Egypt with their merchandise.

The names of some of our commonest herbs appear in the Bible, and Our Lord chose one of the humblest of them to illustrate the Parable of the Mustard Seed, in which the growth of the Kingdom of Heaven is compared to a seed of mustard.

In this parable Our Lord describes it as least of all the seeds, but one of such prolific growth that it “becomes the greatest among herbs,” a tree in which birds of the air come and lodge.

In England we constantly see fields of wild mustard several feet high, but we should not describe this as “the greatest among herbs.” In the holy land, however, travellers describe fields of mustard “as tall as a horse and its rider,” and on such plants birds would naturally perch, just as they do here on corn or tall thistles. The rich soil and hot climate would be the cause of such growth.

On two other occasions Our Lord referred to the mustard seed when reproving his disciples for their want of faith. If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove. And when the disciples ask for their faith to be increased, He again uses the proverb of the mustard seed.

The leaves, stems and seed of some herbs by Jewish law were subject to tithe. Mint was one of these, also rue, anise and cinnamon. These herbs were named by Our Lord when He rebuked the Pharisees for paying this small tithe punctiliously, but omitting to carry out those weightier matters of Jewish law: mercy, judgment and faith.

Mint grows wild in Egypt and the Holy Land and it was one of the bitter herbs eaten by the Jews with the Paschal Lamb: With bitter herbs they shall eat it.

There were five of these bitter herbs, and according to the Rabbis, these were lettuce, endive, chicory, and two others not known, although it is possible one of them would be the stinging nettle.

Anise, valued in the east and all over the world for its aromatic seeds, grows in Palestine and is a small, umbelliferous plant.

Cinnamon, too, was cultivated for its seeds, which Biblical people used for spicing bread, cakes and meat.

The method of obtaining its small seeds is described in the book of Isaiah: For the fitches are not threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned about the cummin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod.

By “fitches” is meant the seeds of a small plant called nigella, very hot and spicy and used a great deal in Egyptian and Arabian cookery. The tiny seeds of both these plants could not endure the heavy corn thresher, but were beaten out by hand with a slender rod.

A small, shrubby herb, with clusters of fragrant, white and yellow blossoms, is called samphire in The Song of Solomon. It yields the henna flower so much used by the people of the east for dyeing their nails and the palms of their hands.

The three homely herbs, garlic, leeks and onions, were among the list of good things left behind them with the flesh pots of Egypt, for which the Israelites longed vainly when they were wandering in the wilderness: We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumber and the melons, and the leeks and the onions and the garlick.

The onion was an important vegetable in Egyptian cookery; and it was also eaten in a raw state by travellers crossing the desert as a remedy against thirst.

Coriander, another herb producing spicy seeds, was compared to manna by the Israelites: And the house of Israel called the name thereof Manna; and it was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey.

The gall of the Bible might have been wormwood or any bitter herb. It was compared to the poison of dragons and the cruel venom of asps.

The nettles of the Holy Land are much more virulent than those of this country; they are the same variety as those brought into Britain by the Romans. Their sting is very severe and lasts for many hours. These nettles grow large and tall and they are found in places once occupied, by the Romans.

There is a story in the Second Book of Kings with a moral which might very well apply to those foolish people who pick plants and eat them without knowing anything about their properties.

When Elisha went down to Gilgal, there was a famine in the land and he wished to entertain “the sons of the prophets.”

His servant went out into the fields and found wild gourds growing on a vine, and, not knowing they belonged to a poisonous variety, he brought them back and shredded them into a pot of pottage. When it was served out the guests cried out reproachfully: “Oh, thou Man of God – there is death in the pot.”

The spices of which we read so much in the Bible cannot strictly be called herbs, as they are the gum resins taken from trees; but they are too interesting to be ignored.

Myrrh, aloes, cassia and cinnamon were costly spices used by the Jews for their purification oil, and brought from India and Arabia.

Myrrh was one of the principal ingredients of the holy oil used for anointing all the vessels in the Tabernacle and the High Priest and his sons. The punishment for using this holy oil for any other purpose was death. Myrrh was very precious. It was used for embalming the dead and sometimes as a medicine to induce sleep. It was one of the gifts brought by the Wise Men to the Infant Saviour.

Cinnamon was another ingredient of the holy oil and a perfume mentioned by King Solomon.

Frankincense, the gum of an Indian tree like a mountain ash, imported through Arabia, was so fragrant that it was considered the sweetest of perfumes. It was another of the Wise Men’s gifts.

Spikenard was one of the rarest perfumes and very costly, because it had to be fetched from a plant growing at a great height on the Himalayas. The liquid called “nard” comes from the root leaves, which throw up hairy spikes. This was the “precious ointment” used by Mary Magdalene for anointing the feet of Our Lord.

We may well imagine that a pound of this costly perfume must have been Mary’s most treasured possession; perhaps kept for years in the alabaster vial for some great occasion in her life.

According to Jewish law, persons, things or places which had been defiled in any way had to be cleansed by a purifying water. This was done by a sprinkler made of a bunch of hyssop dipped in the water of purification. There has always been discussion, which has never really ended, over the identity of the true hyssop. Some botanists say it was the caper which grows over a wall, and others the mignonette. It seems more likely that it was the marjoram, for a bunch of this herb makes an excellent sprinkler.

It was used to sprinkle the door posts of the Israelites’ houses with the blood of the Paschal Lamb, and for purifying lepers and their abodes. It was upon hyssop that vinegar was passed on a sponge to the lips of Our Lord upon the Cross; and the word is used symbolically by the Psalmist: Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean.

One of the most joyful of the Jewish Feasts was the Feast of the Tabernacles, a thanksgiving for the harvest and a commemoration of the journey to the Promised Land, when the Israelites dwelt in tents. During this festival the Jews erected little tents or booths, built of olive, pine, palm and myrtle. The lovely sweet-scented myrtle, always used for brides, is still seen in Jewish synagogues at the Feast of Tabernacles with citron, palm and willow of the brook. In Jewish bazaars at Jerusalem and Damascus the dried leaves and flowers of myrtle are sold in great quantities to be distilled as perfumes. A favourite name for little Jewish girls is “Hadassah,” which is the Hebrew word for Myrtle.

Herbs were used at that other great Jewish feast, the Passover. To celebrate the deliverance of the people from Egyptian bondage, it was attended by great ceremonies, the chief being the slaying and eating of the Paschal Lamb with bitter herbs and unleavened bread.

The flowers of the Holy Land are beautiful and they grow everywhere over the hills and in the valleys and meadows. One of them, the little crocus sativus, the blue flower we call autumn crocus, is the saffron of Solomon’s garden. The women of Syria collect the yellow stigmas of these plants, dry them in the sun and pound them into saffron cakes which are sold in the bazaars for colouring and flavouring the rich, spicy food of the East.

One of the commonest flowers of the Holy Land is the lily-of-the-field, which is probably why Our Lord chose it to illustrate perfect trust in God’s mercy: Consider the lilies of the field; they toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

These lilies-of-the-field are probably the brilliantly coloured wild anemones which carpet the highways and fields of Palestine. Our Lord would, perhaps, pick a scarlet one to point his lesson, because it is compared to the glorious robe of a King.

One of the most famous herbs mentioned frequently in the Bible – and it may be called a herb, because of the value of its seeds in medicine – is the flax. From the very earliest times, one might almost say it came after fig leaves, linen was used to clothe men, women and children, and the tiny, frail flax plant, with its blossoms of lavender blue, provided the thread for the spinning wheel. The flax crop was precious, and one of the ten plagues of Egypt was a terrible disaster to the Egyptians, because it destroyed the flax as well as the barley.

Linen wrappings have been found on the oldest mummies in the world. The fabric was made into priestly vestments embroidered with blue, purple and scarlet; it clothed Kings, and the curtain in the Tabernacle which divided the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies was made of fine linen embroidered with cherubs. In the list of holy things used in the Tabernacle, with the brass, gold and silver and wood, is “fine linen.”

When the Israelites were journeying towards the Promised Land, they must have wondered if their new country would produce flax for their raiment; and when the two spies sent out by Joshua returned, their minds would be set at rest. For the spies had been hidden by a friendly woman of Jericho on the flat roof of her house, where they saw the stalks of flax laid out to dry.

Flax must be called a most precious herb. For once upon a time, in the fields of the Holy Land, grew the frail little flowers as blue as Heaven, whose slender stalks were to be woven into the linen that, on the first Christmas Night, swaddled the “Flower of Babies.”