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Of the bread of the ancient Hebrews we know nothing, except from their sacred books; but these contain a large store of knowledge. Their cereals seem to have consisted only of wheat, barley, rye (or it may be spelt), and millet, but they cultivated leguminous plants, such as beans and lentils. It is impossible to say accurately when these books were written, so that in the following notices respecting the bread of the Hebrews I take the sequence in which I find them placed in the Bible. It is impossible to do otherwise, as their chronology is such an open question.

At first, in all probability, the normal course of pre-historic man was followed—wheat and barley grew wild, were first eaten raw, and then parched. Of this latter and primitive method of cooking cereals we have several notices. It was used as a sacrifice, as we see in Leviticus ii. 16: ‘And the priest shall burn the memorial of it, part of the beaten corn thereof, and part of the oil thereof, with all the frankincense thereof: it is an offering made by fire unto the Lord.’ That parched corn was at that time a food we find in Levit. xxiii. 14: ‘And ye shall eat neither bread, nor parched corn, nor green ears, until the self-same day that ye have brought an offering unto your God.’ We next find it as the food of labouring people in Ruth ii. 14, when Boaz ‘reached her parched corn, and she did eat, and was sufficed, and left.’

Mention is again made of it in I. Sam. xvii., when Goliath of Gath challenged the men of Israel. Jesse’s three sons had followed Saul to the battle, and the anxious father had sent his youngest son David, with provisions for them, and a present to their commander, vv. 17, 18: ‘And Jesse said unto David his son, Take now for thy brethren an ephah4 of this parched corn, and these ten loaves, and run to the camp to thy brethren; and carry these ten cheeses unto the captain of their thousand, and look how thy brethren fare, and take their pledge.’ We see, I. Sam. xxv. 18, how Abigail, Nabal’s wife, in order to propitiate David, ‘made haste, and took 200 loaves, and two bottles of wine, and five sheep ready dressed, and five measures of parched corn, and 100 clusters of raisins, and 200 cakes of figs, and laid them on asses.’ The last we hear of parched corn as food is in II. Sam. xvii. 27, 28, when David arrived at Mahanaim. Shobi, Machir, and Barzillai ‘brought beds, and basons, and earthen vessels, and wheat, and barley, and flour, and parched corn, and beans, and lentils, and parched pulse.’ In England this parching is sometimes applied to peas, and, indeed, there is a saying comparing an extremely lively person ‘to a parched pea in a frying pan,’ and in America ‘pop corn,’ or parched maize, is very popular.

Threshing corn we first read of in Deut. xxv. 4, when we find the following direction given: ‘Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn,’ a practice which the natives of Aleppo, and some other Eastern places, still religiously observe.

How Gideon (Jud. vi. 11) or Oman (I. Chron. xxi. 20) threshed, whether by oxen or by flail, we cannot tell, but in Isaiah xxviii. 27, 28, we find five methods of threshing then in vogue. ‘For the fitches [this is supposed to be the Nigella sativa, whose seeds are used as a condiment, like coriander or caraway] are not threshed with a threshing 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 threshing it, nor break it with the wheel of his cart, nor bruise it with his horsemen.’ In Lowth on Isaiah we find this passage made somewhat clearer:

‘The dill is not beaten out with the corn-drag;

Nor is the Wheel of the Wain made to turn upon the cummin.

But the dill is beaten out with the Staff,

And the cummin with the Flail, but

The bread corn with the Threshing-Wain;

And not for ever will he continue thus to thresh it,

Nor vex it with the Wheel of its Wain,

Nor to bruise it with the Hoofs of his Cattle.’

The Staff and Flail were used for that grain that was too tender to be treated in any other method. The Drag consisted of a sort of frame of strong planks, made rough at the bottom with hard stones or iron; it was drawn by horses or oxen over the corn sheaves spread on the threshing floor, the driver sitting upon it. The Wain was much like the former, but had wheels with iron teeth, or edges like a saw; the axle was armed with iron teeth or serrated wheels throughout; it moved upon three rollers, armed with iron teeth, or wheels, to cut the straw. In Syria they make use of the drag constructed in the very same manner—and this not only forces out the grain, but cuts the straw in pieces for fodder for the cattle; for in Eastern countries there is no hay.

Sir R. K. Porter, in his Travels in Georgia,5 speaks of this method of threshing, which he saw in the early part of the last century. ‘The threshing operation is managed by a machine composed of a large square frame of wood, which contains two wooden cylinders placed parallel to each other, and which have a turning motion. They are stuck full of splinters, with sharp square points, but not all of a length. These barrels have the appearance of the barrels in an organ, and their projections, when brought in contact with the corn, break the stalk and disengage the ear. They are put in motion by a couple of cows or oxen, yoked to the frame, and guided by a man sitting on the plank that covers the frame which contains the cylinders. He drives this agricultural equipage in a circle round any great accumulation of just-gathered harvest, keeping at a certain distance from the verge of the heap, close to which a second peasant stands, holding a long-handled 20-pronged fork, shaped like the spread sticks of a fan, and with which he throws the unbound sheaves forward to meet the rotary motion of the machine. He has a shovel also ready, with which he removes to a considerable distance the corn that has already passed the wheel. Other men are on the spot with the like implement, which they fill with the broken material, and throw it aloft in the air, where the wind blows away the chaff, and the grain falls to the ground. The latter process is repeated till the corn is completely winnowed from its refuse, when it is gathered up, carried home, and deposited for use in large earthen jars. The straw is preserved with care, being the sole winter food of the horses and mules. But while I looked on at the patriarchal style of husbandry, and at the strong yet docile animal, which for so many ages had been the right hand of man in his business of tilling and reaping the ground, I could not but revere the beneficent law which pronounced, “Muzzle not the ox when he treadeth out the corn.” ’

It was probably one of these that Araunah meant (II. Sam. xxiv. 22) when he said unto David: ‘Let my lord the king take and offer up what seemeth good unto him: behold, here be oxen for burnt sacrifice, and threshing instruments and other instruments of the oxen for wood.’ And it is certainly mentioned in Isaiah xli. 15: ‘Behold, I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth.’

The threshing-floor is many times mentioned in the Bible. There were those of Atad, Nachon, and Araunah (or Ornan), the value of whose floor, etc., is variously stated in II. Sam. xxiv. 24, where it says that David bought the flour and oxen for 50 shekels of silver, or about 6l of our money; whilst in I. Chron. xxi. 25, he gave him 600 shekels of gold in weight, or 1200l of our currency, which seems a large sum for a small level piece of ground; for the floors, so-called, were out of doors, so that the wind might carry away the chaff, as we read in Hosea xiii. 3: ‘They shall be … as the chaff that is driven with the whirlwind out of the floor.’ See also Psalm i. 4.

These floors were used for other purposes than threshings, as we read in I. Kings xxii. 10: ‘And the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat the king of Judah sat each on his throne, having put on their robes, in a void place (or floor) in the entrance of the gate of Samaria; and all the prophets prophesied before them,’ a statement which is repeated in II. Chron. xviii. 9.

Harvest-time was appointed by Moses as one of the great festivals—Exodus xxiii. 14, etc.: ‘Three times thou shalt keep a feast unto me in the year. Thou shalt keep the feast of unleavened bread: (thou shalt eat unleavened bread seven days, as I commanded thee, in the time appointed of the month Abib; for in it thou camest out from Egypt: and none shall appear before me empty). And the feast of harvest, the first-fruits of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the field: and the feast of ingathering, which is in the end of the year, when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field.’ And again, in Exodus xxxiv., this is repeated, with the addition (v. 21): ‘Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest: in earing time and in harvest thou shalt rest.’ This holiday was, and is, called the feast of tabernacles, and we read in Deut. xvi. 13, etc.: ‘Thou shalt observe the feast of tabernacles seven days, after that thou hast gathered in thy corn and thy wine: and thou shalt rejoice in thy feast, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy man-servant, and thy maid-servant, and the Levite, the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, that are within thy gates. Seven days shalt thou keep a solemn feast unto the Lord thy God in the place which the Lord shall choose: because the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all thine increase, and in all the works of thine hands, therefore thou shalt surely rejoice.’

In the story of Ruth we get an idyllic picture of a Hebrew harvest field, with its kindly greetings between master and man, and its gleaners. Naomi, a native of Bethlehem, returned thither from Moab, after the death of her husband, Elimelech, accompanied by her daughter-in-law Ruth, who was also a widow, ‘and they came to Bethlehem in the beginning of barley harvest.’

Special favour was accorded to Ruth. She might glean ‘among the sheaves’—i.e., following the reapers, instead of waiting until the corn had been carried; but the Jews were enjoined to be liberal in the matter of gleaning, as we see by Lev. xix. 9: ‘And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest’; and in Deut. xxiv. 19, ‘When thou cuttest down thine harvest in thy field, and hast forgot a sheaf in the field, thou shalt not go again to fetch it; it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow: that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hands.’

There were no public mills at which flour could be ground, but, as now, in the unchangeable East, every family ground their own corn, and this task, as well as the making and baking of bread, was left to the women. See Matt. xxiv. 41: ‘Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left.’ Again we find that it was a woman who was grinding corn on a housetop in Thebez who (Judges ix. 53) ‘cast a piece of a millstone upon Abimelech’s head, and all to brake his skull.’ An Eastern flour mill consists of two stones, the upper one rotating on the lower. In Shaw’s Travels, p. 297, he says: ‘Most families grind their wheat and barley at home, having two portable millstones for that purpose. The uppermost is turned round by a small handle of wood or iron placed in the edge of it. When this stone is large, or expedition is required, then a second person is called in to assist. It is usual for the women alone to be concerned in this employ, setting themselves down over against each other, with the millstones between them.’