David Bivin

The King James Version of Luke 6 speaks of the disciples plucking ears of corn, which to an American suggests yellow sweet corn rather than grain which the British translators had in mind. In fact, corn is a generic term used to refer to the most important cereal crop of a region, be it maize, wheat or oats. In the Land of Israel, the main field crops in ancient times were wheat and barley. Barley is the Hebrew se’orah. It is mentioned thirty-four times in the Hebrew Scriptures, thirteen times together with wheat.

The Torah commands that at harvest time a sheaf of the first grain harvested is to be brought to the priest to be waved before the LORD as an offering. This was done on the second day of the Passover festival (Lev. 23:10-11). The Torah does not specify which grain is meant, but the commandment has always been understood to refer to barley which ripens in Israel at the time of Passover.

Barley flour was less expensive than wheat flour, being coarser and less tasty, and was used commonly in the bread baked by the poor. Because barley can be grown on steeply sloping land or in regions where rainfall is insufficient for wheat production, its distribution was quite widespread in ancient times.

Barley is so inferior to wheat that in ancient sources it is often mentioned as animal feed (I Kings 4:28; Mishnah, Sotah 2:1). Even so, because it ripens a month or more before wheat, it was what was brought to the Temple on Passover as a thanks offering.