cucumber Summary and Overview

CU'CUMBER . Num 11:5. A garden-vegetable well known in this counrty. Squirting Cucumber. (From Eiehm.) c. Section of the Fruit. a. Plant. b. Fruit. Cucumbers, melons, and onions are now among the leading productions of Egypt, and are also commonly cultivated in Palestine. Besides our own kind, another (Cucumis chafe) is cultivated, having a fruit with less flavor, but larger. "Cucumbers form an important item in the summer food of the poor, and are eaten with the rind on, without any condiment. In the oppressive heat of summer they form a most grateful vegetable. I remember seeing dinner served out to an Arab school in Jerusalem, which consisted of a thin barley-cake and a raw cucumber to each boy."-Tristram. The "lodge in the garden of cucumbers," Isa 1:8, rudely constructed of poles and boughs, may still be seen in many fields. It is intended to shelter a watchman set to protect the fruit from jackals and other animals, as well as from thievish men. When the crop is over and the lodge forsaken by the keeper, "the poles fall down, or lean every which way, and those green boughs with which it is shaded will have been scattered by the wind, leaving only a ragged, sprawling wreck, a most affecting type of utter desolation."-Thoinson. Job seems to have had such ruins in mind. Job 27:18.

A product abounding in Egypt, a variety of which, the Cucurtis chafe, is "the queen of cucumbers" (Hasselquist). A variety of the melon; hence the Israelites pined for this Egyptian dainty in the wilderness (Numbers 11:5). Qishu, from qaasha' "to be hard," it being an indigestible food. Tristram observed quantities of the common cucumber in Israel. Isaiah 1:8; "a lodge (a lonely box for watching in against depredations) in a garden of cucumbers," so solitary was Zion to be, as such a lodge when deserted and wrecked by the winds, the poles fallen or leaning every way, and the green boughs which had shaded it scattered.