PARCHED GROUND
667
PARCHMENT
sum, or bean of Pythagoras, and most abundantly the pulse called fjram by the English, on which their cattle are chiefly fed. This is the Cice}- arietinum of bota- nists, or chick-pea, which is common even in Egypt and the south of Europe, and may be obtained every- where in India in a parched state, under the name of chehenne. Belon (Observat. ii, 53) informs us that large quantities of it are parched and dried, and stored in nia!j,azines at Cairo and Damascus. It is much used during journeys, and particularly by the great pilgrim caravan to Mecca (comp. Ilasselquist, p. 191). Consid- ering all these points, it does not appear to us by any means certain that the kali is correctly translated "parched corn"' in all the passages of Scripture. Thus, in Lev. xxiii, 14 : " Ye shall eat neither bread, nor parched corn (kali), nor green ears, until . . ." So in Kuth ii, li: "And he (Boaz) reached hex jnirched corn (kali), and she did eat." 1 Sam. xvii, 17 : " Take now for thj' brethren an ephah of parched corn." And again, xxv, 18, where live measures of parched corn are mentioned. Bochart remarks {I/ieroz. II, i, 7) that Jerome renders kali by frixum cicer, i. e. tfhe parched cicer or chick-pea; and, to show that it was the prac- tice among the ancients to parch the cicer, he quotes Plaiitus {Bacch. \v, 5, 7), Horace {De Arte Poetica, 1. 249), and others; and shows from the writings of the rabbins that kali was also ajiplied to some kind of pulse. The name kali seems, moreover, to have been widely spread through Asiatic countries. Thus in Shakspeare's IJiiidee Dictionary, kulce, from a Sanscrit root, is trans- lated/«(?.?(? — leguminous seeds in general. It is applied in the Himalayas to the common lield-pea. It is culti- vated in the Himalayas, also in the plains of North- west India, and is found wild in the Khadie of the Jumna, near Delhi ; the corra mutiur of the natives, called kullae in the hills {Illust. of Himalayan Botany, p. 200). Hence we are disposed to consider the pea, or the chick-pea, as more correct than parched corn in some of the above passages of Scripture. — Kitto. See also Ge- senius, Thesaur. p. 1215; Celsius, Ilierobot. ii, 231 sq., where other methods of interpretation are- collected. Some have even supposed k(di to be a kind of coffee- bean! The predominant opinion of interpreters, how- ever, sustains the rendering of the A.V., since wheat or barley, roasted in the ears and then rubbed out, is still common among the Bedouin (see Legh, in Macmichael's Journey, p. 235), and in Palestine (Hobinson, Bibl. Res. ii, 394). Thus Thomson remarks, "A quantity of the best ears, not too ripe, are plucked with the stalks at- tached. These are tied into small parcels, a blazing fire is kindled with dry grass and thorn-bushes, and the corn-heads are held in it until the chaff is mostly burned oif. The grain is thus sufficiently roasted to be eaten, and it is a favorite article all over the country" (Land and Book, ii, 510). Tristram likewise observes, " We once witnessed a party of reapers making their evening meal of parched corn. A few sheaves of wheat were brought down, and tossed on the tire of brushwood. As soon as the straw was consumed, the charred heads were dexterously swept from the embers on a cloak spread on the ground. The women then beat the ears and tossed them into the air until they were thoroughly winnowed, when the wheat was eaten at once wdiile it was hot. The ilish was by no means unpalatable" {Xat. IliM. of the Bible, p. 492), See Ears (of Cokx).
Parched Ground is the rendering of the Hebrew sharub', 3^'>^, in Isa. xxxv, 7. This word properly means " heat of the sun," as the A. V. renders it in Isa. xlix, 10. Hence it is used to designate a phenomenon whicH is frequent in Arabia and Egypt, and may be occasionally seen in the southern parts of P^urope; call- ed by the Arabs Serah, and by the French Le Mirage, by which name it is also commonly known in English. Descriptions of this illusion are often given by travel- lers. It consists in the appearance of a lake or sea in the midst of a plain where none in reality exists. It is
produced by the reflection of the rays of light from strata of air heated by the sand or the sun ; and it fre- quently exhibits, along with the undulating appear- ance of water, the shadows of objects within or around the plain, both in a natural and in an inverted position. The deception is most complete ; and to the weary trav- eller who is attracted by it, it is in the highest degree mortifying, since, instead of refreshing water, he finds himself in the midst of nothing but glowing sand. It is often used proverbially, or for the sake of comparison, by the Arabs, as in the Koran (Sur. xxiv, 39) : " But as for those who believe not, their works arc like the serab of the plain : the thirsty imagines it to be water, but when he reaches it he finds it is nothing." The same figure occurs in Isa. xxxv, 7: "The sharab shall become a lake," i. e. the illusive appearance of a lake in the desert shall become a real lake of refreshing waters. See Gesenius and Henderson on Isaiah, and comp. the descriptions and explanations in Kitto's J'hysical His- tory of Palestine, p. 147, 150, 151.— Kitto. See Mi- rage.