kul´t̬ū̇r:
Found only in 2 Esdras 8:6 the King James Version and the Revised Version (British and American), “give … culture to our understanding,” i.e. to nourish it as seed in the ground.
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Cucumbers
(Heb. plur. kishshuim; i.e., “hard,” “difficult” of digestion, only in Numbers 11:5). This vegetable is extensively cultivated in the East at the present day, as it appears to have been in earlier times among the Hebrews. It belongs to the gourd family of plants. In the East its cooling pulp and juice are most refreshing. “We need not altogether wonder that the Israelites, wearily marching through the arid solitudes of the Sinaitic peninsula, thought more of the cucumbers and watermelons of which they had had no lack in Egypt, rather than of the cruel bondage which was the price of these luxuries.” Groser’s Scripture Natural History.
Isaiah speaks of a “lodge” (Isaiah 1:8; Heb. sukkah), i.e., a shed or edifice more solid than a booth, for the protection throughout the season from spring to autumn of the watchers in a “garden of cucumbers.”
Cucumber
kū´kum-bẽr (קשׁאים, ḳishshu’īm; σίκυος, síkuos):
One of the articles of food for which Israel in the wilderness looked back with longing to Egypt (Numbers 11:5). Cucumbers are great favorites with all the people of Palestine. Two varieties occur, Cucumis sativus (Arabic, Khyār), originally a product of Northwest India, which is smooth-skinned, whitish and of delicate flavor, and requires much water in its cultivation, and Cucumis chate (Arabic, faqqūs), which is long and slender but less juicy than the former. Probably the Biblical reference is to this latter as it is a plant much grown in Egypt where it is said to attain unusual excellence.
A “garden of cucumbers” or more literally a “place of cucumbers” (miḳshāh), is mentioned in Isaiah 1:8; Baruch 6:70. “A lodge in a garden of cucumbers” (Isaiah 1:8) is the rough wooden booth erected by the owner from which he keeps guard over his ripening vegetables. It is commonly raised upon poles and, when abandoned for the season, it falls into decay and presents a dreary spectacle of tottering poles and dead leaves.
