God’s Promise: Rain, Grain, and Grass

The agrarian import of Deuteronomy 11:14‒15, found in what Jewish readers know as the second paragraph of the Shema prayer, may not be self-evident to modern readers, the majority of whom live in urban and suburban settings. The text speaks directly to both those who grew crops and those who engaged in animal husbandry.

Prof.

Gary A. Rendsburg

Prof.

Gary A. Rendsburg

Categories:

Eikev

Rain for Crops

Deuteronomy 11:14 promises that if the Israelites hearken to God’s word,^[1] God will cause the rain to fall and the crops to grow:

^{דברים יא:יד} וְנָתַתִּ֧י מְטַֽר־אַרְצְכֶ֛ם בְּעִתּ֖וֹ יוֹרֶ֣ה וּמַלְק֑וֹשׁ וְאָסַפְתָּ֣ דְגָנֶ֔ךָ וְתִֽירֹשְׁךָ֖ וְיִצְהָרֶֽךָ:

^{Deut 11:14} And I will give the rain (for) your land in its season, the early-rain and the latter-rain; and you shall collect your grain, and your new-wine, and your fine-oil.

The verse opens with three words for rain:

מָטָר matar, a generic term for rain (the word occurs 55x in the Bible^[2])
יוֹרֶה yoreh, refering to the rains which occur early in the rainy season (beginning around November until around February);
מַלְקוֹש malqosh, a term for the rains which continue to soak the land later in the season (approximately March and even into April).^[3]

This detailed description of the rains, here in Deuteronomy 11:14 and in other biblical passages, reflects their importance in ancient Israel. Unlike the riverine cultures of Egypt and Mesopotamia, where irrigation channels provided water to the fields,^[4] in the land of Canaan, agriculture was totally dependent on the seasonal rains.

Psalm 72 expands upon matar with two additional related terms, revivim and zarzif:

^{תהלים עב:ו} יֵ֭רֵד כְּמָטָ֣ר עַל־גֵּ֑ז
כִּ֝רְבִיבִ֗ים זַרְזִ֥יף אָֽרֶץ:

^{Ps 72:6} Let him be like rain that falls on a mown-field, like droplets of a downpour on the ground ^[5]

Zechariah 10 uses the terms matar and malqosh from Deuteronomy 11:14, plus two more, ḥaziz and geshem:

^{זכריה י:א} שַׁאֲל֨וּ מֵיְ־הֹוָ֤ה מָטָר֙ בְּעֵ֣ת מַלְק֔וֹשׁ
יְ־הֹוָ֖ה עֹשֶׂ֣ה חֲזִיזִ֑ים
וּמְטַר־גֶּ֙שֶׁם֙ יִתֵּ֣ן לָהֶ֔ם
לְאִ֖ישׁ עֵ֥שֶׂב בַּשָּׂדֶֽה:

^{Zech 10:1} Ask YHWH for rain in the season of latter-rain.
It is YHWH who causes storms;And He will provide rainstorms for them,
Grass in the fields for everyone.^[6]

As in Deuteronomy 11:15 (see below), YHWH provides the rain which allows the “grass in the fields” to grow.

Grain, Wine, and Olive Oil for the Crop Farmers

The second part of verse 14 mentions the three key agricultural products of the land. However, instead of using the prosaic words לֶחֶם leḥem “bread,” יַיִן yayin “wine,” and שֶׁמֶן shemen “[olive] oil,” when speaking of YHWH’s providing food for his people, the author of Deuteronomy prefers what appears to be the loftier language of דָּגָן dagan “grain,” תִּירוֹשׁ tirosh “new-wine,” and יִצְהָר yitzhar “fine olive oil”^[7] – a trio of nouns which occurs 20x in the Bible, including 6x in the book of Deuteronomy.^[8]

The Order of the Three Food Terms

The ordering of the three terms—דְגָנֶךָ וְתִירֹשְׁךָ וְיִצְהָרֶךָ degankha wə-tiroshkha wə-yitzharekha “your grain, and your new-wine, and your fine-oil”^[9]—reflects a norm in world languages: when a series of two or three items are collocated, the ordering is from shorter to longer. Clear examples of this in English in two-terms phrases are: “pins and needles,” “neat and tidy,” and “nook and cranny.”^[10] The same principle applies to three-item phrases: “hook, line, and sinker”, “lock, stock, and barrel,” and “faith, hope, and charity.”^[11]

Throughout the Bible, the three items are ordered as dagan / tirosh / yitzhar. All three words are comprised of two syllables, but dagan contains three consonants and two short vowels; tirosh contains three consonants and two long vowels; and yitzhar contains four consonants, thereby making the word automatically longer, regardless of its short vowels.^[12]

The Israelite Diet and the Mediterranean Triad

The basic meal consumed by the ancient Israelites (and their neighbors) was comprised of bread dipped in olive oil, with wine as drink.^[13] The olive oil could be seasoned with various local herbs (like zaʿatar) or with a bit of vinegar (see Ruth 2:14), but the oil itself was the primary item.^[14] Other foods—such as pulses (peas, lentils, chickpeas) or fruit (figs, dates, pomegranates)—could accompany the meal, but bread, oil, and wine constituted the basic repast.^[15] These three staples comprise what scholars—both those who research the history of food and those who advocate for healthful eating—now call “the Mediterranean triad.”^[16]

There is also something special, perhaps even numinous to the ancients (though hopefully to moderns as well) about the three foodstuffs. A fig or a date or a pomegranate could be plucked from the tree and eaten immediately. Vegetables such as lettuces can be snipped, and roots such as garlic and onions can be uprooted, and then eaten immediately. By contrast, bread, wine, and olive oil derive from major transformations of their raw materials—grain, grapes, and olives—transformations that are conducted by humans.^[17]

Grass for the Pastoralists

The next verse continues with a promise that the Israelites will have sufficient food:

^{דברים יא:טו} וְנָתַתִּ֛י עֵ֥שֶׂב בְּשָׂדְךָ֖ לִבְהֶמְתֶּ֑ךָ וְאָכַלְתָּ֖ וְשָׂבָֽעְתָּ:

^{Deut 11:15} And I will give you grass in your field for your cattle; and you shall eat and you shall be sated.

The final two words, “you shall eat and be sated” are the expected conclusion from the previous verse that YHWH will make grain, grapes, and olives grow, but, between the rain and human eating, the author adds the growth of grass, which serves as fodder for the livestock. This, the verse implies, is connected to how humans eat and are sated – especially those people who engaged in animal husbandry and who would have easy access to animal-derived foodstuffs, especially dairy products.^[18]

Though not as self-evident as in the case of agrarian foodstuffs, animal products are equally dependent on rainfall. The rains allow the grasses to grow, which in turn provide for healthy herds and flocks, which in turn provide humans with a steady supply of milk and, if an animal is slaughtered, meat.

Most striking in this regard is the parallel between the biblical passage and the opinion expressed by contemporary farmer Joel Salatin, brought to public attention by Michael Pollan in his best-selling book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Pollan writes:

But if you ask Joel Salatin what he does for a living (Is he foremost a cattle rancher? A chicken farmer?) he’ll tell you in no uncertain terms, “I’m a grass farmer.” The first time I heard this designation I didn’t get it at all—hay seemed the least (and least edible) of his many crops, and brought none of it to market. But undergirding the “farm of many faces,” as he calls it, is a single plant—or rather the whole community of plants for which the word “grass” is shorthand. “Grass,” so understood, is the foundation of the intricate food chain Salatin has assembled at Polyface, where a half dozen different animal species are raised together in an intensive rotational dance on the theme of symbiosis. Salatin is the choreographer and the grasses are his verdurous stage; the dance has made Polyface one of the most productive and influential alternative farms in America.^[19]

To the majority of modern westerners, who no longer live on the land (and off the land),^[20] the words of Deuteronomy 11:15 pass without full appreciation, but the meaning of this verse was likely obvious to anyone in ancient Israel where, perhaps 90‒95% of the people were engaged in food production in one way or the other—the growing of crops, animal husbandry, viticulture, olive oil production, the various stages required to transform grain into flour (threshing, winnowing, sifting, grinding, etc.), and so on.^[21] (The remaining 5‒10% would have included potters, masons, weavers, smiths, scribes, etc.)

If I may be permitted a personal note: despite having recited the three paragraphs of the Shema prayer innumerable times during my lifetime, only upon reading the above passage from Pollan’s book did I realize what the biblical verse was asserting.

Rain: A Message for Farmers and Shepherds

Deuteronomy 11:14–15 thus speaks to both the farming and pastoral communities that produced food in ancient Israel. Verse 14 addresses those who grew crops, while verse 15 speaks to those who tended flocks and herds. For the former, the connection between rain and food was immediate. For the latter, the connection between rain and food required the additional middle step. Grass was (and remains) the key.^[22]

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Published

July 28, 2021

Last Updated

October 29, 2024

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Footnotes

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Published

July 28, 2021

Last Updated

October 29, 2024

[1] Editor’s note: For more on this passage, see Reuven Kimelman, “The Shema’s Second Paragraph: Concern Over Israel's Affluence,” TheTorah (2018); Marc Zvi Brettler, “The Shema’s Second Paragraph: An Inner-Biblical Interpretation,” TheTorah (2018); David Frankel, “The Good Land of Israel,” TheTorah (2017).

[2] In fact, even more than geshem, which occurs 44x and which is the common word for “rain” both in post-biblical Hebrew and in modern Hebrew.

[3] Naturally, rain falls in the land of Israel throughout the winter, from November through March or April, but one cannot know the specific range for the two words highlighted in the second and third bullets here. The former term, yoreh, clearly means “early rain,” starting in November, but through which month does it extend? only in the first month or two of the rainy season? all the way through, say, February? In sum, beyond its connotation as “early rain,” we really have no way to determine the precise range.

[4] Of course, even riverine cultures require precipitation, though often the rain falls in far-away countries. For instance, Egypt relies on the Nile, which is fed by two rivers: the Blue Nile, which originates in Lake Tana in Ethiopia, and the White Nile, fed by Lake Victoria, which spans three countries, Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya. These lakes are themselves fed by other rivers, etc. All can be traced to rainfall or melted snow.

[5] The reference here is to the king of Israel, who is metaphorically compared to abundant rain.

[6] For more on these terms, see Edward Yechezkel Kutscher, A History of the Hebrew Language (Jerusalem: Magnes Press / Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1982), 55.

[7] One cannot know for sure the precise meanings of tirosh and yitzhar, but I seek here some alternatives to the basic terms “wine” and “oil.”

[8] In addition to our verse, see Deuteronomy 7:13, 12:17, 14:23, 18:4, 28:51. Elsewhere in the Bible, see Numbers 18:12; 2 Kings 18:32; Jeremiah 31:12; Hosea 2:10, 2:24; Joel 1:10, 2:19; Haggai 1:11; Nehemiah 5:11, 10:40, 13:5, 13:12; 2 Chronicles 31:5, 32:28. Editor’s note: The Temple Scroll, found at Qumran, actually contains three separate Bikkurim (First Produce) festivals, each fifty days apart, in order to celebrate each of these products in their season; see Marvin A. Sweeney, “How the Temple Scroll Rewrote the Festival of Bikkurim,” TheTorah (2018).

[9] This and numerous other examples are discussed in my book: Gary A. Rendsburg, How the Bible Is Written (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2019), ch. 20 = pp. 424‒442. For an earlier study, see Shamma Friedman, “כל הקצר קודם” [The “Law of Increasing Members” in Mishnaic Hebrew], Leshonenu 35 (1971/5731), 117–129, 192–206. Editor’s note: See also, Shira Golani, “Why Is the Sojourner Listed After the Livestock?” TheTorah (2017).

[10] Additional examples include: “jot and tittle,” “bells and whistles,” “cease and desist,” “rough and tumble,” “first and foremost,” “straight and narrow,” “front and center,” “rest and relaxation,” “brick and mortar,” “part and parcel,” “fast and furious,” “quick and dirty,” “salt and pepper,” “ladies and gentlemen,” “checks and balances,” “trials and tribulations,” “done and dusted,” “pomp and circumstance,” and “kit and caboodle.”

[11] The same holds for specific examples from literary texts: Mark Antony addresses his audience as “friends, Romans, countrymen” (William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene 2); the authors of the United States Declaration of Independence refer to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”; and the signatories thereto pledge “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

[12] Prefixes such as ‎וְ- wə- “and” and הַ- ha- “the” may appear, and suffixes such as ךָ-kha- “your” may occur, but the basic ordering remains the same. The sole exception is at Numbers 18:12, where יִצְהָר yitzhar “fine-oil” is fronted for the sake of alliteration; see further in Rendsburg, How the Bible Is Written, 435‒436.

[13] For more on agriculture and foodways in ancient Israel, see Oded Borowski, Agriculture in Iron Age Israel (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1987); idem, “What Was Life Like in Biblical Times?” TheTorah (2019); Macdonald, What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat?; and Ellen F. Davis, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014). On our specific topic, see especially Macdonald, What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat?, with an entire chapter devoted to the Mediterranean triad (ch. 3 = pp. 19‒24). For a detailed study on the centrality of grain production (including the process of milling into flour and baking into bread) to ancient Israelite culture, and the vital role of women, see Carol Meyers, “Having Their Space and Eating There Too: Bread Production and Female Power in Ancient Israelite Households,” Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender Issues 5 (2002): 14‒44. As far as we can tell, meat, fish, and dairy were consumed far less commonly than nowadays.

[14] Raw olives are extremely hard and bitter, so they are generally not plucked from the tree and eaten fresh. To be truly palatable, olives must be cured. There is little or no evidence for the eating of olives in the ancient Near East (at least not until the Greco-Roman period). The entire harvest seems to have been used for the production of olive oil. See Nathan Macdonald, What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat? Diet in Biblical Times (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 23.

[15] The word לֶחֶם leḥem “bread” can also have the connotation of “meal” in biblical Hebrew, showing the central place bread held in the diet. In fact, the term itself derives from a proto-Semitic root meaning “food, meal,” and thus, in Arabic, the same root laḥm (لحم) refers to “meat,” which for a nomadic, desert culture, would be the staple food. A similar process takes place with the English “meal,” originally “the ground portion of the grain” (essentially flour), as one still hears in British English, and then by extension “meal” generally (as in lunch or dinner). In the other direction, note that “meat” originally connoted food generally, with “flesh” (cp. German Fleisch) reserved for what we call “meat” today.

[16] Most people usually think of Crete, Italy, Spain, and Provence when they hear the term “Mediterranean triad.” See, for example, in the highly influential book by Elizabeth David, A Book of Mediterranean Food (1950; see discussion on the Wikipedia page, Mediterranean cuisine). Even so, here we have the same three foods collocated throughout the Bible, though especially in the book of Deuteronomy.

[17] I here express my gratitude to my friend Nigel Savage, founder, president, and C.E.O. of Hazon, for our lively email exchange (June 2021), as we exchanged all manner of ideas concerning the three basic food items (including the observation that bread, wine, and olive oil are products which undergo transformation). He also observed that the three blessings recited at home on Shabbat evening relate to the same three basic foodstuffs mentioned in Deuteronomy 11:14 (and in five other places in the book). The blessings of בּוֹרֵא פְּרִי הַגֶּפֶן “who creates the fruit of the vine” over the wine, and of הַמּוֹצִיא לֶחֶם מִן הָאָרֶץ “who brings-forth bread from the earth” over the bread, are obvious. (The latter blessing is based on Psalm 104:14.) Obviously God does not bring forth bread from the earth, but rather grain. (For לֶחֶם “grain,” see, e.g., Isaiah 28:28, 30:23.) Less obvious is olive oil, but in ancient times, as the Mishnah (Shabbat 2:2) makes explicit, the lighting of lights to be used on Shabbat was not accomplished via candles (a medieval invention largely), but rather through oil lamps:

וַחֲכָמִים מַתִּירִין בְּכָל הַשְּׁמָנִים, בְּשֶׁמֶן שֻׁמְשְׁמִין, בְּשֶׁמֶן אֱגוֹזִים, בְּשֶׁמֶן צְנוֹנוֹת, בְּשֶׁמֶן דָּגִים, בְּשֶׁמֶן פַּקּוּעוֹת, בְּעִטְרָן וּבְנֵפְט. רַבִּי טַרְפוֹן אוֹמֵר: אֵין מַדְלִיקִין אֶלָּא בְשֶׁמֶן זַיִת בִּלְבָד.

And the sages permit all oils: sesame oil, nut oil, radish oil, fish oil, gourd oil, tar, and naphtha. Rabbi Tarfon says: one does not kindle except with olive oil only.

(For the sake of convenience, the Hebrew text is presented as it appears at https://www.sefaria.org/, which presumably utilizes a modern printed version. Note that the wording and spelling varies slightly in medieval Hebrew manuscripts, including in the Kaufmann Manuscript.)

The recommendation of Rabbi Tarfon is most telling, as it demonstrates the splendor of burning olive oil, especially when compared to alternative sources. Hence, when one recites לְהַדְלִיק נֵר שֶׁל שַׁבָּת “to kindle the lights of Shabbat,” one should be transported back in time to an era when olive oil was used for lighting, at least in the home of Rabbi Tarfon and presumably many others. I hasten to add, however, that while the lighting of oil lamps for Shabbat goes back as far as the rabbinic period, the blessing over this lighting is a very late addition to Jewish ritual, since it does not appear until its first mention in the writings of Natronay Gaon (9th century C.E.), likely representing a reaction to the Karaite opposition to the kindling of lights before the advent of the Sabbath, which then would continue to burn during Shabbat. Nonetheless, the point is illustrative of how the Mediterranean triad lives on in the practice of Jewish blessings on Shabbat.

[18] As intimated above, meat was rarely consumed by the ancient Israelites.

[19] Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma (New York: Penguin, 2006), 125‒126.

[20] The share of the U.S. population engaged in food production, for example, is estimated at only 2%.

[21] See Philip J. King and Lawrence E. Stager, Life in Biblical Israel (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 8.

[22] For more on the topics raised in this essay, see Gary A. Rendsburg, “From the Desert to the Sown: Israel’s Encounter with the Land of Canaan,” in The Mountains Shall Drip Wine: Jews and the Environment, ed. Leonard J. Greenspoon, Studies in Jewish Civilization 20 (Omaha: Creighton University Press, 2009), 105–128, available here.