Barley

Barley moves through the UPDV as a working grain — early in the field, plain on the table, sufficient for armies and altars alike. It belongs to the agricultural calendar of Egypt and Palestine, ripens before wheat, feeds horses and households, marks the season for gleaning and for sworn vengeance, valuates a sanctified field, and answers a husband's jealousy with a stripped-down meal-offering. In the Gospel, five barley loaves feed a multitude.

A crop of Egypt and Palestine

Barley first appears as a crop ruined alongside flax in the seventh plague: "And the flax and the barley were struck: for the barley was in the ear, and the flax was in bloom" (Ex 9:31). The phrasing fixes both the season — barley already eared, flax in bloom — and the geography: Egypt produces barley.

Palestine produces it too, and the land's character is named in those terms. Moses describes the inheritance as "a land of wheat and barley, and vines and fig trees and pomegranates; a land of olive trees and honey" (De 8:8). The roll of named crops is what makes the land "fruitful," and barley sits second in that catalogue, just after wheat.

The settlement narratives carry the same picture. At Pasdammim "He was with David at Pasdammim, and there the Philistines were gathered together to battle, where was a plot of ground full of barley; and the people fled from before the Philistines" (1 Chr 11:13) — the contested ground is itself a barley field. In Jeremiah, ten men purchase their lives by pointing Ishmael toward stockpiles of "wheat, and of barley, and of oil, and of honey" hidden in the field (Jer 41:8); barley is what one stores against famine and bandits.

Sowing, ripening, and the field itself

Job's closing oath calls down a curse in agricultural terms: "Let thistles grow instead of wheat, And cockle instead of barley. The words of Job are ended" (Job 31:40). Wheat and barley are the things one expects to grow — losing them to weeds is the punishment Job is willing to invite if his words have been false.

Joel's lament names the same pairing in disaster: "Be confounded, O you⁺ husbandmen, wail, O you⁺ vinedressers, for the wheat and for the barley; for the harvest of the field has perished" (Joel 1:11). Husbandman and vinedresser cry together because grain and vine fail together.

Isaiah turns the sowing itself into a parable of divinely taught order: "When he has leveled its face, does he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cumin, and put in the wheat in rows, and the barley in the appointed place, and the spelt in its border? For his God instructs him aright, [and] teaches him" (Is 28:25-27). Barley has its appointed place in the field, distinct from wheat, fitches, cumin, and spelt.

A standing barley field can also be a target. Absalom, frustrated at Joab's silence, instructs his slaves: "See, Joab's field is near mine, and he has barley there; go and set it on fire. And Absalom's slaves set the field on fire" (2 Sam 14:30). Burning a kinsman's barley is enough provocation to force a meeting.

The barley harvest and gleaning

Barley ripens before wheat, and the season it opens has its own name. When Naomi returns from Moab "with her, who returned out of the country of Moab: and they came to Bethlehem in the beginning of barley harvest" (Ru 1:22). The arrival is timed to the first sheaves.

Ruth gleans in that opened field. "And Ruth the Moabitess said to Naomi, Let me now go to the field, and glean among the ears of grain after him in whose eyes I will find favor. And she said to her, Go, my daughter" (Ru 2:2). Boaz tells her where to stay: "Then said Boaz to Ruth, Do you not hear, my daughter? Don't go to glean in another field, neither pass from here, but stick here by my maidens" (Ru 2:8). She works through both seasons end to end: "So she stuck by the maidens of Boaz, to glean to the end of barley harvest and of wheat harvest; and she dwelt with her mother-in-law" (Ru 2:23).

The right to glean is a legal one. The torah commands the owner to leave behind: "And when you⁺ reap the harvest of your⁺ land, you will not wholly reap the corners of your field, neither will you gather the gleaning of your harvest: you will leave them for the poor, and for the sojourner: I am Yahweh your⁺ God" (Le 23:22; cf. Le 19:10 on the vineyard).

The barley-harvest season also fixes the timing of grim public events. Saul's seven sons are handed over to the Gibeonites, "and they fell [all] seven together. And they were put to death in the days of harvest, in the first days, at the beginning of barley harvest" (2 Sam 21:9). The barley calendar dates the execution as exactly as a court record.

Threshing and winnowing

When the cut grain comes off the field, it goes to the floor. Naomi tells Ruth, "And now isn't Boaz our kinsman, whose maidens you were with? Look, he winnows barley tonight in the threshing-floor" (Ru 3:2). The threshing-floor is an actual place — Boaz works it — and it is also the setting for what follows in Ruth.

Isaiah notes that not every grain is threshed the same way: "For the fitches are not threshed with a sharp [threshing] instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned about on the cumin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cumin with a rod" (Is 28:27). Barley, by implication, is processed with the heavier instruments belonging to the larger crops.

Boaz's measuring of grain in the gleaning-field carries the volume his work yields: "And he said, Bring the mantle that is on you, and hold it; and she held it; and he measured six [measures] of barley, and laid it on her: and he went into the city" (Ru 3:15). Earlier the same day "she gleaned in the field until evening; and she beat out that which she had gleaned, and it was about an ephah of barley" (Ru 2:17) — an ephah is the day's gleaning, six measures the parting gift.

Loaves and bread

Barley is bread before it is anything else. Ezekiel, ordered to dramatize a long siege, is told: "You take also to yourself wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and spelt, and put them in one vessel, and make yourself bread of them; [according to] the number of the days that you will lie on your side, even three hundred and ninety days, you will eat of it" (Eze 4:9). Six grains and pulses become one survival loaf, with barley among them.

David's flight from Absalom is met by friends who "brought beds, and basins, and earthen vessels, and wheat, and barley, and meal, and parched [grain], and beans, and lentils, and parched [pulse], and honey, and butter, and sheep, and cheese of the herd, for David, and for the people who were with him, to eat: for they said, The people are hungry, and weary, and thirsty, in the wilderness" (2 Sam 17:28-29). Barley is on the list of basics that make camp possible.

In the days of Elisha, "there came a man from Baal-shalishah, and brought the man of God bread of the first fruits, twenty loaves of barley, and fresh ears of grain in his sack. And he said, Give to the people, that they may eat" (2 Ki 4:42). Twenty barley loaves are the firstfruits a prophet receives.

In the Gospel, barley loaves do the same kind of work on a larger scale. Andrew speaks up at the lakeside: "There is a lad here, who has five barley loaves, and two fish: but what are these among so many?" (Joh 6:9). After the meal, "they gathered them up, and filled twelve baskets with broken pieces from the five barley loaves, which remained over to those who had eaten" (Joh 6:13). The remainders are reckoned in barley-loaf fragments.

Provender for horses and tribute

Barley feeds animals as well as men. Solomon's logistics include grain for his cavalry: "Barley also and straw for the horses and swift steeds they brought to the place where [the officers] were, every man according to his charge" (1 Ki 4:28).

Solomon also pays his Tyrian woodcutters in barley by the cor: "And, look, I will give to your slaves, the hewers who cut timber, twenty thousand cors of beaten wheat, and twenty thousand cors of barley, and twenty thousand baths of wine, and twenty thousand baths of oil" (2 Chr 2:10). Barley is wage-grade currency for skilled labor in the Lebanon.

Subjugated nations pay in the same commodity. After Jotham defeats Ammon, "the sons of Ammon gave him the same year a hundred talents of silver, and ten thousand cors of wheat, and ten thousand of barley. So much did the sons of Ammon render to him, in the second year also, and in the third" (2 Chr 27:5).

In the Gentile north, Hosea buys back his wife at a barter rate: "So I bought her to me [by my Speech] for fifteen [shekels] of silver, and a homer of barley, and a half-homer of barley" (Hos 3:2). Mixed silver and barley together name the price.

Valuation, measure, and offering

Barley sets a baseline for valuing land. "And if a man will sanctify to Yahweh part of the field of his possession, then your estimation will be according to its sowing: the sowing of a homer of barley [will be valued] at fifty shekels of silver" (Le 27:16). The priest reckons a sanctified field by how much barley-seed it absorbs.

The same grain measures the offering at the altar. The oblation Ezekiel prescribes: "This is the oblation that you⁺ will offer: the sixth part of an ephah from a homer of wheat; and you⁺ will give the sixth part of an ephah from a homer of barley" (Eze 45:13). Wheat and barley are both due, in the same proportion.

When a husband suspects his wife, the priest receives a deliberately bare oblation: "the man will bring his wife to the priest, and will bring her oblation for her, the tenth part of an ephah of barley meal; he will pour no oil on it, nor put frankincense on it; for it is a meal-offering of jealousy, a meal-offering of memorial, bringing iniquity to remembrance" (Nu 5:15). Barley meal — without oil, without frankincense — is the form jealousy takes at the sanctuary.

Symbol in dream and vision

Barley turns up in dream-imagery as the Israelite tribesman's own staple. A Midianite soldier reports to his fellow: "I dreamed a dream; and saw that a cake of barley bread tumbled into the camp of Midian, and came to the tent, and struck it so that it fell, and turned it upside down, so that the tent lay flat" (Jdg 7:13). The barley cake stands in for Gideon's army in the dreamer's mind.

In the Apocalypse, barley names the famine ration: "I heard as it were a voice among the four living creatures saying, A measure of wheat for a denarius, and three measures of barley for a denarius; and don't hurt the oil and the wine" (Re 6:6). At those prices a day's wage barely buys a day's grain.

The same pricing logic shows up in Elisha's word over besieged Samaria: "Hear⁺ the word of Yahweh: thus says Yahweh, Tomorrow about this time a seah of fine flour will be [sold] for a shekel, and two seahs of barley for a shekel, in the gate of Samaria" (2 Ki 7:1). Once the Syrian camp is plundered, the prophecy lands in identical terms: "So a seah of fine flour was [sold] for a shekel, and two seahs of barley for a shekel, according to the word of Yahweh" (2 Ki 7:16). Barley is the index by which scarcity and relief are both reported.