Cucumber

The cucumber appears twice in scripture — once as a remembered taste of Egypt, once as a desolation image. Both pictures pivot on the cucumber-garden as a humble, watered patch of cultivated ground.

Remembered with Egypt

In the wilderness the people grow weary of manna and recall the produce of Egypt by name: "We remember the fish, which we ate in Egypt for nothing; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic" (Num 11:5). The cucumber stands first among the vegetable list, part of the cheap and common fare bound up with their slavery.

A Lodge in a Garden of Cucumbers

The same garden becomes a figure of forsaken Zion. In the prophet's opening oracle, the daughter of Zion is "left as a booth in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city" (Isa 1:8). The cucumber-patch with its empty watchman's hut after harvest becomes the picture of a city stripped down to one isolated, exposed shelter.