Cummin

Cummin (cumin) is a small aromatic seed grown alongside the bread-grains. Isaiah uses it as a parable of how a wise farmer matches each crop to its proper handling — and behind the farmer, of how Yahweh teaches Israel.

The farmer's parable in Isaiah

Isaiah folds cumin into a single picture of patient agricultural know-how. After plowing and harrowing, the farmer sows according to kind, then threshes according to kind: "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. 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" (Isa 28:25-27). The seed is too delicate for the heavy threshing-sledge or the wagon-wheel; a hand-rod suffices. The farmer's discrimination — the right tool for each grain — is itself a thing taught by God.