Rye (Spelt)

Where older English versions read "rye" the UPDV reads "spelt" — a hardy hulled wheat — at all three of the relevant verses. The grain appears in three different settings: an Egyptian field at the time of the plagues, a Canaanite farmer's parable, and a prophet's siege-rations.

A grain grown in Egypt

When the seventh plague strikes, the hail flattens flax and barley but spares two later crops: "But the wheat and the spelt were not struck: for they were not grown up" (Ex 9:32). Spelt is grouped with wheat as a late-maturing cereal, ripening after barley.

Cultivated in Canaan

Isaiah's husbandry parable lists spelt among the planned plantings of a careful farmer: "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?" (Isa 28:25). Each crop has its place — fitches and cumin broadcast, wheat in rows, barley in its allotted plot, spelt sown along the border of the field.

Used to make bread

Ezekiel is told to mix six grains and pulses into a single ration for his siege-sign: "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). The combined loaf — spelt among them — sustains the prophet through the long enacted siege.