English 
Chinese 
Dutch 
Arabic 
Spanish 
Portuguese 
Russian 
French 
Italian 
German 
Japanese 
Continue reading with a subscription
Get unlimited access to all our premium content and exclusive features.
Enjoy unlimited access, cancel anytime.
Summary
- Cucumbers appear in Numbers 11:5, where the Israelites in the wilderness remember the food of Egypt, and in Isaiah 1:8, “a lodge in a cucumber field.”
- Most modern translations also read Jeremiah 10:5 as “scarecrows in a cucumber field,” where the King James Version has “upright as the palm tree.”
- Catholic and Orthodox Bibles contain the same image in the Letter of Jeremiah (Baruch 6:70 in the RSV Catholic Edition).
- The Hebrew qishshu’im were probably chate melons; researchers found no clear evidence of the modern cucumber around the ancient Mediterranean.
- The “melons” of Numbers 11:5 are usually identified as watermelons.
- Scripture gives the cucumber no symbolic meaning of its own; the complaint in Numbers is remembered as a warning against craving (Psalm 106:14–15).
Bibliography (Click to show)
- Scripture quotations from the English Standard Version (Numbers 11:4–6, 31–34; Psalm 106:14–15; Isaiah 1:7–8; 24:20; Jeremiah 10:3–5; 1 Corinthians 10:6), the King James Version (Isaiah 1:8; Jeremiah 10:5), the Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition (Baruch 6:70) and the New American Bible, Revised Edition (Isaiah 1:8; Baruch 6:69). https://www.biblegateway.com/
- F. Brown, S. R. Driver and C. A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford, 1906), entries “מִקְשָׁה” (field of cucumbers, Isaiah 1:8; Jeremiah 10:5; compare Baruch 6:70), “מְלוּנָה” (lodge, hut) and “אֲבַטִּחִים” (watermelons), via Sefaria. https://www.sefaria.org/
- Ernest Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English (Carta, 1987), entries “קִשּׁוּא” and “מְלָפְפוֹן,” via Sefaria. https://www.sefaria.org/
- Jules Janick, Harry S. Paris and David C. Parrish, “The Cucurbits of Mediterranean Antiquity: Identification of Taxa from Ancient Images and Descriptions,” Annals of Botany 100, no. 7 (2007): 1441–1457. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2759226/
- “Cucumber,” Wikipedia, section on cultivation history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucumber
- “Armenian cucumber” (snake melon), Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_melon
- “Letter of Jeremiah,” Wikipedia, on its place in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_Jeremiah
- Charles J. Ellicott, Commentary for English Readers, and John Gill, Exposition of the Entire Bible, on 1 Corinthians 10:6. https://biblehub.com/commentaries/1_corinthians/10-6.htm
