Cummin

Cummin was a humble crop, grown for its seed. Isaiah 28 uses it to show that a farmer knows what each plant needs: the cummin is beaten “with a rod,” because heavier tools would spoil it, and the wise ways of the field are said to come from God. Jesus mentions it in a sharper moment. He tells the scribes and Pharisees they “pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith.” Matthew 23:23 is the place to begin.

3 verses

Isaiah

Isaiah 28:25

When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin, and cast in the principal wheat and the appointed barley and the rie in their place?

Isaiah 28:27

For the fitches are not threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned about upon the cummin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod.

Matthew

Matthew 23:23

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.

From Easton's Bible Dictionary

Matthew George Easton, 1897

(Heb. kammon; i.e., a “condiment”), the fruit or seed of an umbelliferous plant, the Cuminum sativum, still extensively cultivated in the East. Its fruit is mentioned in Isa. 28:25, 27. In the New Testament it is mentioned in Matt. 23:23, where our Lord pronounces a “woe” on the scribes and Pharisees, who were zealous in paying tithes of “mint and anise and cummin,” while they omitted the weightier matters of the law.” “It is used as a spice, both bruised, to mix with bread, and also boiled, in the various messes and stews which compose an Oriental banquet.” Tristram, Natural History.

From Smith's Bible Dictionary

William Smith, 1884

one of the cultivated plants of Palestine. (Isaiah 28:25,27; Matthew 23:23) It is an umbelliferous plant something like fennel. The seeds have a bitterish warm taste and an aromatic flavor. The Maltese are said to grow it at the present day, and to thresh it in the manner described by Isaiah.