The dust which is blown farthest away is worthless, and the farmer burns it, because it cannot be used to feed the cattle nor for any other good purpose. It is seldom that any instrument was used to increase the wind. The fan is, in fact, the shovel or wooden fork with which the unseparated grain and straw is thrown into the air. The allusions to the fan and the winnowing of grain are too abundant in Scripture to need citation. The allusions by the prophet to fanning, as in Jer. 15:7 and Isaiah 30: 24, and 41: 16 refers to what was the ancient, as well as the modern, custom of winnowing the grain by a shovel or fork.1 The most significant allusion to this Oriental way of cleaning the grain is the prediction respecting our Lord, "whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor."2 There is another significant passage in Psalms 139: 3, "Thou searchest (or winnowest) out my path and my lying down." The image here is a bold Oriental one of the farmer, who throws his threshed grain many times into the air in the process of winnowing that he may make it thoroughly clean. So God would winnow us to make us thoroughly godly.

217. Granaries. The present unsettled condition of most of the countries of the East causes the farmers and peasants to have the most secluded and secret places for storing their grain. Often it was in a carefully prepared cistern or pit under ground, sometimes within the house. One traveler speaks of finding such a grain pit in the reception room of an Oriental house. Dr. F. J. Bliss, the explorer, found large pits dug in the hard ground, with narrow mouths, in which wandering Arabs store their grain to-day. He adds, "Pits of the same kind, but smaller, containing perhaps the stores of a single family, were recognized in our excavations at Lachish and elsewhere. These were filled up quite solidly when we excavated them, but their circumference of hard earth was distinctly preserved. In one case at Lachish a chamber was found full of charred barley, which had been stored away

1 See also Jer. 51: 2.

Matt. 3: 12; Luke 3: 17.

some three thousand years ago, and then burned before it could ever be used.' And Tristram tells of how "wheat is now universally stored in silos or underground pits, hollow chambers, about eight feet deep, carefully cemented on the inside, so as to be impervious to damp, and with a circular opening at the mouth about fifteen inches in diameter, just large enough to admit the passage of a man, and which is boarded over, then, if needed for concealment, covered with earth or turf. In such receptacles the corn will remain sound for several years (?). These silos abound in all parts of the country, and are probably, in some cases, the identical store-houses used by the Jews, who first constructed them. They are frequently close to an old-wine press, where has been the homestead of some Israelite farmer." Such store-houses are alluded to in Jer. 41: 8, "Slay us not: for we have treasures in the field, of wheat, and of barley, and of oil, and of honey." These store-houses are often under the women's apartments, where a woman hid Jonathan and Ahimaaz in one of these silos, covering it over and spreading grain on the top, so that those who were searching for them did not suspect the place of their hiding. The Arabs of to-day have such places for keeping and secreting their grain from the wandering bands of brigands and from the more lawless government spies.

1S. S. W., 1907, p. 165.

See 2 Sam. 4:6; 17: 18, 19.

XX.

FRUITS AND VINES.

218. Kinds of Fruits.-Fruits abound in Bible and all Oriental lands. Syria now has many kinds of fruit trees and fruit-bearing shrubs. Dr. Post gives a list of about forty principal ones that abound in Palestine alone. Among the best known fruit trees are the olive, fig, orange, apricot, pomegranate, mulberry, cherry, nectarine, plum, and medlar. "Medlar" is a fruit known by a Turkish name, which means, "the next world." Apples and pears are grown near Damascus, but are not indigenous to, and do not thrive well in, Palestine. The pomegranate tree seems like an uncared-for shrub. Large and good apricots grow near Solomon's pools.

219. Figs.-Fig trees are cultivated in gardens, usually by women. If the fig garden is away from the village, it may have a hut, to which the family owning the garden removes in the summer months, not only from villages, but from towns like Hebron, Gaza, Ramleh, and Lydda. The women gather the figs, dry them on the red earth in the sun in an enclosed space, to keep away the dogs, chickens, and children by day, and the jackals and foxes by night. The fruit harvest is a happy time for women and girls. They sing, sometimes from morning until night, one girl sings a line and another in the next garden, or across the valley, sings a second line, and so they continue the songs antiphonally all the day. The figs, when dried, are put away for winter, or are sold in the markets, as at Jerusalem and Jaffa. Sometimes "long garlands of dried figs are put on a string, weighing together seven or eight pounds. This method is common in villages like Bethel, Gibeon, Nazareth, and other small places. Es Salt (east of the Jordan) is renowned for figs and raisins."

220. Early Figs.-There are several kinds of figs, and

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