Isaiah 28:27 - Exposition

For the fitches are not threshed with a threshing-instrument. The Nigella sativa is too lender a plant to be subjected to the rude treatment of a threshing-instrument, or "threshing-sledge." Such instruments are of the coarsest and clumsiest character in the East, and quite inapplicable to plants of a delicate fabric. Karsten Niebuhr thus describes the Arabian and Syrian practices: " Quand le grain dolt etre battu, les Arabes de Yemen posent le bled par terre en deux tangles, epis center epis, apres quoi ils font trainer par-dessus une grosse pierre tiree par deux boeufs. La machine dent on se sert en Syrie consiste en quelques planches garnies par-dessous d'une quantite de pierres a fusil ". Neither is a cart wheel turned about upon the cummin . The allusion is to aim the coarse mode of threshing practiced in Palestine and elsewhere, by driving a cart with broad wheels over the grain. But the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod . Canon Tristram says, "While the cummin can easily be separated from its case by a slender rod, the harder pod of the Nigella requires to be beaten by a stout staff".