But however eager men might be in the above enquiry, their helpmates were equally desirous of finding a means whereby they might escape the reproach of barrenness,—a reproach than which none was more dreaded by eastern women. Such means was at last discovered, or supposed to be so, in the mandrake,[73] a plant which thenceforth became, as the following quotation proves, of inestimable value in female eyes.
"And Reuben went in the days of wheat harvest, and found mandrakes in the field, and brought them unto his mother, Leah. Then Rachel said to Leah, Give me, I pray thee, of thy son's mandrakes.
"And she said unto her, Is it a small matter that thou hast taken my husband? and wouldest thou take away my son's mandrakes also? And Rachel said, Therefore he shall lie with thee to-night for thy son's mandrakes.
"And Jacob came out of the field in the evening, and Leah went out to meet him, and said, Thou must come in unto me, for surely I have hired thee with my son's mandrakes. And he lay with her that night.
"And God harkened unto Leah, and she conceived and bare Jacob the fifth son."[74]
There is only one other passage in the Bible in which this plant is alluded to, and that is in Solomon's song:
"The mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved."[75]
All that can be gathered from the former of the above quotations is that these plants were found in the fields during the wheat harvests and that, either for their rarity, flavour, or, more probably, for their supposed quality of removing barrenness in women, as well as for the stimulating powers attributed to them, were greatly valued by the female sex. In the quotation from Solomon's Song, the Hebrew word Dudaim expresses some fruit or flowers exhaling a sweet and agreeable odour, and which were in great request among the male sex.[76]
According to Calmet, the word Dudaim may be properly deduced from Dudim (pleasures of love); and the translators of the Septuagint and the Vulgate render it by words equivalent to the English one—mandrake. The word Dudaim is rendered in our authorized version by the word mandrake—a translation sanctioned by the Septuagint, which, in this place, translates Dudaim by μῆλα μανδραγορῶν, mandrake—apples, and in Solomon's Song by οἱ μανδραγὸραι (mandrakes). With this, Onkelos[77] and the Syrian version agree; and this concurrence of authorities, with the fact that the mandrake (atropa mandragora) combines in itself all the circumstances and traditions required for the Dudaim, has given to the current interpretation, its present prevalence.