Besides, Lolium or Darnel shews it self in the Winter, growing up with the Wheat; and Theophrastus observed that it was no Vernal Plant, but came up in the Winter; which will not well answer the expression of the Text, And when the Blade came up, and brought forth Fruit, or gave evidence of its Fruit, the Zizania appeared. And if the Husbandry of the Ancients were agreeable unto ours, they would not have been so earnest to weed away the Darnel; for our Husbandmen do not commonly weed it in the Field, but separate the Seeds after Thrashing. And therefore Galen delivereth, that in an unseasonable year, and great scarcity of Corn, when they neglected to separate the Darnel, the Bread proved generally unwholsome, and had evil effects on the Head.
Our old and later Translation render Zizania, Tares, which name our English Botanists give unto Aracus, Cracca, Vicia sylvestris, calling them Tares, and strangling Tares. And our Husbandmen by Tares understand some sorts of wild Fitches, which grow amongst Corn, and clasp upon it, according to the Latin Etymology, Vicia à Vinciendo. Now in this uncertainty of the Original, Tares as well as some others, may make out the sense, and be also more agreeable unto the circumstances of the Parable. For they come up and appear what they are, when the Blade of the Corn is come up, and also the Stalk and Fruit discoverable. They have likewise little spreading Roots, which may intangle or rob the good Roots, and they have also tendrils and claspers, which lay hold of what grows near them, and so can hardly be weeded without endangering the neighbour Corn.
However, if by Zizania we understand Herbas segeti noxias, or vitia segetum, as some Expositours have done, and take the word in a more general sense, comprehending several Weeds and Vegetables offensive unto Corn, according as the Greek word in the plural Number may imply, and as the learned Laurenbergius[255] hath expressed, Runcare quod apud nostrates Weden dicitur, Zizanias inutiles est evellere. If, I say, it be thus taken, we shall not need to be definitive, or confine unto one particular Plant, from a word which may comprehend divers: And this may also prove a safer sense, in such obscurity of the Original.
And therefore since in this Parable the sower of the Zizania is the Devil, and the Zizania wicked persons; if any from this larger acception, will take in Thistles, Darnel, Cockle, wild strangling Fitches, Bindweed, Tribulus, Restharrow and other Vitia Segetum; he may, both from the natural and symbolical qualities of those Vegetables, have plenty of matter to illustrate the variety of his mischiefs, and of the wicked of this world.
Cockle, in Job 31. 40.
49. When ’tis said in Job, Let Thistles grow up instead of Wheat, and Cockle instead of Barley, the words are intelligible, the sense allowable and significant to this purpose: but whether the word Cockle doth strictly conform unto the Original, some doubt may be made from the different Translations of it; For the Vulgar renders it Spina, Tremelius Vitia Frugum, and the Geneva Turoye or Darnel. Besides, whether Cockle were common in the ancient Agriculture of those parts, or what word they used for it, is of great uncertainty. For the Elder Botanical Writers have made no mention thereof, and the Moderns have given it the Name of Pseudomelanthium, Nigellastrum, Lychnoeides Segetum, names not known unto Antiquity: And therefore our Translation hath warily set down [noisome Weeds] in the Margin.
Footnotes
[188] Depinxit oculos stibio. 2 Kings 9. 30. Jerem. 4. 30. Ezek. 23. 40.
[189] Jona 4. 6. a Gourd.
[190] ἄπιστος θέα. Philo.