GENESIS XXX.

ND 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" (ver. 14, 16). Very few interpreters of Scripture have been able to resist the temptation to theorize on the fruit which had such fascination both for Rachel and Leah. Almost every traveller also in Eastern climes has thought himself bound to contribute something to the literature of the question, "What are mandrakes?" As with very many biblical questions, this one has suffered much by not being examined in the light of the context. Few subjects have had so much attention devoted to them as the mandrake. For several reasons it merits this, but chiefly from the light which a proper understanding of it must shed on the spiritual condition of the wives of Jacob. (1) Let us inquire what were the general circumstances accompanying this conversation between the two sisters. When Leah had borne four sons-Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah-" she ceased bearing.' Rachel was as yet childless. Her maid, Bilhah, had indeed, as for her, borne Dan and Naphtali to Jacob, but Rachel was still dissatisfied. Leah appears to have been in the same state of mind when Reuben found the mandrakes, in search of which he had gone into the field. The daughters of Laban associated the fruit with the state of their own bodies, and believed that to partake of it would conduce to fruitfulness. Rachel at the time was the favourite wife of Jacob, but she was willing, for the sake of the mandrakes, that Leah should cease to be despised as she had been. Thus the bargain. Leah's address to Jacob implied that she believed he regarded the fruit from the same point of view as did Rachel and herself. It does not appear that she gave all the fruit collected by Reuben. Rachel's request

was only for a share of it. The whole narrative is thus suggestive of these two things:-On the one hand, the mandrakes were thought to act as a remedy for unfruitfulness; and, on the other hand, they were evidently rare in the locality in which Jacob at this time resided. This latter fact has been almost generally overlooked by interpreters. They have written on these verses as if the scene were in Palestine, and not in Mesopotamia; and to several it has appeared an objection to the attempt to identify the mandrake with a well known plant of Palestine, that it is comparatively common in the land, and could easily have been obtained by Laban's impatient and wilful daughter! (2) Have the mandrakes been identified, or has an approach to identification been made? It might almost be said that the efforts in this direction are innumerable. The Hebrew word dudărm, rendered "mandrakes" in this passage, is used in the same form only once more in the Bible. In the Song vii. 10-13, the Bride says-" Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages. Let us get up early to the vineyards; let us see if the vine flourish, whether the tender grape appear, and the pomegranates bud forth: there will I give thee my loves. 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." The biblical elements for identification come thus to be the name dădăim, or love plant; the period at which it is ripe for gathering, namely, the season of the wheat-harvest, which occurs in the end of April and beginning of May; and last, the fragrance of the plant, as alluded to in the Song. In very few cases have all these elements been kept in view. The classification of results cannot but convince the student that very much labour has been wasted on the matter. The plantain (Musa paradisiaca) has had a large share of attention devoted to it, in the belief that it represents the dudăim of this passage. But its size and other features are wholly opposed to this. Reuben "found the mandrakes." He had been in search of fruit which could not have so stood out as that of the Musa would have done. Shaw (Travels, vol. ii. 148), referring to this, says "It could not, as I presume, from the very nature and quality of it, grow wild and uncultivated, as the dădăim must certainly have done." Referring to the theories current on this point, he adds-" Others, again, as the dădăim are supposed to denote something amiable and delightful, have taken them for cherries, and that the dudai, consequently, which we interpret 'baskets (Jer. xxiv. 1), were made of the cherry-tree. But the same with equal reason might have been asserted of the plum, or of the apricot, or of

the peach, or of the orange, or lemon, which might have been as rare and no less delightful than the cherry; though it is more probable that none of these fruits were known in Judea in those early times, not having been propagated so far to the westward till many ages afterwards. However, what the Christians of Jerusalem take at present for dădăim are the pods of the jelathon, a leguminous plant peculiar to the corn fields, which, by the many descriptions I had of it (for it was too early when I was there to see it), it should be a species of the winged pea; probably the hierazune, or the lotus tetragonolobus. In no small conformity likewise with this account, the melilotus odorata violacea of Morison, the lotus hortensis odorata, and the lotus sativa odorata, have been taken for the dădăim. It is certain that the bloom of all, or most of the leguminous plants, yields a grateful smell (Cant. vii. 13), a quality which they have so far at least in common with the dădăim.” This extract is given as an average specimen of the mode of looking at this question. Jasmines, mushrooms, lilies, &c., have all had claims put in for them. (3) What other plant appears to answer the biblical features named above? The reply may be made with much confidence, that the dădăim is represented by the mandrake properly so called, the Atropa mandragora (= Mandragora vernalis) of botanists. It has long been noted as a love apple (pomum amatorium), it ripens at the time of the wheat-harvest, and in early spring its flowers "give a smell." Though common in Palestine, it is not so in Mesopotamia, though it is to be met with here and there. Thus its value, and thus the mode in which it is spoken of as having been found by Reuben making search for it. The attention of intelligent travellers was early called to its existence in Palestine, and to the uses to which it was applied. Maundrell (1697), in his "Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem," says-" Our company halting a little while at Naplosa, I had an opportunity to go and visit the chief priest of the Samaritans, in order to discourse with him about some difficulties occurring in the Pentateuch; which were recommended to me to be inquired about by the learned M. Job Ludolphus. I inquired of him what sort of a plant or fruit the dădăim, or, as we translate it, mandrakes, were, which Leah gave to Rachel for the purpose of her husband's embraces? He said that they were plants of a large leaf, bearing a certain sort of fruit, in shape resembling an apple, growing ripe in harvest, but of an ill savour, and not wholesome; that the virtue of them was to help conception, being laid under the genial bed; that the women were often wont so to apply it at this day, out of an opinion of its prolific virtue. Of these

plants I saw several afterwards in the way to Jerusalem." Later, Hasselquist found it in great plenty near Nazareth:-"I had not the pleasure to see this plant in blossom, the fruit now hanging ripe to the stem, which lay withered on the ground; but I got several roots, which I found difficult to procure entire, as the inhabitants had no spades, but a kind of hoe, or ground axe; with this they cut up the earth, and hurt the root, which in some plants descended six and eight feet under ground. From the season in which this mandrake blossoms and bears fruit, one might form a conjecture that it was Rachel's dudăim. These were brought her in the wheat-harvest, which, in Galilee, is the month of May, or about this time, and the mandrake was now in fruit. This plant grows in all parts of Galilee, but I never saw or heard anything of it in Judea. The Arabs in this village call it by a name which signifies, in their language, the devil's victuals." The Arabs still name the mandrake Tufa-el-Sheitan" the apples of Satan" and another related plant (Solanum spinosum) they name Tufa-el-Mejanim, or "mad apples." (4) The position of the mandrake (Atropa mandragora) in systematic botany. It is a dicotyledonous plant, and belongs to the natural order Solanaceae, or nightshade family-an order of plants which lies between the figworts (Scrophulariaceae), the broom-rapes (Orobanchaceae), and the mulleins (Verbasaceae), on the one hand, and the borages (Boraginaceae), the dodders (Cuscutacea), and the bindweeds. (Convolvulacea), on the other hand. In the third family above them we have such well known plants as the speedwell, foxglove, mimulus, toadflax, and eyebright; and in the third below them occur the bindweeds, gentian, &c. The intermediate groups, with the exception of the borages, are not so well known. The broom-rapes above, and the dodders below, are parasitic plants. The Solanaceæ have generally eighteen genera ranked under them, Of these, four are to be met with in Britain—the thorn apple (Datura), henbane (Hyoscyamus), nightshade (Solanum), and dwale, or deadly nightshade (Atropa). The mandrake ranks as a species under the last-named genus. All the British representatives of this order are less or more poisonous. Some of the foreign representatives of the order are edible-as, for example, the potato (Solanum tuberosum), the winter cherry (Physalis), and the Lycopersicum, whose fruit is the well-known tomato.

Though the thorn apple is generally ranked among British plants, the common species (D. stramonium) is a native of America, and the red species (D. sanguinea) was introduced to England from the East about 1597. It has powerful narcotic and poisonous effects when

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3 I

partaken of. The henbane has also strong narcotic qualities, and, if even a small quantity of its seeds be eaten by man, death is likely to

Fig. 101.

ensue.

The true nightshades or bitter-sweets, though not so dangerous as these, have yet the same qualities in a modified degree. The most deadly member of the group, however, is the Atropa, or dwale. It is comparatively rare, and may easily be distinguished by its large oval leaves, nearly a foot long, and four or five inches broad, its rounded, branched, and slightly downy stalk. Its whole appearance is suggestive of hurtful qualities. Its name dwale is an Anglicised form of the French deuil, or mourning. The mandrake, though fitted to attract attention from the same general gloomy appearance, is not so powerful, even as a narcotic, as the dwale (Atropa belladonna). The root of the mandrake is large, fleshy, slightly tapering below, and meeting at the surface a thick set tuft of deep green, hairy, pointed leaves. The shape of the root, like that of the orchis,

"Which liberal shepherds dead men's fingers call,"

has formed a theme around which much superstition has clustered; the fancy of the ignorant being, that it resembles a human body, is possessed of animal feelings, and shrieks when torn from the earth. Reference is made to this superstition by the dramatist :

"Wherefore should I curse them?

Would curses kill as doth the mandrake's groan,

I would invent as bitter searching terms

As lean faced envy in her loathsome case."

The effect which credulity was sure would follow to those who should hear the "groans," is described in another

passage:

"And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth,

That living mortals hearing them run mad."