Isaiah Chapter 28 verse 27 Holy Bible
For the fitches are not threshed with a sharp `threshing' instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned about upon the cummin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod.
read chapter 28 in ASV
For the fitches are not crushed with a sharp instrument, and a cart-wheel is not rolled over the cummin; but the grain of the fitches is hammered out with a stick, and of the cummin with a rod.
read chapter 28 in BBE
For the dill is not threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is a cart-wheel turned about upon the cummin; but dill is beaten out with a staff, and cummin with a rod.
read chapter 28 in DARBY
For the fitches are not threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned about upon the cummin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod.
read chapter 28 in KJV
read chapter 28 in WBT
For the dill are not threshed with a sharp [threshing] instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned about on the cumin; but the dill are beaten out with a staff, and the cumin with a rod.
read chapter 28 in WEB
For not with a sharp-pointed thing threshed are fitches, And the wheel of a cart on cummin turned round, For with a staff beaten out are fitches, And cummin with a rod.
read chapter 28 in YLT
Pulpit Commentary
Pulpit CommentaryVerse 27. - 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" ('Description de l'Arabie,' p. 140). 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" ('Natural History of the Bible,' p. 445).
Ellicott's Commentary
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(27) For the fitches are not threshed . . .--Better, fennel seed, as before. The eye of the prophet passes from the beginning to the end of the husbandman's work. He finds there also the varying methods of a like discrimination. A man would be thought mad who threshed his fennel seed and cummin with the same instrument that he uses for his barley and his wheat. It is enough to beat or tap them with the "rod," or "staff," which was, in fact, used in each case. Interpreting this parable, we may see in the fennel and the cummin the little ones of the earth, with whom God deals more gently than with the strong. "Tribulation," as the etymology of the word (tribulum, a threshing instrument) tells us, is a threshing process. The lesson of the parable is that it comes to nations and individuals in season and in measure. The main idea is familiar enough in the language of the prophets (Micah 4:13; Habakkuk 3:12). The novelty of Isaiah's treatment of it consists in his bringing in the minute details, and drawing this lesson from them.
