DATES (Phoenix Dactilifera) is a dioecious, long-lived, palm, indigenous from Northern Africa through the Arabian peninsula to Northern India, esteemed for its sweet fruit and its valuable wood and leaves. It may have been the first cultivated fruit and was well established in the Middle East during the Bronze Age. The plants lacks a deep root system so that irrigation is essential. Because the date is dioecious, production of fruit by pistillate clones requires a source of pollen, and artificial pollination was well illustrated in Assyrian bas reliefs where practice became codified in the laws of Hammurabi 1,750BC and the practice became a religious one.
- Deuteronomy 2 "Then we did what the Lord told me to do. We went back into the desert on the road that leads to the Red Sea. We traveled for so many days to go around the Mountains of Seir. Then the Lord said to me, "You have travelled around these mountains long enough. Turn North. Tell the people this: You will pass through the land of Seir. This land belong to your relatives, the descendants of Esau. They will be afraid of you. Be very careful. Do not fight them. I will not give you any of their land -not even a foot of it, because I gave the hill country of Seir to Esau to keep as his own. You must pay the people of Esau for any food you eat or water you drink there.... He knows about everything that happened on the trip through this great desert. The Lord your God has been with you these 40 years. You have always had everything you needed." So we passed by our relatives, living there in Seir.
We left the road that leads from the Jordan Valley (the plain of the Valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees) to the Towns of Elath and Ezion Geber. We turned onto the road that goes to the desert in Moab. The Lord said to me, "Do not bother the Moabites. Do not start a war against them. I will not give you any of their land. They are the descendants of Lot, and I gave them the City of Ar." In the past the Emites lived in Ar. They were strong people, and there were many of them. They were very tall, like the Anakites. The Anakites were part of the Rephaites, but the people of Moab called them Emites."
- Psalms 1:3 "And He shall be like a tree planted by the Rivers of Water, that brings forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither ..."
- Psalm 92:7-8 "The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree .. Those that be planted in the House of the Lord shall flourish .. They shall bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing.
FIG (Ficus carica, Ficus sycomorus). Two species of fig are mentioned in the Scriptures: common fig and sycomore fig. The common fig is a gyno-dioecious species consisting of monoecious inedible wild types (caprifig) and pistillate domesticated.
Borne on small trees, figs are one of the classic Mediterranean fruits. Domestication was generally contemporary with olive and grape in the Eastern Mediterranean basin. Pollination is affected by a tiny wasp (Blastophaga psenes) that overwinters in the caprifig. The wasp, after emergence, enters the common fig, which contains only long-styled pistils, not adapted to ovi-position, causing the wasp to perish, but not before pollination has occurred. The tree of Good and Evil in the Genesis story of the first human couple was often depicted as a fig tree.
The sycomore fig originated in the savannas of Eastern Central Africa and was introduced into Egypt in pre-dynastic times. It became an important cultivated plant for its decay resistant wood and its fruit, which although not exceptional, was widely consumed. Because the pollinating wasp seems not to have been introduced, the fruits did not develop normally and ripening was achieved by scraping with a metal tool, an example of an innovating horticultural practice that relied on ethylene release from the wound response.
- Genesis 3:7 "And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons."
- Amos 7:14 "I was not a prophet or a prophet's son but i was a herdsman, and a piercer of sycomore fruit."
- Mark 11:12,20 "The next day, Jesus was leaving Bethany. He was hungry. And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, He came, if haply he find anything thereon: And when He came to it, He found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet. So Jesus said to the tree, 'People will never eat fruit from you again.' And in the morning as His followers passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots."
- Luke13: 6-9 "A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none. Then said he unto the dresser (cultivator) of his vineyard, 'Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none; cut it down; Why should it waste the ground?'
But the dresser answered, 'Master, let the tree have one more year to produce fruit. Let me dig up the dirt around it and fertilize it. Maybe the tree will have fruit on it next year. if it still does not produce, then you can cut it down."
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