Literatuur

• Daan Smit , Planten uit de Bijbel, Een inventarisatie en beschrijving, [1992], p. 123,
• - - , Algemeen, , Dove's Dung (Star of Bethlehem)
  Hebrew: chiryonim
  Ornithogalum umbellatum

  Click here for photo (close-up)

  Click here for photo (whole plant)

  II Kings describes the siege of Samaria and its famine. While some believe the dove's dung in 2 Kings 6:25 is literally the waste of the bird, others take it to be the bulb of the star of Bethlehem plant. Pigeons excrement has been eaten in times of desperate food shortage. Easton notes the language of 2 Kings 18:27; Isaiah 36:12. He also tells us the Arabs apply the name "doves dung" to various vegetable substances like the seeds of millet, an inferior kind of vegetable pulse, and the root of ornithogalum, sometimes called "bird-milk".

  The bird-milk or star of Bethlehem plant grows on a stalk of about six inches and has long thin leaves. (See photos) It's bulb is dried, roasted and eaten or made into a flour. Italians sometimes eat them like chestnuts. "For centuries Syrians used it for food. Dioscorides, the historian, writes that in his time this bulb was added to flour made into thin cakes" (Walker).

  1 Cab (Hebrew - kab) is equal to 1.1600 Quart (Standard). It was worth about 20 pieces of silver.
  
  2 Kings 6:25 (KJV) And there was a great famine in Samaria: and, behold, they besieged it, until an ass's head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cab of dove's dung for five pieces of silver.

• - - , Algemeen, Tuesday, May 08, 2007, Laudator Temporis Acti ; Dove's Dung
  Kevin P. Edgecomb, author of the blog biblicalia, writes:

  I have a slight correction to your recent and thoroughly enjoyable post on coprophagy, etc.
  
  The Hebrew "dove's dung" in 2 Kings 6.25 has been recognized for some time now as a colloquial term for either husks or a particular weed. It's particularly the Akkadian data that clarified things.
  
  This is from Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor's Anchor Bible Commentary on 2 Kings (Doubleday, 1988), page 79:

  Josephus thought that the dung was used for salt (Antiquities ix.62); Qimhi, for fuel due to lack of firewood. The translation of NEB ("locust beans") and NJPS ("carob pods") follow the Akkadian evidence: in a lexical list of plants, ḫalla/ze summāti, "dove's dung," is defined as zēr ašāgi = ḫarūbu, "the seed of the (false) carob." This was first recognized by R. Campbell Thompson, Dictionary of Assyrian Botany (London, 1949), 186; and independently by A. L. Oppenheim, JQR 37 (1946-47), 175-76. See also the extensive treatment by M. Held, Studies...Landsberger, AS 16 (1965), 395-98.

  From just a few years later, the Anchor Bible Dictionary (Doubleday, 1992), has this listed among Flora (vol. 2, p. 815):

  DOVE'S DUNG, STAR OF BETHLEHEM (Ornithogalum umbellatum) is the Heb ḥiryôn (2 Kgs 6:25; see Post 1883: 801; Loew 1928, I: 601; Moldenke 1952: 162). This plant grows profusely on the hills of Samaria, and the white flowers look like bird droppings. It is a small, bulbous plant with umbels of flowers. The bulbs are poisonous, unless roasted or boiled; then they may be ground into meal.

  In that respect, "dove's dung" should simply be reclassified in your list, though it's still a fun thing to see.
  
  I also offer you a further biblical example, Ezekiel 4.9-15 (New Revised Standard Version), instructions of the LORD to Ezekiel for a prophetic "bed-in" or whatever one might call it:

  And you, take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt; put them into one vessel, and make bread for yourself. During the number of days that you lie on your side, three hundred ninety days, you shall eat it. The food that you eat shall be twenty shekels a day by weight; at fixed times you shall eat it. And you shall drink water by measure, one-sixth of a hin; at fixed times you shall drink. You shall eat it as a barley-cake, baking it in their sight on human dung. The LORD said, "Thus shall the people of Israel eat their bread, unclean, among the nations to which I will drive them." Then I said, "Ah Lord GOD! I have never defiled myself; from my youth up until now I have never eaten what died of itself or was torn by animals, nor has carrion flesh come into my mouth." Then he said to me, "See, I will let you have cow's dung instead of human dung, on which you may prepare your bread."

• - - , Algemeen, , Nature at Close Range; Dove's Dung
• - - , B-Hebrew, 4 sept 2008, What is that to be eaten 2 Kings 6:25?
• K Randolph, One of the things being sold for food is usually translated as dove's dung, but is that correct? XRY YWNYM חרייונים the second part is usually translated as doves. But is that correct? It can also be translated as clays.
  The first part is also mentioned in Genesis 40:16 in relation to baked goods. Is this the same word?
  I have heard (I don't remember where) that in some places, when food is scarce, that clay is eaten to provide bulk in the stomach to stop hunger pangs, could this be a reference to this practice?
• Jack Tladatsi: The word in question (dibyown) is of course a hapax legomenon which does not seem to be derived from any obvious Hebrew roots. The "doves dung" is the ketib. The LXX translates this as dove's dung (kabou koprou peristerwn). However even if we take the ketib and LXX at face value, that does not mean people were actually eating doves dung. In Mexico and the US Southwest there is a popular confection called "churros", a long narrow lump of fried dough sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon. It is possible to translate "churros" as dung although there are more graphic and accurate words available in English language. The name is merely reflective of the general appearance of the food, particularly when it made by hand, and perhaps the fact it an inexpensive food popular with the poorer strata of society. Perhaps "doves dung" is something similar.
• Kevin P. Edgecomb From the Anchor Bible Dictionary: DOVE'S DUNG, STAR OF BETHLEHEM (Ornithogalum umbellatum) is the Heb [XRYWN] (2 Kgs 6:25; see Post 1883: 801; Loew 1928, I: 601; Moldenke 1952: 162). This plant grows profusely on the hills of Samaria, and the white flowers look like bird droppings. It is a small, bulbous plant with umbels of flowers. The bulbs are poisonous, unless roasted or boiled; then they may be ground into meal. David Noel Freedman, The Anchor Bible Dictionary, 2:815 (New York: Doubleday, 1996, c1992).
• David Kolinsky The root for the word, (dibyown), is D.B.H which is analogous to DB in Arabic meaning to crawl, creep, move slowly, go on all fours, fill, pervade, invade, stream in, rush in; bear, sand hill, tiny animal, insect. Considering that the Ktiv is Chiryon which is related to the word Ch.R./A (/A = aleph) which means excrement, the connection to excrement is on solid ground. Therefore, I suggest that both words most likely mean "Scarab or Dung Beetle" which in times of famine would most definately be eaten and nutritious.
• Isaac Fried It seems to me that DIBYONIM is from the root DB, which is but a variant of the root ZB, 'ooze, drip', eventually 'pile up'.
• - - , B-Hebrew, 7 sept 2008,
• David Kolinsky: The root for the word, (dibyown), is D.B.H which is analogous to DB in Arabic meaning to crawl, creep, move slowly, go on all fours, fill, pervade, invade, stream in, rush in; bear, sand hill, tiny animal, insect. Considering that the Ktiv is Chiryon which is related to the word Ch.R./A (/A = aleph) which means excrement, the connection to excrement is on solid ground. Therefore, I suggest that both words most likely mean "Scarab or Dung Beetle" which in times of famine would most definately be eaten and nutritious.
• Bill Rea: A number of English translations have a footnote to say these were a type of seed pod. How reliable that is I have no idea but it seems a reasonable suggestion.
• Kelton Graham: And the NET footnotes says that dove's dung was name for husk of seeds. Based on evidence from Akkadian, M. Cogan and H. Tadmor (II Kings [AB], 79) suggest that "dove's dung" was a popular name for the inedible husks of seeds.
• J.P. van de Giessen , Blog Aantekeningen bij de Bijbel, May 21, 2010,

  Ster van Bethlehem op Pinksteren

• J.P. van de Giessen , Blog Aantekeningen bij de Bijbel, June 20, 2011,

  Vogelmelk

---

Mede mogelijk dankzij