1 68 Fruits and Fruit- Trees. 



it to be the 'ets hadhar of Leviticus xxiii. 40, where the 

 command is given as to keeping the Feast of Tabernacles : 

 " Ye shall take you on the first day the boughs of goodly 

 trees, branches of palm-trees, and boughs of thick trees, 

 and willows of the brook, and rejoice seven days." For 

 this reason they still employ it when celebrating the annual 

 Feast, which falls some time in August. "A citron," says 

 Canon Tristram, "is handed round, and smelt by the 

 worshippers as they go out, when they thank God for all 

 good things and sweet odours given by Him."* That 

 there shall be no lack of the fruit when the time arrives, 

 the citron is cultivated for this particular use at a place 

 called Assats or Assat, about a day's journey from Taru- 

 dant, in Morocco, on the bank of the river Loos, near 

 which there are very ancient citron-orchards, known by 

 the names of Aaron, David, and others of the patri- 

 archs. The shipment, which takes place from Mogador, 

 amounted in 1883 to a hundred and ten boxes, containing 

 over nine thousand of the fruit, the poorest of which 

 are worth four shillings each, while specially fine ones, 

 without blemish, fetch as much as twenty shillings. But 

 alas for the pious belief ! Scripture supplies no ground 

 for it. The Hebrew phrase means nothing more than 

 "goodly trees," as in the A.V., and as acknowledged in 

 the Revised ; the rest is simple tradition, and must be 

 put down to the ancient commentators. " Targums," as 

 they are called, Chaldee paraphrases upon various Old 

 Testament books, existed in an oral form among the Jews 



* Natural History of the Bible, p. 348. 



