Jeremiah 41:8. We have treasures in the field, of wheat, and of barley, and of oil, and of honey.
1. It is a very ancient custom in many parts of the East to store grain in large pits or cisterns, dug in the ground for the purpose. In Syria these cisterns are sealed at the top with plaster, and covered with a deep bed of earth to keep out vermin. They are cool and dry and tight. Among the Moors, the custom is to have a thick layer of straw on the bottom and a lining of straw on the sides. They cover the mouth with a stone, and sometimes build over it a small pyramid of earth to shed the rain. Very often, however, after closing the mouth, they cover the place with sod so skillfully that none but the initiated can tell where the pit is. Shaw says that in Barbary there are sometimes two or three hundred of these grain-pits together, the smallest of them holding four hundred bushels.
Burder (Oriental Literature, No. 621) gives a quotation from Chenier, a French traveler, who says that among the Moors the fathers of wealthy families fill a granary of this kind at the birth of every child, and empty it when the child becomes an adult and is married. He knew of corn which had been kept in such pits for twenty-five years and was still fit for use, though it had lost its whiteness.
These are doubtless he kind of places referred to in the text, where the treasures of wheat were kept. David also had “storehouses in the field” (1 Chron. 27:25). Besides these subterranean granaries there were also barns. See note on Genesis 41:48 (#81).
2. In like manner oil is sometimes kept in jars buried in the ground; and jars of honey might easily be kept in a similar manner. The ten men referred to in the text who sought to purchase their lives of Ishmael, had concealed their treasures in the field so that no one should rob them.
Some suppose that the “cellars of oil” belonging to David were merely places where oil jars were buried. See 1 Chronicles 27:28.
Other treasures besides those mentioned in the text are frequently buried in the East. See note on Matthew 13:44 (#667).