Barley

Barley is a grain crop that grows shorter and matures faster than wheat. In the Jordan Valley it is ready to harvest in March or April — the first grain of the year to ripen, before the wheat harvest that follows weeks later. The flour it produces is coarser, darker, and less desirable than wheat flour. Because of this, barley was significantly cheaper — the grain of labourers, the poor, and common soldiers. It was the grain you ate when you could not afford wheat, or when you were working a field someone else owned.

The entire book of Ruth is set against the barley harvest. After her husband's death, Ruth goes to glean the leftover stalks in Boaz's barley field — the survival strategy of the absolutely poor (Ruth 2:17). The book ends with redemption, but it begins with a widow on her knees picking up what reapers dropped. When a boy offered Jesus five barley loaves and two fish in John 6:9, he was offering the most basic ration of the poor, not anything fine. Jesus multiplied it for five thousand. In Revelation 6:6, the black horse's rider holds scales for measuring food — a day's wage buys only a measure of barley — the sign of catastrophic, grinding famine when even the cheapest grain is almost beyond reach.