46 Ekev

V. 8. ארץ חטה וגו׳. It needs to be ascertained why the description of the wealth of the soil has been given in two groups apparently divorced by the repetition of the ארץ. If we are not mistaken, the seven genera of fruit in the series in which they are named always belong to warmer climates, and indeed the date palm, דבש (see Vayikra 2, 11), belongs decidedly to the hot zone, while wine thrives only in the temperate zone. Perhaps the sentence says: it is a land of wheat, barley, grapes, figs and pomegranates, in which not only olives and date palms occur, but which is also actually a land of olives and palms, in which as well as grain and wine, so also olives and dates thrive excellently. The makif between ארץ and זית, which connects the olive tree even more concisely as a characteristic peculiarity of the country, would also speak for this. According to Oken (German naturalist, botanist, biologist, and ornithologist), Palestine is also the actual home of the olive tree, and it was only from there that it was transplanted to Greece, etc. It is thus this country that has the fortunate distinction of being the home of the olive tree. Thus this country has the fortunate advantage of bearing an abundance of the most excellent fruits of all zones. That with the second ארץ a second peculiarity of the soil is expressed, which is equal in advantage to that introduced with the first ארץ, is also evident from the Halacha Berachoth 41b, according to which dates precede pomegranates in the berachah to be spoken before eating them, because the latter come second, but the latter are mentioned only in fifth place after ארץ,

זה שני לארץ וזה חמישי לארץ.

I was once shown the first printed sheets of a work on halakhic measurements, in which he made what seems to me to be a very noteworthy comment on this sentence. In it he demonstrates how, apart from Jewish circles in the ancient world, fruits such as barley, olives, etc. were generally accepted as the basic units for measuring length and weight. Of course, the fruit of a certain country had to be considered the standard fruit for these measured fruits in international trade. The fruits of Palestine would have been so well known in world trade as the most excellent that they would have been the standard unit for length and weight, and one would not have measured according to barley, olives in general, but according to Palestinian barley, Palestinian olives, etc., etc., etc. The fact that they were not measured by barley or olives in general, but by Palestinian barley, Palestinian olives, etc., and that שבח ארץ ישראל, thus showed the excellence of the Palestinian soil fruits in the fact that they are generally regarded as the best-known units of measurement. To my regret, the name of the author has escaped me and I do not know whether his work has been published in full.