Greek word · G2915
κριθή
krithē
barley
Barley, the cheaper and coarser cereal. It ripened earlier than wheat and grew in poorer soil. People ate it as bread or porridge, and it was widely used as animal feed.
Appears once in the Greek New Testament. ·
What it means
From G. Abbott-Smith, A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (1922), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).
In depth
From the study of Revelation 6:6
- Range of meaning
Barley, the cheaper and coarser cereal. It ripened earlier than wheat and grew in poorer soil. People ate it as bread or porridge, and it was widely used as animal feed.
- Against the English
English "barley" is accurate. What English readers miss is its social status: it marked a poor man's table.
- Used elsewhere in the period
The boy's loaves in John 6:9 are barley. Second Kings 7:1, 16, 18 sets wheat and barley prices together in a famine-and-relief oracle. Roman soldiers who disgraced themselves were put on barley rations (Polybius 6.38; Suetonius, Augustus 24). The Mishnah (Ketubot 5:8) sets a wife's maintenance in barley at twice the quantity of wheat.
Where it appears
Revelation · 1
-
Revelation 6:6 κριθῶν of barley
And I heard what sounded like a voice from among the four living creatures, saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius, and do not harm the oil and wine.”
Here: Barley, the cheaper and coarser grain. It was food for the poor, slaves and animals, and in Roman armies it was a punishment ration.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.