συκομωραία

From the study of Luke 19:4

Range of meaning

The sycomore fig, Ficus sycomorus. The name is a Greek compound of sykon ("fig") and moron ("mulberry"), so roughly "fig-mulberry", because its leaves look like mulberry leaves and its fruit is a small fig. The tree is large and spreading, with a short, thick trunk and side branches that start low. It keeps its leaves most of the year and gives deep shade. It does best in warm lowlands such as the Jordan valley and the coastal plain.

Against the English

English "sycamore" names a different tree depending on where you live. In Britain it is a maple (Acer pseudoplatanus). In North America it is a plane tree (Platanus occidentalis), which is tall and has a smooth trunk with few branches low down. Neither one is what Luke meant. The KJV's older spelling "sycomore" kept the difference. The NIV's "sycamore-fig" shows it most plainly.

How it drifted

The Greek name passed into Latin as sycomorus. In late medieval Europe, where the real sycomore fig does not grow, it was attached to the big maple, probably because its leaves looked something like fig leaves. English settlers later gave the name to the American plane tree. As the spelling "sycamore" became standard, the biblical tree and the local tree merged in readers' minds.

Used elsewhere in the period

Greek medical and botanical writers of the first century, notably Dioscorides, use the word sykomoron for this Egyptian and Levantine fig. In the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint), the Hebrew shiqmah (sycomore) is usually rendered sykaminos (1 Kgs 10:27; Ps 78:47; Amos 7:14). Amos calls himself a "dresser of sycomore figs": the fruit had to be nicked by hand to ripen, and it was a cheap food for ordinary people. 1 Kings 10:27 treats sycomores as common in the lowlands. Luke uses sykaminos at 17:6 and sykomorea here. He may mean two different trees (mulberry at 17:6), or the two words may overlap.