the Week of Proper 25 / Ordinary 30
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Bible Encyclopedias
Dung
Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
or Among the Israelites, as with the modern Orientals, dung was used both for manure and for fuel. In a district where wood is scarce, dung is so valuable for the latter purpose, that little of it is spared for the former.
The use of dung for manure is indicated in , from which we also learn that its bulk was increased by the addition of straw, which was of course, as with us, left to rot in the dunghill. Some of the regulations connected with this use of dung we learn from the Talmud. The heaping up of a dunghill in a public place exposed the owner to the repair of any damage it might occasion, and any one was at liberty to take it away. Another regulation forbade the accumulation of the dunghill to be removed, in the seventh or sabbatic year, to the vicinity of any ground under culture, which was equivalent to an interdiction of the use of manure in that year; and this must have occasioned some increase of labor in the year ensuing.
The use of cow-dung for fuel is known to our own villagers, who, at least in the west of England, prefer it in baking their bread 'under the crock,' on account of the long continued and equable heat which it maintains. It is there also not unusual in a summer evening to see aged people traversing the green lanes with baskets to collect the cakes of cow-dung which have dried upon the road. This helps out the ordinary fire of wood, and makes it burn longer. In many thinly-wooded parts of south-western Asia the dung of cows, camels, horses, asses, whichever may happen to be the most common, is collected with great zeal and diligence from the streets and highways, chiefly by young girls. They also hover on the skirts of the encampments of travelers, and there are often amusing scrambles among them for the droppings of the cattle. The dung is mixed up with chopped straw, and made into cakes, which are stuck up by their own adhesiveness against the walls of the cottages, or are laid upon the declivity of a hill, until sufficiently dried. It is not unusual to see a whole village with its walls thus garnished, which has a singular and not very agreeable appearance to a European traveler. Towards the end of autumn, the result of the summer collection of fuel for winter is shown in large conical heaps or stacks of dried, dung upon the top of every cottage. The usages of the Jews in this matter were probably similar in kind, although the extent to which they prevailed cannot now be estimated.
Public Domain.
Kitto, John, ed. Entry for 'Dung'. "Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature". https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/kbe/d/dung.html.
