Mint
“Sweet-scented”
Summary
Mint was a common garden herb which the Pharisees meticulously tithed, exemplifying their attention to minor religious duties while neglecting weightier matters of the law.
☩The Plant
Mint (Greek heduosmon, meaning 'sweet-scented') was a well-known aromatic herb cultivated in ancient gardens. Several species grow in Syria and Palestine, including horse mint (Mentha sylvestris), which is common throughout the region. The plant was valued by the ancients as a warming condiment in cooking, as a medicine with carminative properties, and for its pleasant fragrance—it was even strewed upon the floors of houses and synagogues for its odor. Mint belongs to the large natural order Labiatae and has small reddish flowers with a taste that is bitter, warm, and pungent, leaving a sensation of coolness on the tongue.
☩Tithing Mint
Jesus censured the Pharisees for paying tithes on mint, anise, and cummin while neglecting the weightier matters of the law—justice, mercy, and faithfulness. His rebuke was not that tithing herbs was wrong ('these ought ye to have done') but that such scrupulous exactness in minor duties was hypocritical when combined with neglect of fundamental moral obligations. The tithe of such small garden herbs represented the extreme lengths to which Pharisaic legalism went in external observance while missing the heart of true religion.
See Also
References
- 1.John McClintock and James Strong, "Mint," in Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature, vol. VI (Harper & Brothers, 1867–1887).
- 2.James Hastings (ed.), "Mint," in Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, vol. II (T. & T. Clark, 1906–1908).
- 3.Andrew Robert Fausset, "Mint," in The Englishman's Critical and Expository Bible Cyclopædia (Hodder & Stoughton, 1878).