coriander

The Hebrew that is translated as “coriander” in English was translated in the 1900 Kalaallisut (Greenlandic) translation (a newer version was published in 2000) as kuániarssuit or “angelica.” “Kuániarssuit (modern kuanniarsuit) [is] a plural form based on the stem kuáneĸ (modern kuanneq), ‘angelica’ (angelica archangelica ), an herb native to Greenland and other Arctic and subarctic regions, used as a seasoning in food and as a kind of tea.” (Source: Lily Kahn & Riitta-Liisa Valijärvi in The Bible Translator 2019, p. 125ff.)

According to Exodus 16:31, the miraculous food called “manna” that God sent to the wandering Israelites in the desert was “like coriander seed, white.” Coriander Coriandrum sativum did in fact grow in Egypt and the Holy Land. However, its seed is not very white, but more brown or gray, and Numbers 11:7 tells us that the color was that of bdellium, of which we know almost nothing for certain. Further, the Septuagint has the Greek word korion, which is not coriander. The Arabic name gidda, the cognate of the Hebrew word gad, refers to a different plant, namely wormwood. To complicate the matter further, Exodus 16:14 describes manna as “flaky,” whereas coriander seeds are spherical or egg-shaped.

In view of these difficulties, Zohary (Plants of the Bible. Cambridge University Press, 1982) expresses doubt as to whether the word gad actually refers to the plant we now know as coriander. He speculates that early translators, not knowing what gad referred to, took the Punic word goid (𐤂𐤃) for coriander, and made the association between gad and coriander. The writer would have done us a favor if he had said “like coriander flowers,” which can be white, but unfortunately the text has “seed.” Maybe an early narrator or scribe made a mistake in transmitting the text. Could the Hebrew word perach (“flower”) perhaps have been replaced by zera‘ (“seed”)?

However, it is possible that coriander seed really was intended, and that the point of comparison between manna and coriander seeds was their size, which is about 4 millimeters (3/16 inch) in diameter, the size of a peppercorn. (Thus Revised English Bible and New American Bible have “like coriander seed, but white.”) Another possibility is that the writer was thinking of the way the seeds cluster, or of their firmness. We are told in Numbers 11:8 that the people pounded the manna in mortars and ground it in mills, suggesting some degree of hardness.

The coriander plant is around 60 centimeters (2 feet) in height, the upper leaves being finely divided and the lower ones broad, with tiny white or reddish flowers, and a strong odor. The seeds are oily, brown or gray, and about the size of small peas. The leaves and seeds were used in ancient times in cooking, and are still used for soup and salads up to the present. The fragrant oil from the seeds is sometimes used in making perfume and medicine.

Translators can give a generic rendering, as Good News Bible has done (“like a small white seed”), omitting reference to coriander (but including it in a footnote). It is also possible to follow REB and NAB (“like coriander seed, but white”), which disassociate the seed from the color. If this is done, translators may transliterate “coriander” from a major language or from the Hebrew gad.