Apples of Sodom
Apples of Sodom
Found on the shores of the Dead Sea; like a cluster of oranges, yellow to the eye, and soft to the touch; but on pressure they explode with a puff, leaving only shreds of the rind and fibers. The Arabs twist the silk into matches for their guns. Compare Deu 32:32. The Calotropisprocera, an Indian plant, which thrives in the warm valley of Engedi, but is found scarcely elsewhere in Palestine. Its fruit in winter contains a yellowish dust, of pungent quality. (See WINE OF SODOM)
Fuente: Fausset’s Bible Dictionary
Apples of Sodom
sodum: Josephus (BJ, IV, viii, 4) says that the traces (or shadows) of the five cities (of the plain) are still to be seen, as well as the ashes growing in their fruits, which fruits have a color as if they were fit to be eaten; but if you pluck them with your hands they dissolve into smoke and ashes. What this Dead Sea fruit is, is uncertain. The name Dead Sea apples is often given to the fruit of the Solanum Sodomaean a prickly shrub with fruit not unlike a small yellow tomato. Cheyne thinks that the fruits referred to by Josephus (compare Tacitus Hist. v.37) may be either (1) those of the osher-tree (, usar, Calotropis procera, described by Hasselquist (Travels, 1766)), found in abundance about Jericho and near the Dead Sea, which are filled with dust when they have been attacked by an insect, leaving the skin only entire, and of a beautiful color. Tristram describes the fruit as being as large as an apple of average size, of a bright yellow color, hanging three or four together close to the stem; or as suggested by Tristram (2) those of the wild colocynth; the fruit is fair of aspect with a pulp which dries up into a bitter powder (EB, article Sodom, col. 4669, note 2). This colocynth is supposed to be the wild vine mentioned 2Ki 4:39. The vine of Sodom of Deu 32:32 has been supposed to bear the Dead Sea fruit; but most modern writers regard the passage as figurative.
Fuente: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
Apples of Sodom
Apples of Sodom. Found on the shores of the Dead Sea; like a cluster of oranges, yellow to the eye, and soft to the touch; but on pressure they explode with a puff, leaving only shreds of the rind and fibres. The Arabs twist the silk into matches for their guns. Compare “vine of Sodom” and “grapes of gall” in Deu 32:32.