Fitches

Fitches is the Authorized Version's rendering of two distinct Hebrew plants in Isaiah and Ezekiel. In Isaiah 28:25, 27, the Hebrew qetsah most likely refers to the Nigella sativa (black cumin or fennel flower), a small annual herb of the buttercup family grown across the ancient Near East for its seeds, used as a spice and condiment. Isaiah notes that it is beaten out with a staff rather than threshed with a harder instrument — an illustration of God's wisdom in calibrating judgment to what each crop can bear.

In Ezekiel 4:9, the Hebrew kussemeth (usually translated "spelt" or "emmer") was an inferior grain mixed with wheat, barley, and other grains in the prophet's symbolic "siege bread." The passage illustrates Jerusalem's coming scarcity under siege. Both uses of "fitches" demonstrate the rich agricultural vocabulary of ancient Palestine and the prophets' precise observation of agricultural practice, which they deployed as a vehicle for theological instruction.