Millet

Millet (dochan in Hebrew) was a cereal grain cultivated in ancient Palestine alongside wheat, barley, and spelt. It appears in the Old Testament in two significant contexts: as an ingredient in the multi-grain bread Ezekiel was commanded to bake as a symbolic act (Ezekiel 4:9), and implicitly as one of the food supplies of the ancient Near East. Millet is a small-seeded grass — probably Panicum miliaceum (common millet) or Sorghum bicolor — that tolerates poor soils and dry conditions better than wheat, making it a staple food of the poor and a famine-resistant crop in marginal agricultural regions.