Rue
Plants and Trees in the Bible
Rue is a small, shrubby plant that produces many branches at ground level, with many yellow flowers and very sharp-smelling leaves. It can reach up to a meter (3 feet) in height.
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In the Bible
The Hebrew and Greek words for it, and every verse where each is used
πήγανον pēganon · 1 verse
What it stands for
The ancient Jewish Talmud states that cultivated plants should be tithed. It is possible that the disagreement between Jesus and the Pharisees arose because by New Testament times the people were cultivating rue, dill, and similar plants that had not been cultivated before, and the Pharisees then applied the laws of the Talmud to these little plants, thus complicating the lives of the common people, while at the same time they ignored issues of justice and compassion.
More about it
In the Holy Land at the time of Jesus there was only one wild species of rue common, the Mountain Rue Ruta chalepensis, and it is likely the one referred to by Jesus in his rebuke of the Pharisees in . The very similar cultivated rue Ruta graveolens was introduced from southern Europe later. Rue is common throughout the Middle East, from Syria to Sinai up to the present. Because of its strong smell it is used in cooking and in medicine up to the present. It was used by the Greeks, Romans, and Jews against snakebite and the stings of bees, wasps and scorpions, not to mention its effectiveness against insanity, epilepsy, and even “the evil eye.” In post-biblical Jewish literature rue is called pigam, which is cognate with the Greek pēganon and the Arabic fegan.
Also in Condiments
Sources
Plants and Trees in the Bible, Animals in the Bible and Human-made Things in the Bible © United Bible Societies, 2025 (adapted from Each According to its Kind: Plants and Trees in the Bible by Robert Koops, All Creatures Great and Small: Living Things in the Bible by Edward R. Hope, and The Works of Their Hands: Man-made Things in the Bible by Ray Pritz), CC BY-SA 4.0; adapted for eRhema