Beans

BEANS (פּוֹל, H7038, can mean pea.) Beans are mentioned twice—in 2 Samuel 17:28 and Ezekiel 4:9.

All botanists agree that pol is the broad bean, Faba vulgaris. This is an annual, producing scented, pea-like flowers, followed by long, thick pods. The plants are three ft. high, and grow quite erect. The beans inside are large, nearly round, and when they ripen, are black or brown. The scent from a field of beans may be smelled by passers-by from about the middle of January to the middle of March. The fragrance travels quite long distances. In Pal., dried beans are ground into a flour and made into bread. They also can be cooked as a vegetable.

Broad beans have been found in the coffins of mummies in Egypt.

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915)

A very common product of Palestine; a valuable and very ancient article of diet. The Bible references are probably to the Faba vulgaris (N. D. Leguminosae) or horsebean. This is sown in the autumn; is in full flower--filling the air with sweet perfume--in the early spring; and is harvested just after the barley and wheat. The bundles of black bean stalks, plucked up by the roots and piled up beside the newly winnowed barley, form a characteristic feature on many village threshing-floors. Beans are threshed and winnowed like the cereals. Beans are eaten entire, with the pod, in the unripe state, but to a greater extent the hard beans are cooked with oil and meat.

In Eze 4:9, beans are mentioned with other articles as an unusual source of bread and in 2Sa 17:28 David receives from certain staunch friends of his at Mahanaim a present, which included "beans, and lentils, and parched pulse."